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Just what I expected

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

If you know anything about zombie movies you know they've changed over the decades. Go back and look at a movie like WHITE ZOMBIE or I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE and you'll see natives under the spell of someone walking about with stares on their faces. Fast forward to NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and we get meandering slow walking zombies that live off the flesh of others. Move forward again and you'll find fast running zombies that are frightening in their speed, still flesh eaters. Between those last two came the zombie films from Italy that were somewhere in between and almost always set on some tropical island.Such is the case with ZOMBI 4 aka AFTER DEATH. The movie opens with a voodoo priests reading from the book of the dead while a woman gyrates in a voodoo dance. This all culminates with the ground opening and swallowing her while he looks on. While this was taking place a group of white research scientists on the island have tracked the voodoo doctor to this cave. He blames them for the death of his family, they say they're doing nothing but saving lives with research. When one of them kills him, the woman rises from the ground with the fakest set of fangs you'll ever see spewing green goo. She begins killing them one by one as they shoot to no avail. While all of this is going on, a couple and their young child are trying to escape the island, chased by fast running zombies. The parents stay behind and send the girl off to the river with nothing more than a charm around her neck as they sacrifice themselves to save her.Confused? It doesn't stop there. Fast forward 20 years and we find the grown girl returning to the location to find out what happened to her parents and everyone else. She's accompanied by her friend and a group of mercenaries. The engine on their boat mysteriously conks out as they near the location. They dock and disembark to take a look around for parts to fix the boat. At the same time a trio of friends are also nearby with no explanation how they got there or why. They find the cave from the film's opening as well as the book. One of them isn't superstitious so he opens and reads the book, once again releasing the demon from below who proceeds to chase them with murderous intent. The risen zombies also begin attacking our first group. One is bitten and slowly begins to change, later attacking his friends. One by one they're attacked as they hole up in a building hoping to keep the zombies at bay. Eventually those left of both groups are united as they try to survive. If the movie feels a bit jumbled that's because it is. Directed and co-written by Claudio Fragasso, who co-wrote/co-directed the previous ZOMBI 3, the movie once more was a film that was too short once completed that tagged on something extra, mainly the entire opening sequence. That doesn't stop it from being another fun filled romp for fans of Italian zombie films whose gore quotient is higher than most. If you find yourself among this group you know what I'm talking about.Acting and storytelling is not the main focus of the film, gore is. There is plenty of it on hand from the start when someone has their face ripped off to the end when a victim is impaled by a zombies hand as he reaches through to pull out various organs. All of this is done in living color with copious amounts of goo, blood and guts on hand. Severin has just released several of these films together at the same time and all of them look great considering what they had to work with. The film is offered in a 2k scan featuring the film in the first uncut version released in the US. In addition to the film they've compiled an impressive number of extras as well. These include RUN ZOMBIE RUN an interview with director Fragasso and co-screenwriter Rosella Drudi, JEFF STRYKER IN MANILA and interview with actor Chuck Peyton, BLONDE VS ZOMBIES and interview with actress Candice Daly, behind the scenes footage and the original trailer for the film.During the interview with Fragasso he notes that he wanted to combine genres with this film, offering more action than zombie films in the past. He also notes that his was the first film to feature fast moving zombies that could talk and think and he's correct. These zombies communicate with their victims, at least some do, and they don't all stagger about but actually run, jump and fight with their victims. This makes for a more frightening zombie, one that would be difficult to escape. At the same time the limitations of a low budget don't make it a movie that American audiences are likely to appreciate. But those who love the genre will adore the film. The same for horror fans clamoring for this film and others like it. They will want to make a point of picking this one up. If you've picked it up in the past as a DVD or bootleg toss those aside and make sure you pick this one up from Severin. They've done a great job on this release.

