Welcome Pakistan to the international fraternity (is there a gender-neutral version of that word?) of zombie filmdom! Hell’s Ground is actually two different familiar horror plots shoved rudely together. The primary plot is a Texas Chainsaw Massacre-esque creepy-family-in-the-woods vehicle. There’s a burqa-clad killer with a giant mace, and the greasy brother and the spooky older character (a mother, here) that should sound awfully familiar. Also, the six kids in a van that constitute our protagonists are an almost direct rip. Tacked on to that is a pollution-created zombie subplot that amounts to several scenes straight out of any post-Romero zombie flick. A field full of zombies is shown, the kids get attacked by one zombie and – surprise! - one of the kids (the handsome, slick player dude) gets bit and turn into a decaying, goop-yacking horror.
The underlying TCM engine that drives the movie is a classic choice and it’s decently, if uncreatively, executed. The zombie bits were well done but they are unfortunately few and far between. Basically, the zombies are an afterthought. You could cut those parts out entirely without losing much. The movie itself isn’t much more than a decent melange of familiar horror elements. Still, it’s more or less worth seeing just for the fact that it is a Pakistani zombie movie. It will fill the gap for that part of the world until we get a Bollywood zombie epic.
Sweet lord, Zombie Death House was a chore and a half. Its biggest claim to fame is being the sole directorial effort of veteran character actor John Saxon. It’s obvious why he never directed again, although with this script he never had a chance. You have a Vietnam vet who gets framed and goes to prison where he faces John Saxon’s mad-science disasters in the form of the walking dead. Only it’s far, far more convoluted than that and not in any kind of good way. There are subplots layered upon subplots, flashbacks, endless exposition and more ridiculous crap – hell, we have several threads of plot introduced in the interminable five-plus minute opening credit sequence! Plodding, rambling and dumb as a bag of rocks, this film is as close to worthless as they come.
Before Romero came along and changed things forever, zombies were rarely very interesting on screen. As evidence, I present Exhibit A: Blood of the Zombie. It’s also known as The Dead One and that’s a pretty apt title — thee ain’t much life here. It’s a typical early-’60s bit of plodding, matinee-monster crap. A man inherits a plantation, upon condition of getting married, so he takes his blushing bride down to check things out and take possession of the property. But his voodoo-practicing cousin has other ideas, and plans to murder the wife — via zombie — before the will can be executed. With one scenery chewing exception (the voodoo priestess cousin) the acting is totally wooden. The writing and direction are both awful. The zombie is as slow, unthreatening and uninteresting as the movie itself. The best feature of this movie was its runtime: 68 minutes — and that’s with some early padding scenes of belly dancers and jazz bands.
Despite the R rating, The Chilling has a very made-for-TV vibe. It’s a sloppy, uninspired zombie tale featuring a couple of recognizable faces, most notably Linda Blair of Exorcist fame and the guy who used to play Grizzly Adams. The plot involves a cryogenics facility, a doctor stealing organs from the frozen stiffs, an all-too-convenient lightning strike and some newly awakened, pissed-off dead folks. The whole thing is contrived, boring and pointless. It’s not good, not even a little bit. I was done with this movie well before it was done playing. I don’t know if you can make it out, but on that cover there, it says, “They came, they thawed, they conquered.” That joke, as lame as it is, is far better and infinitely more clever than the movie. At the very end of the movie, there’s also a Grizzly Adams joke tacked on that might, might coax a smile out of you if you have a warm reservoir of nostalgia for that particular hunk of ’70s cheese. Unless you’re like me and simply must see every zombie movie ever made, don’t bother with this.
The worst zombie movie I’ve ever seen has got to be Zombie Night, and that’s really saying something. I mean, I have a totally different set of standards as to what is acceptable when it comes to zombie movies versus “regular” movies. It never even came close to watchable and the 93 minute run time was easily the longest hour and a half of my life. Seriously, I have had dental surgery that was more fun.
Apart from the merest whiff of filmmaking competence and a few nice sets of boobies, the horror comedy Brain Dead really has very little to offer. The plot throws two escaped convicts, a couple of hikers, a televangelist and his pretty little assistant together to face some alien parasitic brain eaters. It steals liberally from both Night of the Creeps and Slither (which itself had to have been influenced by Night of the Creeps) but doesn’t do much with what it takes. There’s some completely insane violence (strangely, more from one of the cons than any zombie), a laughable upskirt gross-out effect and, as mentioned, some nice boobs. Unfortunately, all the boob shots come in the first twenty minutes, never to return. That makes the remaining 70+ minutes nearly unbearably dull. The terrible acting doesn’t help things.
Mash up Lucio Fulci’s Zombie with Tombs of the Blind Dead and then mix in a healthy dose of incest, a dwarf, gratuitous sex, sweet ‘70s ‘staches, lots of mutilation and some seriously whacked out space music. That’s Burial Ground: Nights of Terror. It’s not particularly original or well made, but it earns some serious points for batshit insanity. The plot sees a group of six friends (and one “kid†who is played by a dwarf – that’s him in the picture, fucking weird) visiting their professor friend in a secluded manor. Unfortunately, the prof has accidentally awakened the dead in an ancient crypt on the property. Friends arrive, crypt opens, mayhem ensues. Plenty of nudity in this one and lots of gore and violence, especially against women (the Italians always seem to lean that way…). Some of the gore is well done, some not so much. If you like zombie movies enough to be reading this it’s worth seeing, though, without a doubt.
Return of the Living Dead 2 is a bad sequel, inferior in every way to the original. The two leads from the first movie return, as different characters fulfilling the same purpose. Here they are much less sympathetic – they’re grave robbers as well as morons. The army loses a canister and two bullies open it with a couple of random button pushes (awesome security, army guys!), and the zombies take down the suburban neighborhood. It’s paced and structured much more like a traditional horror movie than the apocalyptic zombie mayhem of the first, complete with a resolution that sees the heroes kill the supposedly unkillable (in the first movie) zombies with surprising ease – it turns out electricity is their downfall. 
