Zombie 4: After Death
Based on the utterly stellar Zombi 3, I was sure that this movie was gonna be another rousing success. God, was I ever wrong. The movie’s not retarded enough to amaze the way Zombi 3 did, nor yet unretarded enough to qualify as even a somewhat passable movie. And you know it’s a bad sign when the liner notes on the DVD tell you that, technically, the movie should just have been called “After Death” and that “in all likelihood, the word ‘zombie’ was just thrown on to cash in on the past success of the films it tries to be related to.” Ouch! Dissed by its own liner notes!
How Stella Got Her Funk Back. Get it? 'Cuz she's a corpse! And corpses smell bad! I pwn!
Premise – 1/5
On the plus side, at least the backstory of the movie sorta makes sense this time. A community of scientists move to a tropical island to work on a cure for, well, they say a cure for death, but that doesn’t make a ton of sense by itself, so we’ll just say “a cure for lotsa diseases and also cancer.” Basically, there are some herbs on this island that voodoo priests use which these doctors and scientists think might have some special restorative properties, so they dick around with them and try to cure disease. The big bad voodoo daddy on the island has a daughter dying of leukemia, which the brain trust try to cure with one of their new thingies, only it doesn’t work and the girl dies. So big bad voodoo daddy gets pissed, blames the foreigners for killing his kid, and decides to open the third door to hell so that flesh-eating demons can avenge her. OK!
And that’s the last time anything that makes sense shows up in the movie, so don’t worry! Apparently, every one of the foreigners gets ripped up except for one little girl with a zombie-repellent necklace thingy who watches her parents die in front of her before somehow getting off of Zombie Island. Maybe she swam, I dunno. Somebody in the opening mentioned something about a boat ready to leave, but if that’s the case, why the fuck did they stick around to get chewed on by zombies for nothing more than a shouting contest with big bad voodoo daddy? And why did big bad voodoo daddy need to sacrifice his wife to open the gate to hell if zombies were already running about making everyone’s life a little more miserable on the island? Stop! No more questions! Thinky-thing hurt!
It's a documented fact that Italian horror directors despise eyeballs and feel obligated to gouge or rip out at least one in every movie.
So, anyways…back to the “plot.” Apparently, there’s a group of people on a little boat heading to this deserted island miles away from anywhere (never mind that the ship’s basically just a speedboat you’d take out for an afternoon, instead of, I dunno, a TRAVEL boat). There’s four ex-mercenaries and two girls coming out this way for no discernible reason. And look, OMG! One of the girls is the same one we saw escaping from zombie island, only 20 years older and hawter (unless you’re a pedophile, and if you are, I don’t want to hear about it). Why she’s coming back? No idea. Why are they there? No idea. Why’s the boat suddenly not working? No idea. Why do they think they can find parts to repair the boat with on an abandoned island, and, perhaps more importantly, why are they searching for those parts far INLAND? No idea. And why, when one of the mercs notices a guy shadowing them, does he run the guy down and beat the shit out of him without so much as a “who are you and what do you want”? No idea. What matters is that there’s fresh meat on the island.
Oh, but they’re not the only spam in a can, no sir! There’s three other people on the island, one guy who must be smart ‘cuz he has glasses, and his two proteges, a guy and a gal. How did they get there? I don’t know. They just are. And apparently they’re either looking for a) a hidden volcano on the island (which they talk about when you first see them) or b) the truth of what really happened to all the islanders twenty years ago. The movie leans towards ‘a’ at first, but then figures ‘b’ might push its “plot” along more. So, anyways, they find their way into a cave temple that looks more like a miniature set where Satan’s stage manager is planning out how cool it’ll look when he gets lowered from the ceiling to start singing a candle-lit power ballad about love in lycra pants—anyways, I’m rambling. This movie has that effect on me. Right, so, back to the temple set: there’s a helpfully labelled (in English no less) “Book of Death” lying on this candle-strewn “Circle of Satan” that is just itchin’ to be picked up and read by one of our retarded heroes. “If you wish to open the gate to hell today/These four words you must say” goes the sinister couplet, and sure enough, Professor Smartglasses thinks reading those four words aloud is a grand idea. Well, I don’t have to tell you it’s not. Apparently, this opens the gate to hell (which I thought was already open ‘cuz there’s already been a zombie getting the crap beaten out of him by the other group, but whatever) and zombies that look more like ninja lepers arrive and tear Professor Smartglasses (who apparently learned the art of killing in one of his college courses, the way he plows through some zombies hand-to-hand) and the Young Sweatermeat apart. Slab Leatherchest, our only survivor from this particular zombie ambush, gets away to find the other group of people who are currently camped out at an abandoned hospital, tending to their zombie-scratched pal.
Apparently Blond Heroine doesn’t remember being here when she was a kid, but she still has the amulet and knows the dead are out there waiting to eat them all even before Slab Leatherchest arrives. Good thing our mercs found “two” M-16s in a crate in this hospital (although somehow, the M-16s keep multiplying. There’s at least four and maybe five in people’s hands near the climax). Also a good thing that there’s another “Circle of Satan” setup in this hospital that Blond Heroine can put her zombie repellent in, which keeps the zombies sulking outside. Too bad Hairy Mongoloid, one of the mercs, says “that’s bullshit” and blows out the candles (apparently, they can stay lit for twenty years but an old grizzly dude can blow them out as easy as you please).
Zombies are big proponents of "hug therapy."
