Burial Ground aka The Nights of Terror (Andrea Bianchi, 1981)

One of three movies released in some European markets as Zombie 3, Burial Ground (also called The Nights of Terror, Zombi Horror, The Zombie Dead, and Burial Ground: The Nights of Terror) was my second exposure to the films of Italian weirdo Andrea Bianchi. Angel of Death, the other Bianchi film I've seen and reviewed for this site, was a mostly terrible Nazisploitation action/horror film, though it boasted the great actor Fernando Rey (making some quick bucks for a half-day of shooting) and a leotard-adorned karate man with a perm who beat up Nazis with his karate skills and who was so pumped about being asked to join an elite Nazi-fighting unit that he karate-kicked all his students in celebration. There was also a weird subplot about Nazis creating half-man/half-animal hybrids in a secret lab. Anyway, that movie was shit with some entertaining moments. This movie is not particularly great, either, but it has better cinematography and pacing and is a lot more entertaining, though, sadly, there are no karate men in leotards in this one.

Burial Ground is a cautionary tale about getting so hopped up on learning about the ancient Etruscans that you unwittingly cause a zombie infestation. Professor Ayres (Raymondo Barbieri) is staying in a room in a swanky Italian villa, studying the Etruscans and their belief that they could bring the dead back to life (I don't think this was an actual Etruscan belief). He decides to break into a crypt, as all legitimate scholars would have done, and accidentally unleashes a horde of zombies who eat his guts.

Some wealthy socialites arrive at the villa the next morning for a weekend getaway. The group is made up of three couples, Janet and Mark (Karin Well and Gianluigi Chirizzi), Leslie and James (Antonella Antinori and Simone Mattioli), and Evelyn and George (Mariangela Giordano and Roberto Caporali). Evelyn and George also bring their weird-ass son Michael (Pietro Barzocchini), a real seventh wheel and a major freakazoid. Michael is supposed to be a small child, but he's played by a diminutive 25-year-old man. (Also, the American guy dubbing his voice for the English-language print is hilarious.) Bianchi cast an adult man because the character of Michael is insanely horny for his own mother, especially her breasts, and because the film is mostly nonstop blood and guts. Bianchi thought he'd catch a lot of flak from the authorities for putting an actual child in the mix. Barzocchini is a strange boy/man-looking dude, and his presence gives the film a surreal, oddball touch. I'd probably have called the police if a small child played the part, but I don't know how my local authorities would have handled it. "Hello? I'd like to report an aesthetic crime that happened in Italy in 1981."

The socialites enjoy a fine meal and some Italian-dubbed-into-English something-clearly-was-lost-in-translation conversation, and then retire to their respective boudoirs to have some hot sex. The couples are massively horny in the film's first third. They all seem to be having a sexy good time, but weird adult child Michael interrupts his parents' lovemaking by slamming open the door, staring at them silently for several minutes, and then calling for his mother, his eyes fixated on her breasts as she puts on clothes. I don't really know what the filmmakers were going for with this incest angle, or why they were going for it. Weird stuff.

Unfortunately for our horny socialites, sexy times end when zombie times begin. For the rest of the film, they have to fight off an encroaching horde of the living dead, assisted by the villa's maid and butler, Kathryn (Anna Valente) and Nicholas (Claudio Zucchet). The zombies follow most of the standard zombie conventions, though they are covered in a lot more worms than your average zom, with one major exception. These undead freaks know how to use tools, and they work together using these tools to get into places other zombies couldn't. This is bad news for horny socialites and the people paid to serve them.

That's pretty much it. The rest of the movie is a zombie-battling festival of violence. No real subtext or subplots or character development. Just people killing zombies and zombies killing people. It's fun, it's dumb, it eventually ends. Nice work, everyone. What's up with the incest stuff?