Zombie Holocaust | |
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Directed by | Marino Girolami |
Screenplay by | Romano Scandariato [1] |
Story by | Fabrizio De Angelis [1] |
Starring |
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Cinematography | Fausto Zuccoli [1] |
Edited by | Alberto Moriani [1] |
Music by | Nico Fidenco [1] |
Production companies |
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Distributed by | Variety Distribution |
Release date |
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Country | Italy |
Languages | Italian English |
Box office | 300 million lire [2] |
Zombie Holocaust (Italian : Zombi Holocaust) is a 1980 Italian horror film directed by Marino Girolami. [1] The film is about a team of scientists who follow a trail of corpses in New York to a remote Indonesian island where they meet a mad doctor (Donald O'Brien) who performs experiments on both the living and dead in his laboratory. The team face both zombies and cannibals in an attempt to stop the doctor. The film was re-edited and released theatrically in the United States in 1982 under the title Doctor Butcher M.D. [3] [4]
In New York City, a hospital worker is found to have been devouring bodies in the morgue. Morgue assistant and anthropology expert Lori discovers he was from the Maluku Islands where she grew up. Dr. Peter Chandler investigates, and he and Lori discover that similar corpse mutilations have occurred in other city hospitals, where immigrants from this region are working.
Peter leads an expedition to the islands to investigate, where he liaises with Doctor Obrero. Included are his assistant George, George's eager journalist girlfriend Susan, Lori, local boatsman Molotto assigned by Obrero, and three guides. The crew is hunted by cannibals and zombies, the latter created by the sinister Doctor Obrero, who is experimenting with corpses.
Lori is accepted as queen of the cannibals and sends them off against the mad scientist and his zombie army.
The film was released in Italy in 1980 [1] [5] and grossed a total of 300 million Italian lira. [2] It was released in the United States in 1982 in modified form, under the title Doctor Butcher M.D.,. [2] The "Doctor Butcher" cut features the film uncensored and uncut, but features a new prologue which consists of footage from an unreleased film shot by director Roy Frumkes, intercut with footage of the zombies from the film and footage of a swinging sign outside a building that said "Doctor Butcher M.D.". [2] In addition to the title Zombie Holocaust, the film has since been released under various other English titles, including Island of the Last Zombies, Queen of the Cannibals and Zombie 3. [2]
The Doctor Butcher M.D. version of the film was originally released on home video by Wizard Films on VHS. When the film was released on DVD in 2002, Shriek Show released the film under its original form as Zombie Holocaust. The US film's prologue and the Doctor Butcher M.D. trailer would be included as extras on the DVD. The film was made available both separately and in a triple feature package. The Zombie Pack Vol. 2 contains Zombie Holocaust, Burial Ground: The Nights of Terror and Flesheater . [6] Shriek Show released the film on Blu-ray for the first time in the U.S. on June 28, 2011, [7] [3] with 88 Films giving the film its UK Blu-ray debut in 2015. [3]
In 2016, Severin Films issued a deluxe edition two-disc Blu-ray that included both Zombie Holocaust and Doctor Butcher M.D., as well as a multitude of bonus features. The first 5,000 copies of this edition also included a replica of the "barf bag" given out at some original screenings of Doctor Butcher M.D. [8]
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In The Zombie Movie Encyclopedia, academic Peter Dendle stated that "Some of the gore effects are quite good, but other than that the movie is a stock accumulation of familiar motifs." [9] Bloody Disgusting rated it 5/5 stars and recommended it to fans of Italian gore films. [10] Author Glenn Kay of Zombie Movies: The Ultimate Guide referred to it as "a bad movie; for Italian zombie gore fans only." [2] Danny Shipka, author of Perverse Titillation: The Exploitation Cinema of Italy, Spain and France, 1960–1980, noted that Zombie Holocaust showed how quickly the zombie subgenre "degenerated into stupidity" and that the film "fuses the cannibal genre and the zombie film into an incoherent mess". [11]
Dawn of the Dead is a 1978 zombie horror film written, directed, and edited by George A. Romero, and produced by Richard P. Rubinstein. An American-Italian international co-production, it is the second film in Romero's series of zombie films, and though it contains no characters or settings from the preceding film Night of the Living Dead (1968), it shows the larger-scale effects of a zombie apocalypse on society. In the film, a phenomenon of unidentified origin has caused the reanimation of the dead, who prey on human flesh. David Emge, Ken Foree, Scott Reiniger, and Gaylen Ross star as survivors of the outbreak who barricade themselves inside a suburban shopping mall amid mass hysteria.
