Burial Ground: The Nights of Terror (1981)

“You’re getting a raise out of me alright, but it has nothing to do with money!”

Don’t even bother with plot or character. Some horror movies don’t even need one. 1 part cheesy shitfest. 1 part surreal horrorshow. That’s really all you need to know. Oh, you also might need to know of the 5 different titles for the movie. One common thing amongst Italian horror fare is the multiple titles. Fulci’s Zombi 2 is also known as Zombie Flesh Eaters. When you watch this one the title comes up as The Nights of Terror. Think that’s confusing? It’s also known as Zombi 3 (not to be confused with Zombi 3– a sequel to Zombi 2, which in itself is meant to act as a sequel to Romero’s Dawn of the Dead).

The worst crime a movie can commit is to be forgettable. Burial Ground knows what it is. And it doesn’t slow down either. Five minutes in the gut munching commences and it takes off. The brisk 85 minute runtime is just enough to the point where you’ll barely even notice it fly by. Everything from zombies using tools, a diminutive incestuous man child named Michael (played to creepy perfection by Peter Bark), rampant sex, decapitations, awful dubs of people saying even worse dialogue. It’s such a disjointed and messy picture that it actually ends up provoking the audience. The makeup is actually eerily good. The zombies genuinely look like rotting flesh pulsating with maggots and worms.

Around this time a whole slew of these sleazy Italian zombie flicks hit. Movies not quite on par with Fulci’s stuff but more entertaining than a lot of the genre fare that passes for zombie movies today. Bruno Mattei’s Hell of the Living Dead, Lenzi’s Nightmare City, Dr. Butcher M.D. Of the lot, Burial Ground is the most satisfying.

About Luke Pajowski 10 Articles
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