Claudio Fragasso strikes again with this second cash-in, which also marks the casting of Jeff Stryker, John Waters favourite gay porn star, in his first mainstream movie. Jeffs on a deserted island with two other backpackers who, upon discovering a volume entitled The Book of Death, apparently mistake it for a nursery rhyme (If you want to open the door to Hell today, these four words you must say) and begin reading aloud, only for the dead to rise and curtail their future as childrens entertainers. The rest of the film displays the same contempt for logic as the deadheads change from shufflers to machine gun-wielding crack commandos and back again, but if nothing else the proceedings allow Fragasso to repeat his favoured technique of moving the camera toward a screaming victim. That camera wobbles as often as the sets, the hastily applied make-up is unconvincing at best, music and footage are recycled from other movies and the acting, staging and dubbing are all terrible. Its fantastic. Watch it on a double-bill with Troll 2.
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.'
