Wonderful Movie

That was an excellent one.

Fantastic!

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

Rescued at sea from her predicament, the sole survivor of the island massacre reluctantly agrees to return to the island with a group of officers to investigate what happened and find themselves against the same creatures as she was forcing her to lead them out.Overall this one was quite a fun if somewhat problematic effort. One of the best features here is the fact that by being so obvious and unrepentant about its status as a true full-fledged rip-off it allows for the same kind of fun as before. As the whole first half is an abbreviated run-through of the same movie, it gives the same sense of fun here in rolling through the same main scenes which gives this the creepy dreams that brings her along, the transport to the island coming off the same way as before and the group undergoing the same positions and group formations as they advance and overtake the area. Once inside, it gets even more fun with the locator beacons of the facility, the motion detectors and even the fire-fight against the one creature they come across which leads into the all-out fun of the storage locker confrontation. Taking off on it's own delirious tangent as the still- alive body gives birth to another creature which in turns leads to one of the wildest shootouts possible where the entire room is filled with creatures and brings an endless stream of gunfire, blasting limbs and bullet wounds that results in massive carnage along the way and is an extraordinary highlight, especially leading into the gunfights required to escape as it shows the group running into the creatures in every corner of the building picking them off one-by-one. Though the film does go back into the rip-off realm afterwards again, it does so with flair as the numerous encounters with the zombies means there's plenty of action featured here with the big escape from the lab here allowing for the group splitting up as the first ones get knocked off leading to the numerous firefights and confrontations throughout here as the group falls under constant attack in plain rip-off sequences of these scenes only done in excessively graphic, over-the-top carnage fashion. Again, this one changes nicely from the other material when it gets to the finale as the real source for all the rampage creatures is such a bizarre and otherworldly concept while still tying in somewhat to what happened in the original that it becomes all the more mindbogglingly cheesy to see this one as the chosen scenario here which still adds a lot of great action dealing with the new-found creatures responsible as this simply adds to the utterly deranged atmosphere here. Still featuring the same great gore and special effects work for the most part, these here hold this up nicely against the film's flaw. Again, since there's so much here that's ripped off from other movies, especially in how it goes play-by-play at times, it can be seen as unnecessary to watch this one instead of the source movie based on how much it does follow that route. It's cheap-looking at times, but these flaws here are more individual-preference than anything to do with the film itself.Rated Unrated/R: Extreme Graphic Violence, Graphic Language and Nudity.

A group of rough'n'tumble marines led by Captain Jurgens (stiffly essayed with topmost cardboard aplomb by James Gregory Paolleli) are sent by the powerful company Tyler Inc. to investigate reports of a zombie outbreak on a remote pacific island where a series of secret medical experiments are being conducted. Dr. Sharon Dimao (woodenly played by the pretty Yvette Yzon), who's the traumatized lone survivor of a previous zombie rampage, accompanies the team on their desperate rescue mission.Boy, does this hilariously horrendous honey cover all the essential endearingly atrocious bases to rate highly as a real four-star stinkeroonie: Ham-fisted (mis)direction by legendary hack sleazemeister Bruno Mattei (his last film no less -- and no more, either!), laughably lousy dubbing, tacky excessive gore, terrible acting from a lame no-name cast, cheesy nightmare flashbacks, tin-eared dialogue (sample line: "You mean zombies like George Romero?"), erratic pacing, and ineptly staged zombie attack set pieces. The derivative script by Antonio Tentori and Giovanni Paolucci not only blatantly (and shamelessly) rips off "Aliens" right down to an annoying wisecracking jerk ala Hudson, but also tosses in a zombie midget, topless zombie women, hideous naked zombie kids with creepy big'n'black bug eyes, a giant talking brain, and even a grotesque zombie newborn baby (!) for extra supremely tasteless good measure. Ray de Leon's sharp cinematography offers a few neatly atmospheric compositions and makes occasional clumsy use of strenuous slow motion. The robust marital score does the rousing trick. An absolute schlocky hoot and a half.

Zombies: The Beginning (2007) * 1/2 (out of 4)Italian director Mattei ended his career with this sequel to ISLAND OF THE LIVING DEAD but don't expect a typical zombie flick. This film picks up right where the previous left as the sole survivor is asked by the government to head back to the island where her crew was killed by the zombies. That's pretty much all you need to know in terms of story as you really don't even need that considering this movie completely ignores what happened at the very end of the previous one. Yes, Mattei's final flick has a lot of zombies but it's actually just a direct rip off of ALIENS. This isn't the first time Mattei has ripped ALIENS and even though this movie is extremely bad, you can't help but somewhat admire how much ripping this guy can do. Not only do we get dialogue and scenes ripped from the Cameron flick but we get the typical stock footage stolen from other movies and this time it's CRIMSON TIDE. How Mattei got away with doing this his entire career is beyond me but quite a few of the sub scenes from that movie are lifted and used here. The movie actually looks like it had a fairly decent budget as the set design is actually pretty good and this is especially true at the end when we visit the alien/zombie tombs. Fans of gore will get quite a bit of that here as the red stuff is constantly flowing with various heads being shot off and parts being ripped or eaten. The CGI effects are quite poor but it adds a somewhat campy feel to the film. The performances, like the previous film, are hard to judge considering how bad the dubbing is but most people don't come to movies like this for the acting. The film doesn't mind ripping off other movies including dialogue from DAY OF THE DEAD and Mattei even rips off his own RATS: NIGHT OF TERROR. Fans of exploitation will probably want to check this out just for the cheese but the biggest problem is that it runs way too long and there's just not enough here to warrant the long running time. Mattei certainly went out with his comeback and this film contains all the bad stuff he'll always be remembered for.

Wow, I don't know who the fanboy was that wrote the review that made me want to watch this but I feel I must warn everybody else what a stinking pile of poo this "movie" is. Let me start by saying I Love zombie movies. I also love the Alien series of movies. If you take the plot and characters and dialog of the Alien series, get a bunch of bad "actors" to recite the lines, replace aliens with zombies and great special effects with really crappy ones, that pretty much sums up this effort. I'm not saying they stole ideas from the Alien series, They literally stole entire scenes and dialog and just did it really crappy. There was not even an attempt to disguise the blatant thievery. Oh, they did replace the aliens with zombies. Did I mention that????????? Total crap, total waste of time and the worst effects I have seen since the 60's. If you love zombie movies, stay away from this one.