75) Hell of the Living Dead (1980) Dir: Bruno Mattei and Claudio Fragasso Date Released: January 1984 Date Seen: March 21st, 2009 Rating: 0.5/5
My love for Hell of the Living Dead (1984) is admittedly based on a sick ironic fascination with exploitation films that are so preposterously gaudy and ill-conceived on every level that they reach astronomical new levels of camp absurdity. Hell is like a zombie version of Heart of Darkness, a trip into Euro-centric fears of black otherness that actually genuinely believes that it's not being racist by limply repudiating the fears it so clearly has become infected by.
Even ignoring that intellectual failure, Hell is just plain bad, despite its amazing Goblin soundtrack. Mattei and co. has stuffed this monumental crapfest beyond all reasonable breaking points with ridiculous confrontations, over-the-over-the-top gore (yes, that wasn’t a typo) and a lot of slow-motion animal stock footage. I honestly can’t stay mad at a movie this catastrophically inept for any length of time; instead, I worship at it’s alter.
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