Zombie Creeping Flesh

Zombie Creeping Flesh (1980), aka Hell of the Living Dead. Directors Bruno Mattei and Claudio Fragasso are not known for their genre-defining filmmaking, and they certainly don’t provide any surprise moves in their contribution to the zombie canon.

It does contain the immortal lines “don’t get your balls blasted” and “operation sweet death must be considered a complete failure”. There are certainly lots of zombie balls being blasted, and the film should be considered a complete failure.

There is documentary footage of native tribespeople and animal attacks to fill out the running time and to provide some context that this is Papua New Guinea and not some woodland outside Rome, but no one is convinced.

The zombies seem to come in two types: the ones who stumble about unable even to grab, and those who cannot only grab but can open the door of a moving jeep to try and get a bite out of the token female journalist. The journalist character seems to be there to provide the necessary topless scenes, and for one of the not-so-crack SWAT team to hit on. “If we had met in different circumstances, you would be in the sack with me right now.”

As with all these things, the zombies make it from the isolated island to the streets of the city and seem to be everywhere when previously there were none.

I would say the film was slightly redeemed by the inclusion of the soundtrack by Italy’s finest horror prog connoisseurs, Goblin. But even the music is borrowed from their scores to two other films, and not the famous ones either. Watch it at your peril.

Zombie Creeping Flesh is particularly bad, but definitely worth a watch for just what Bruno Mattei is capable of.