A Disappointing Continuation

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

Against a plain black background, the red glob of colour seems to take forever to reveal itself as the (alternate) title, After Death.Good colour composition goes overboard quickly, as the opening possession sequence looks like a high school production of a zombie movie from fifteen years earlier, as a black chick dances and jiggles to imply she's under demonic possession of some sort. Enter heavily armed Rambo-like commandos to shoot the place up, and some barely defined threat of a curse of zombie flesh-eaters (one of this film's many akas, Zombi Flesh Eaters 3) on this island, and you have what is supposed to be this film's plot.But there is little plot to speak of, just dim characters meeting a gory demise.The lead girl is, I think, returning to the island to avoid being killed by zombies, like her family had been. But if she's trying to avoid the same fate as her family had at the hands of these flesh-eating zombies, then why the bloody hell did she return to the island? She should have just kept her ass at home! One chick tries to kill a zombie by bashing him over the head with a big stick. Seriously? Did that blockhead really think that would work?The first twenty minutes were especially awful, the remainder isn't much better. Fangs look like those fake vampire teeth worn by grade school kids at Halloween, and the zombies looked like people in lame Halloween costumes bought at K-Mart (after all, it was the 1980s) A bit of product placement, too, in an early scene, with Budweiser logo clearly shown throughout. I bet there was a LOT of Budweiser being drunk during filming. That would probably help anyone trying to watch this film, also.

No-one can blame Italian Euro-trash for consistency! Borrowly liberally from the over-arcing story in ZOMBIE, the movie is set on a tropical island (filmed in the Phillipines) about the dead rising up to kill a team of scientists. The sole survivor is a little girl with a pendant. How she makes it off the island, the movie doesn't show. In fact, the movie is pretty scant on details (not even a little "20 years later..." inter-title?) Anyway, "20 years later..." she returns as part of a boatload of stereotyped characters. No kidding, it sounds like the beginning of a joke: "So, this blond chick, some mercenaries, a black dude, and a few others are on this boat. And the boat pulls them into an island over-run with the undead..." Almost immediately upon setting foot on-land, one of the characters spots a weird be-robed figure running through the forest and (naturally) chases after him. Why? We don't know, but he does. And of course, upon catching the figure, he's bitten and the survivors hole up in what looks like a rundown hospital. Conveniently, there is a makeshift graveyard out back. As night wears on, the dead rise and claim the living. As is usually the case with these bad movies, I live for moments of sheer stupidity. This movie contains two moments! The first is at the very beginning when the wife of a voodoo priest (and I swear I'm not making this up) is literally pulled down to Hell. She re-emerges moments later as a green gob spewing she-demon with claws, incredible speed and jumping. At one point, she even hovers in mid-air. The second is when the black dude is surrounded by zombies in the hospital. The other survivors have escaped, but he decides to stay behind and sacrifice himself. The zombies are closing in and he's holding a grenade. One zombie says "We'll all be together again" and the black dude replies "We'll be together, forever!" And drops the grenade. BOOM! The ending makes absolutely no sense, though it is eerie. Then again, the same could be said about most Italian horror movies. As usual, this movie is best watched in the company of your funniest friends, so that you can riff your way through it!