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Zombi 2 is a 1979 English-language Italian zombie film directed by Lucio Fulci. It was adapted from an original screenplay by Dardano Sacchetti to serve as a sequel to George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead (1978), which was released in Italy under the title Zombi. It stars Tisa Farrow, Ian McCulloch, and Richard Johnson, and features a score by frequent Fulci collaborator Fabio Frizzi. Frizzi's score has been released independently of the film, and he has performed it live on tour.
Ruggero Deodato was an Italian film director, screenwriter, and actor.
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Zombi 3 is a 1988 Italian horror film directed by Lucio Fulci and Bruno Mattei and starring Deran Sarafian, Beatrice Ring, and Ottaviano Dell'acqua. The film is an in-name-only sequel to Fulci's Zombi 2. The film is about a group of scientists at a top-secret research facility who are working on a biological weapon called Death One, which mutates and kills the living creatures and reanimates the dead. The weapon is leaked out of the facility, which leads to a spread of infection among soldiers and touring people in the area.
The Zombi series refers collectively to horror films that have been marketed, in various territories, as sequels to either George A. Romero's Italian-American film Dawn of the Dead (1978) or Lucio Fulci's Italian film Zombi 2 (1979). The latter was itself marketed by Italian distributors as a sequel to the former. A confusing history has emerged from the practice of reworking films as Zombi movies for release in different countries, a process during which a film may be given a different title in each country where it is released. In Britain and Thailand, these films were released as the Zombie Flesh Eaters series. In North America and Germany, the films became known as the Zombie series. The films maintained their original spelling, Zombi, when released in Australia and other select countries.
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Absurd is a 1981 English-language Italian slasher film directed, lensed and co-produced by Joe D'Amato and starring George Eastman, who also wrote the story and screenplay.
Eaten Alive! is a 1980 Italian horror film directed by Umberto Lenzi. The film is about a young woman who is searching for her sister after her abduction by a cult in the jungles of New Guinea.
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Cannibal Apocalypse is a 1980 action horror film directed by Antonio Margheriti and starring John Saxon, Elizabeth Turner, Giovanni Lombardo Radice, Cinzia De Carolis, Tony King and Ramiro Oliveros. The film combines the cannibal film genre with a Vietnam War film.
Giannetto De Rossi was an Italian makeup and special effects artist for motion pictures. His career included work for several high-profile directors, including Bernardo Bertolucci, Sergio Leone, Federico Fellini, Franco Zeffirelli, and David Lynch; as well as collaborations with cult filmmakers Lucio Fulci and Alexandre Aja. He was known particularly for his highly detailed and realistic prosthetic appliances, most visible in his horror output. He was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Special Effects for the Oscar-winning The Last Emperor (1987).
Virgin Among the Living Dead is a film directed by Jesús Franco. Franco shot the film in Portugal in 1971 with the film it was only being released to the public in 1973. While credited as a production of Liechtenstein, it was submitted theatrically as being the product of various countries with Franco biographer suggesting that the Prodif Ets. company was set up as a tax shelter.
Erotic Nights of the Living Dead is a 1980 Italian erotic horror film directed and written and directed by Joe D'Amato. It has received mixed to negative reviews. It was filmed in and around Santo Domingo.
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