George Romeros Night Of The Living Dead may have invented the flesh-eating zombie genre, but it was Dawn Of The Deads success a decade later that led to a flash flood of clones and cheap knock-offs. Most of these came out of Italy, and in amongst acknowledged classics such as Lucio Fulcis Zombie Flesh Eaters were films so mind-numbingly awful youd swear theyd been made as a drunken bet. Produced for chump change, starring nobody you ever heard of and horribly dubbed to boot, these films were fit only for riffing on Mystery Science Theater 3000. You know the drill: zombies in poor make-up snack upon bad actors until the announcement that the zombie virus has spread across the globe leads to a freeze-frame ending and the threat of more sequels to come. The cycle kicked off again in 2002 with the release of 28 Days Later (itself a Romero pastiche), and it was as though the imitators hadnt been away. Despite the advances in filmmaking technology, these clods still hadnt bothered to learn their craft properly, and their films remained a disaster on every conceivable level. Some of these disasters are so bad theyre good, but all the rest should be hermetically sealed. See for yourself.
Ian Watson is the author of 'Midnight Movie Madness', a 600+ page guide to "bad" movies from 'Reefer Madness' to 'Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead.'