I saw this movie quite recently as 'Zombie Flesh Eaters 3' on Vipco DVD. Anyway, to put it bluntly it was awful. I've heard similar things about 'Zombie Flesh Eaters 2' (Zombie 3) which I haven't seen yet but trust me; 'Zombie Flesh Eaters 3' (Zombie 4: After Death) is a cacophony of rubbish, definitely not something Lucio Fulci would have approved of.We open in an old cave on a remote tropical island with some cheesy jungle 'Eye of the Tiger' style music playing and this black priest in robes is chanting while a lady nearby (his wife) goes ballistic, eventually sinking into the ground, agonisingly slow too. Some safari lookalikes enter (they're actually scientists) and accuse the priest of spreading a plague on the island that reanimates the dead because the priest's daughter died of cancer while in their care. Stupidly, the priest doesn't care and says his wife will avenge her daughter and he himself will 'come back for your intestines!'. Wifey returns as a ridiculous fanged creature and starts mutilating the scientists in sadistic fashion. We then see a mother, father and daughter running through the island being pursued by zombies. Daddy cops it, mummy gives amulet to the little girl and tells her to run, then mummy suffers same fate as daddy. In the next shot, the little girl is now completely grown up after somehow escaping the island and just happens to pass by the island when the boat conks out. They dock at the island and explore. Three other kids are on the island and they find the cave from the beginning (looks a little different) where they find a movie prop, the book of the dead (really, its an ancient book, yet someone has just written 'The Book of Death' on the front in black marker!). Anyway, one of them reads it and zombies are upon them. After that, the strangely intelligent zombies grow in numbers and bite (not devour) everyone in the group till they are whittled down to just two. The grown up girl thinks she can stop it using her mummy's amulet, but alas it fails and while her companion is mauled to death behind her, she pulls off her own face and becomes a zombie. The End! Plot holes are abound so much in this film, its really laughable. First, you're driven to think the dead are back via a plague or virus unleashed on the island using voodoo. However they are brought back by the book of the dead?? Plus, there are already zombies loose on the island before they read the damn book! Then we have the candles and the amulet, which halts all the zombies movement. Why didn't they keep the candles lit all the time? And why all of a sudden are the zombies part of magic curses and gates of hell? The priest in the beginning mentioned nothing about the dead coming from hell, except for his wife whom he personally sent there.Even the zombies themselves are stupid. They do so many things zombies just DO NOT do, like being able to sprint like an Olympic runner, they only have a tiny nibble on humans just to transform them or they just kill them in a gruesome way. They can even speak and fire weapons, taunting their former allies and such. And they are dressed in silly cowls that make them look like ninjas! Why is it called 'Zombie Flesh Eaters 3' if the zombies don't even eat?? I normally love zombie movies but this one really was just too painful to bear. The acting is atrocious, the plot is too thin and full of holes and errors and there is no satisfactory or logical conclusion at the end of the film. There is one thing I must credit the film with though: Although some make-up effects look silly, overdone and just out of place, the gore effects are well done and plentiful as well. I'd only recommend this movie to someone interested in just seeing a few gory death scenes stringed together. Really bad stuff people.

The Italian 'Zombie' series began with Lucio Fulci's Zombi 2 (AKA Zombie Flesheaters), which was named to cash in on the success of Romero's Dawn of the Dead (released as Zombi in Italy), and after Fulci's flick proved a hit, several films laid claim to the 'Zombi 3' alias, including Bruno Mattei's Burial Ground (AKA Nights of Terror), Marino Girolami's Zombie Holocaust, and Fulci's own Zombie Flesheaters 2.As for Zombie 4 (AKA Zombie Flesheaters 3, just to make matters even more confusing)... well, that was originally called 'After Death', but was given its new moniker in an attempt to broaden its appeal. Like Zombi 2, the film has a tropical island setting and packs in as much cheapo gore that the budget will allow, but although its new title might be deemed fitting, be warned: this one makes Fulci's films look like works of genius.Director Claudio Fragasso opens his film with a hilariously trashy prologue which sees a little girl named Jenny narrowly escaping from a tropical island infested by zombies, which have been resurrected by a voodoo priest. Twenty years later, the now grown-up Jenny (Candice Daly) unwittingly returns to the island—along with another woman and four mercenaries—when the boat she is on experiences engine trouble, and once again finds herself fighting for survival against the undead, with a little help from her soldier of fortune pals, a couple of convenient M16 machine guns, and adult movie star Jeff Stryker (in a rare non-porn performance).This 'ho-hum' set up allows for the expected scenes of mouldy bodies rising from the ground (shallow graves proliferate the island), people repeatedly being grabbed through nearby windows (and walls!), and a couple of fairly gory deaths, all of which soon gets rather tedious; however, the awful acting and the fact that the numerous badly made-up, drooling, snaggle-toothed living dead can run, jump, speak, and even use guns, at least offers a few unintentional laughs. For this reason, the film might appeal to devotees of god-awful Euro trash, but everyone else should avoid like a zombie infested tropical island.3.5 out of 10, rounded up to 4 for IMDb.