Credit where its due: as movies where swimwear models encountering zombies on a Sixteenth Century galleon go, Horror Of The Zombies (aka The Ghost Galleon) is top of the list. Even by zombie movie standards, though, the women here give bikinied blondes a bad name. Adrift in the ocean after a publicity stunt gone wrong (long story), they think nothing of boarding a creepy-looking ship that suddenly appears out of the fog, pay no attention to the coffins on board and fail to notice when they disgorge their inhabitants skeletal zombies in hooded cloaks. Upping the bare flesh quotient allows director Amando De Ossorio to (slightly) tone down the violence in this third instalment of his Blind Dead quartet, which is unfortunate because the viewer cant wait to see his thoroughly obnoxious cast get theirs. Among those begging to be eviscerated are a greedy sporting goods magnate, a bitchy photographer and a model who searches for her missing roommate while wearing a bikini.
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.'