A woman inadvertently goes back to a zombie infested island where her parents were killed.Writer /director Claudio Fragasso wild abysmal sequel has very little link to Fulci's Zombi. Fragasso's film seems predominantly like Mattei's Virus/ Hell of the living Dead / Night of the Zombies (1980). Like Night of the Zombies was a Dawn of the Dead wannabe, this is another bad cheese festival of zombie nonsense.While the phrase so bad it's good can be be applied to Night of the Zombies, Zombi 4 is plain borderline with a few redeeming features. Mainly some make up effects and lead cast. There's awfully executed effects, shoddy lighting, sub-par directing, illogical storytelling and coupled with daft exposition dialogue in every scene, at times its simply cheap but not cheerful. While fun, talking zombies, guns, candles falling over and jumping undead add up to very little.The 80's rock soundtrack of is probably its best redeeming feature. As another cash-in follow up to Zombie Flesheaters it's slightly disappointing.

Black magic is used to release the undead on American scientists who came to an island to help find a cure for cancer, securing the wrath of a voodoo priest whose daughter was a victim of their experimental research. The lone survivor, a little girl, will unknowingly return to the island accompanying a group of mercenaries(soldiers of fortune only "working for the good guys")who find themselves on the same island as the voodoo ghouls from the opening of the movie. We also follow three who are on the island attempting to find out what happened to those who were killed on the settlement. You have a Book of the Dead, lit candles, an amulet which supposedly keeps the door to hell closed, four words which will free the undead from captivity, and the non believer who scoffs at the mere notion of such a thing as zombies occupying the earth releasing them to once again terrorize the living by quoting forbidden lines.Shot in the Philipines, using Filipino actors as the zombies, Claudio Fragrasso(Troll 2)shot "After Death"(tagged as Zombie 4)in two weeks with little budget(a little over 100,000 dollars). He even admits the film carries the typical plot associated with the immensely popular genre and devoted inspiration to the splatter rather than story. Fragrasso admits that it is an empty film and that it was used to recoup loss from another movie(Fragrasso calls "After Death" a "recovery" movie). The characters have no personality and the damaged faces of many of the zombies favored, to me anyway, burn make-up rather than the usual rotted flesh we are accustomed to. To me the zombies, for the most part, resembled the creatures from the wildly popular Argento/Lamberto Bava DEMONS movies than the undead from the Italian ZOMBI series, their ghoulish complexion, grotesque features and hideous teeth. The ending, when two remaining members of those yet consumed by the zombies find themselves in the cave containing the book of the dead, is incomprehensible and bizarre(the physical "metamorphosis" of the girl regarding her face/eyeball). The story itself is essentially pure formula zombie movie..the zombies besiege live humans who are surrounded with little place to escape and no refuge to protect themselves. It looks like a film shot on the cheap and feels as if it was thrown together on the fly with little preparation, except in the gore effects with heavy dependency on prosthetics. Many of the zombies( of those who turn in the film) spit out blood and slime, with lots of icky slobber. Splatter fans might be more forgiving towards this than the casual horror fan who'll find it nothing more than a junk film clearly proclaiming that the ZOMBI series had run it's course. Faces and skin are torn apart and gnawed into. A hand goes completely through a victim. Bodies are shot multiple times by machine guns.The mercenaries aren't exactly a bright group and it's not surprising they wind up in their predicament..impulsive and irrational behavior/decisions are definitely their undoing(not killing those bitten and visibly changing into the undead; not leaving the island when it was clear that danger was present; engaging the zombies without regard to their advantage in numbers).

Zombie 4 (1988) ** (out of 4) Forth film in the never ending cycle of Italian zombie films has nothing to do with the previous three but then again, none of those three had anything in common either. In this film a crazed voodoo priest opens the doors to Hell and zombies come to eat stupid people. Plot wise there's really nothing new in this film but if you like non-stop gore then it has plenty of that. Whatever budget the film had certainly went towards the special effects, which are pretty good. There's a face ripping scene, which is probably the highlight of the film. Everything else from the performances to the direction is pretty bad so gore fans need only apply. Original title is After Death.