“Hell of the Living Dead”
Day 2 of the 2025 31-Days of Horror
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When a top-secret experiment at the Hope Center Chemical Factory, in Papua New Guinea, goes awry it results in a chemical spill, turning scientists and workers into zombies. A TV reporter and her camera man band together with 4 soldiers to find out why people are coming back from the dead and eating the living.
Ooooh! Music by Goblin!! Well, they didn’t do the soundtrack, but it’s there. I’d watch Hell of the Living Dead for that alone! This is an entertaining enough Italian/Spanish zombie film from director Bruno Mattei, originally titled Virus, famously intended to be a knock off of Dawn of the Dead. Some of the elements are there, the journalists and the soldiers joining together to try to survive, some attempt at social commentary regarding the military’s poor treatment of the native islanders, but mostly half-assed.
The makeup and effects are actually decent. Sometimes pretty gross, sometimes outright silly. The zombie rat scene in the beginning lets you know exactly what you’re in for. They definitely over used the stock footage. And where I understand that using stock footage is supposed to give the film more depth, why do they show footage to imply herds of elephants on Papua New Guinea?
I was actually surprised at how much I enjoyed this. Margie Newton, as the journalist, Lia, the main character, carried the film fairly well, aside from the random, inappropriate screaming, which was a failure of the writing/directing, rather than the acting. The supporting men were caricatures of what late 70s manly men were supposed to be.
Ultimately, if you’re a fan of the classic Italian Zombie exploitation genre, this just might be for you.