Anyways, a zombie attack is imminent, of course, but our “heroes” manage to hold them off until the candles get relit by Blond Heroine. This sets off a 5-minute scene of our three standing mercs plus Slab stare at the zombies (the last merc, Random Fisticuffs, is down and out from the zombie he tussled with and got scratched by earlier) , and the zombies stare back. Inconsequential Cocktease, our other female in the movie, is scared and told to sit by Random and try to keep it together. The staredown continues, but Random takes a turn for the worse, dies, and comes back to gnaw on Inconsequential. Random Fisticuffs gets done chowing, then goes to the “Circle of Satan” and kicks it over, prompting another zombie onslaught while Blond Heroine just shrieks. Now, why Random Fisticuffs was able to walk around and do stuff while the Circle was up and the other zombies had to just stand there sullenly, I’m not sure. But none of that matters, because soon another zombie attack ensues wherein Hairy Mongoloid decides that, if he’s going to get killed and come back as a zombie, he’s going to take out as many as he can before then. He runs off crazily and hides behind a tree, where the now-zombified Inconsequential Cocktease finds him and says “you were supposed to protect me.” She decides to repay him for his shitty bodyguarding by chewing on his chest.
So that just leaves Slab Leatherchest, Ugly Mustache Guy, Blond Heroine, and…Dan (the only character who I remember hearing named). They somehow make it through the night, and Ugly Mustache Guy sees undead Hairy Mongoloid wandering around out there taunting him, and so naturally decides to go outside to plug Hairy while leaving the other three folks asleep. And we know what the consequences are for stupid decisions like that, don’t we? Yadda yadda…he gets whupped by Hairy, taken a bite out of, and then left there screaming for the other three to come help him. They make the brilliant decision to do just that, and bring him back into the hospital and let him rest on the bed, still clutching his M-16 (which is at least number three of the two they found before). Obviously, another bad plan, he wakes up a zombie and guns down Dan, but Dan gets his revenge by blowing up the whole hospital with a grenade while Blonde Heroine and Slab Leatherchest escape to do…something. At this point, I’m not sure just what the movie was trying to tell me about its ending. There’s a scene of them running, fighting a horde of zombies that keep rising from the same three graves, falling asleep, and then wandering back to the cave-temple-rock-stage thingy. There’s something about sacrificing your soul to close the gate to hell, and Slab gets a hand shoved through his back and out the front while Blonde starts zombifying or something and pulls her eyeball out. Cue the end credits! Seriously. That’s how it happens.
I should probably point out that, while the book has "The Book of Death" clearly written on the front in permanent marker, all the characters constantly refer to it as "The Book of the Dead." I guess that's just to rip off a little bit more from Evil Dead.
Cast – 1/5
You see how I used “cute” names for the characters in the movie above? There’s a reason for that, since they’re all so utterly awful and unmemorable and I couldn’t wait for them all to die. The only thing I feel obligated to say about the cast is that the name I came up for with “Slab Leatherchest” isn’t too far off base. You see, he’s an actor by the name of “Jeff Stryker” and I knew from the moment he walked onscreen in his open shirt that he HAD to be gay. In fact, he did me one better and is actually a gay porn actor! And sadly, that’s probably the biggest credentials in this whole sorry cast. Is there really anything more I need to say at this point?
This is actually what the zombies spend much of their time doing in this movie. Urping stuff. Do you feel menaced?
Technical Bells and Whistles – .5/5
You know, I’ve never given any of these subcategories a .5 rating, I don’t think. I didn’t even know it was allowed, and maybe it’s not, but at this point, I’m past the point of caring. I’m SUPPOSED to have lots of gore and stupid death scenes in this movie, I know I am. So where were they? I didn’t expect another amazing levitating zombie head or undead fetus attack like in “Zombi3,” because those are some seriously high watermarks. But I should’ve gotten SOMETHING, dammit! These zombies are so unmotivated they can’t really be bothered to do anything other than take a bite here or scratch there for the most part. Most of the gore effects come from zombies getting their heads shot apart by our plucky heroes, and frankly, that’s just wrong. And who told the movie it was okay to have a snail’s pacing? I mean, if the story made sense or was even vaguely interesting, fine, we could spend more time on it—but that’s not how it is. It’s like this movie is at least sixty percent filler, and for a zombie movie, that just doesn’t fly.
And what’s with all the pouncing? Zombies pounce, bounce, and leap all the time in this movie, and it looks entirely ridiculous. Although I have to say, at least in those scenes they’re not just standing there staring, letting you see how crappy their make-up effects and raggedy ninja attire look. And in case you were wondering, I wasn’t exaggerating above when I say a horde of zombies keeps rising from the same three graves outside the front of the hospital. I mean, you see them coming out of the ground there probably a dozen times, if not more, like the director just thought that scene was sooooo cool he had to keep shooting it over and over again and putting it in his film. Ugh.
And please, don’t even get me started on the “soundtrack.” If you like hearing the same generic Survivor-sounding band singing about “Living After Death” repeated all over the movie, you’ll love it. And if bland Survivor wannabes don’t do it for you, I hope you’ll enjoy the soul-searingly bad synthesizer music that I could’ve composed on a friend’s Casio keyboard when I was 9. Which is to say nothing of the heinous English dubbing this movie received, which is laughable at best when you can actually hear what the hell the people are saying. Most of the lines seemed delivered through a pillow by someone trying to muffle the sound of the gunshot their impending suicide would produce.
Welcome to our big retarded family!
Popcorn Factor – 1/5
Look, if you feel you absolutely MUST watch a stupid Italian zombie flick, this is not the one for you. It’s not great on the gore, the WTF moments are more annoying than entertaining, and the movie just spends a lot of time staring at itself and spitting up colored Bosco syrup mixed with water. I only laughed out loud a few times during this movie, where in Zombi 3 there was something completely dumb yet funny in every scene. Even if you’re a huge zombie fan, I’d recommend ignoring this one unless you have absolutely nothing else to fall back on and are in dire need of a zombie fix. You’re only gonna get burned, man.