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Zombi: La Creazione

Zombies: The Beginning

Italy 2007
produced by
Giovanni Paolucci for Diamonds International Film, Film Export Group
directed by Bruno Mattei (as Vincent Dawn)
starring Yvette Yzon, Alvin Anson, Paul Holme, James Gregory Paolleli, B.B. Johnson, Dyana Craystan, Gerhard Acao, Mike Vergel, Miguel Faustmann, Gene Zwahir, Ronny Boos, Sereno Cunial, Sven Stefaniksen, Tony Wells, Bon Vibar, Lili Schneider, King Roberts, Darwin Valdez, Jim Gaines
screenplay by Giovanni Paolucci, Antonio Tentori, visual effects by Digital Vision

review by
Mike Haberfelner

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Sharon (Yvette Yzon) is the only survivor of an island overrun by zombies. Since that incident, Tyler Inc. has gotten hold of the zombie virus and has transferred it to one of their labs on another island. Eventually though, contact with that island broke off, and now Tyler Inc. sends the marines in, along with their head scientist Barker (Paul Holme), and with Sharon, the only one who has come face to face with zombies and survived.

Of course, once on the island, our heroes find everyone dead, and before long, the zombies kill their way through most of the marines as well, until only Sharon, Barker and a handful of soldiers are left, and they lock themselves in inside the lab - where Barker starts conducting experiments, and it soon becomes clear that he is not willing to give up on the zombies quite yet. When Sharon gives him a pice of her mind, he locks her in with a handful of zombies hoping that everything will sort itself out ... but Sharon survives. Barker himself has less luck when coming face to face with a zombie, and soon the other soldiers die as well.

As the only survivor, Sharon knows she must do her best to end the zombie plague once and for all, and eventually, she reaches a zombie breeding station controlled by a telepathic brain, and manages to blow up the place. Still, that doesn't kill all of the zombies, but when all seems to be lost, a submarine shows up to pick Sharon up and get her to safety.

 

Italian zombie films are hardly ever terribly innovative, but this one is pretty much an undisguised (yet unofficial of course) remake of James Cameron's Aliens, with zombies filling in for extraterrestrials (not too much of a stretch, if you thing about it), and outer space replaced with an island in the Pacific. Ironically, director Bruno Mattei has (unofficially) remade Aliens once before with 1990's Terminator II/Shocking Dark.

This actually says rather little about the quality of the film at hand though - and you know what, for forgettable and derivative zombie trash, Zombies: The Beginning is not that bad at all, it's competently directed at least, its low budget doesn't show too much, Yvette Yzon certainly makes up for one of the better heroines Mattei had in his films over the years, and for a change, Mattei refrains from killing off likeable characters at random points just for maximal shock effects, which makes this film almost coherent, narratively.

All that said, one can't help but also state there are waya funnier zombie movies out there (if unintentionally so), and Mattei has made way funnier movies (again, unintentionally so), and even if this is one of his better films concerning the pure craft of filmmaking, it's by no means an important genre entry. STill, you might be mildly entertained.

 

By the way, a direct sequel to Bruno Mattei's Island of the Living Dead from a year earlier - but you don't have to have seen that movie to understand this one.

 

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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In times of uncertainty of a possible zombie outbreak, a woman has to decide between two men - only one of them's one of the undead.

 

There's No Such Thing as Zombies
starring
Luana Ribeira, Rudy Barrow and Rami Hilmi
special appearances by
Debra Lamb and Lynn Lowry

 

directed by
Eddie Bammeke

written by
Michael Haberfelner

produced by
Michael Haberfelner, Luana Ribeira and Eddie Bammeke

 

now streaming at

Amazon

Amazon UK

Vimeo

 

 

 

Robots and rats,
demons and potholes,
cuddly toys and
shopping mall Santas,
love and death and everything in between,
Tales to Chill
Your Bones to

is all of that.

 

Tales to Chill
Your Bones to
-
a collection of short stories and mini-plays
ranging from the horrific to the darkly humourous,
from the post-apocalyptic
to the weirdly romantic,
tales that will give you a chill and maybe a chuckle, all thought up by
the twisted mind of
screenwriter and film reviewer
Michael Haberfelner.

 

Tales to Chill
Your Bones to

the new anthology by
Michael Haberfelner

 

Out now from
Amazon!!!