Imagine a cheap-looking rip-off that recreates entire scenes from Aliens, steals footage from Crimson Tide and uses dialogue from both films and youve got Zombies: The Beginning, the final film from Italian schlockmeister Bruno Mattei. The plot is basically Aliens with zombies the lone female survivor of a zombie outbreak returns to the remote island where her friends died with the marines in tow, and much ass is kicked. Remember how Aliens had an armored vehicle that was shoulder-high in exterior shots yet the cast was able to stand up inside? Theres no such discrepancy here because they have a van that mustve been rented for the production - not only do the actors drive v-e-r-y carefully, there's also a Caution: Driver Has Limited Vision sticker on the shotgun side. Come the finale, our heroine encounters the movies take on the Alien Queen a creature that uses a length of pipe to extract zombie foetuses from living hosts and is controlled by a talking brain in a glass case. If youre going to rip off a classic, this is the way to do it.
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.'
