45 Years Later, The Nastiest Zombie Knock-Off Just Got A Huge Upgrade

As its nonsensical title suggests, Hell of the Living Dead was one of several Italian video nasties which unashamedly piggybacked on the success of a certain George A. Romero classic. And rather impressively for a scene which includes Cannibal Apocalypse, Nightmare City, and Zombi 2, the 1980 horror (also known as Virus and Creeping Zombie Flesh) can lay claim to being the nastiest of the lot.

The Odd History Of Hell of the Living Dead

Directed by exploitation maestro Bruno Mattei, the gorefest was specifically conceived as a lighter alternative to Dawn of the Dead. It somehow even wrangled the rights to use part of Goblin’s iconic score. But whereas its obvious inspiration was a true labor of love which singlehandedly revived a genre once considered dead in the water, Hell was a hastily cobbled together affair which even its famously self-aggrandizing scriptwriter has reportedly since described it as an abortion. Some would argue Claudio Fragasso, who’d later pen and helm the ultimate best-worst movie Troll 2, was being too kind.

The offensiveness begins at Hope Center #1, one of several hush-hush research labs purportedly working toward a new food source for third world nations. But according to the doomed eco-terrorists who’ve sparked a hostage crisis at Barcelona’s U.S. Embassy, these facilities have far more nefarious intentions. Whatever its purpose, the original Papua New Guinea facility soon becomes defunct when the lethal combination of a chemical leak and resurrected rat turns every employee into a flesh-hungry zombie.

Unaware of the undead uprising, the four-man Interpol team tasked with taking down the anarchists subsequently travel to the Pacific nation in the belief it, too, has come under siege. Alongside Lia (Margit Evelyn Newton), an investigative reporter who immediately fulfills the gratuitous nudity quota, and Max (Gabriel Renom), a Frank Zappa lookalike cameraman they meet along the way, they soon discover that rifle-toting hippies aren’t the problem.

As they watch a young boy devour his own father, the motley crew are no doubt left with one particular eco-terrorist’s last words — “You’re all doomed to die a horrible death” — ringing in their ears. Before that, though, the group stumble across a whole host of other ghastly sights while driving their Jeep through the perilous jungle terrain. In the film’s most questionable creative decision, however, many are of the real-world variety.

Indeed, with an extremely limited budget at his disposal, Mattei was often forced to rely on stock footage to make the film’s Spanish location shoot convince as a tropic, ritualistic island. And boy, does he make the most of it, regularly interspersing scenes with random nature shots without rhyme or reason. More unforgivably, though, he also throws in harrowing footage of animal slaughter, funeral ceremonies, and dead human bodies plucked from 1979 documentary Des Morts. (interestingly, footage from Hell was also repurposed itself in the pandemic’s first horror Corona Zombies).

Why is Hell of the Living Dead Worth Seeing Now?

When Hell of the Living Dead isn’t resembling a snuff film, however, it serves as an entertaining, and often unintentionally hilarious, piece of trash cinema. The excruciatingly bad dialogue, for example, bears all the hallmarks of a scriptwriter with only a mild grasp of the English language. “Boy, with all them teeth, I’d sure like to have the dental concession here,” comes the truly baffling remark from one commando after stumbling across a crowded graveyard. “We’d better stop that leak or we’ll all be dead,” deadpans a research assistant early on, a prime example of the film’s tendency to state the bleeding obvious.

The performances are also comically inept, too. Newton reacts to each cataclysmic scenario as if it was nothing more than a mild inconvenience. While at the opposite end of the spectrum, Franco Garofalo hams it up to the rafters as the commando whose incessant taunting of the zombies (“S***-faced bastards! Lousy bunch of turds! Brainless monkies! Ha, ha, you can’t catch me! Get back to your graves”) suggests he has a death wish: his increasing fury over his colleagues’ inability to shoot for the head is also a joy to watch.

Then there’s the non-sequiturs which leave you thinking the cast and crew may have been affected by a chemical leak themselves. As the gang briefly find some respite from all the madness in an abandoned plantation, for instance, Osborne (Josep Lluís Fonoll) suddenly decides it’s the perfect time to don a tutu and hat and impersonate Gene Kelly in Singin’ in the Rain. See also the cutaway to a virtually empty UN crisis meeting in which the few representatives who’ve bothered to turn up do little more than theatrically throw paper at each other.

To be fair, that brief diversion could be interpreted as an incisive social commentary on how little the developed world cares about the underdeveloped. Likewise, the big reveal in which final girl Lia miraculously deduces that “Operation Sweet Death” wasn’t a hunger-ending initiative at all, but instead a dastardly scheme to reduce the population of economically deprived countries.

“Dispose of the weakest elements, the most defenseless, the most numerous, in the simplest possible way: just cause them all to eat each other,” Lia explains before suffering the film’s most brutal death — a hand through the mouth which then pushes her eyeballs out from the inside. Of course, it’s soon discovered the genocide has backfired and now the entire world is facing a zombie apocalypse, a suitably savage ending for a film which proudly wears its barbarism on its sleeve.

What New Features And Upgrades Does The Hell of the Living Dead 4k Blu-ray Release Have?

Hell of the Living Dead’s 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray release offers a treasure trove of special features including interviews with director Mattei, leading lady Newton and action men Garofalo and José Gras (Lt. Mike London), with the latter also providing a locations tour.

Other interviewees include Bernard Seray and Pep Ballenster, aka technician Fowler and the father eaten by his own son, producer José María Cunillés, and punk singer fan Peter Bywaters.

Hell of the Living Dead is available on Blu-ray 4K now.