Burial Ground Year: 1980 Director: Andrea Bianchi Written by: Piero Regnoli Threat: Zombies Weapon of Choice: Teeth IMDb page:

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Rish's Reviews
Also known as Le Notti del terrore (The Nights of Terror), this, my friends, is a bad movie. It's not just mediocre or even Jason X bad, but frighteningly bad. Yikes. But as awful as it is, it is definitely entertaining, though certainly not in the way the filmmakers intended.
Ripping off not just Night of the Living Dead, but also Dawn of the Dead and its own Italian ripoff Zombie, Burial Ground tells the tale of a professor in some venerable estate (complete with cemetery) who inexplicably unleashes hordes of Romero-class zombies, who eat flesh, turn their victims into others like them, and die only when their heads are destroyed. Unfortunately, a group of . . . what were they? Friends? Scientists? Vacationers? . . . arrive there about fourteen minutes after this plague has been unleashed. Lucky us.
Seen in a Hollywood revival theatre with the typical dregs of society, this was more fun than it would've been on video, but it was still lethargic, uninspired, and a giant stinker. The effects are laughable, the zombies themselves ranging from semi-effective papier-mache masks to Third grade homemade Halloween makeup. The scares do not exist, and the gore has all been done better in the three aforementioned zombie flicks.
The badly-dubbed dialogue was entertaining, though. Entertaining in the way experiencing a cockfight blindfolded might be. And everything took so damn long. Besides being inane and unoriginal, the film's worst crime was that it was insufferably boring. The same effect, of watching a door sloooooooooooooooooooowly creaking open, and then waiting around for something to appear, is repeated three times. Also repeated thrice (maybe they were following the old Vaudeville adage of threes) is the silly zombies-tear- someone's-stomach-open-and-play-with-real-entrails effect from Dawn of the Dead. Repeated twice is the super slow woman-is-dragged-toward-the-implement-of-her-death (or vice versa) from Zombi.
The zombies in this film, while slower than half-squashed caterpillars crawling over flypaper, were smart enough to use tools, trick their victims, and use a battering ram to gain entrance to the compound. The people they were after, however, were not so smart. I'd say, on average, they made Lenny from Of Mice and Men look like a MENSA candidate. One woman spends nearly every moment she is onscreen whimpering, cringing, and moaning. And she had A LOT of screentime.
The people used a shotgun, rocks, a machete, a pistol, and their bare hands to kill the zombies. The living dead used broken glass, a spike, their hands, a saw, a scythe, and their teeth to kill the people. Smart or not, these zombies were easier to kill than baby Superman in a kryptonite basinet. They were ridiculously slow, physically weak (a woman actually SHOOK one to death if you can believe that) and wait around for their potential victims to either kill them, or sit there and whimper until someone comes to their rescue.
The only thing this has going for it is the sickening addition of Michael, the ten year old boy, played by a thirty-eight year old (or, if he really was ten, he may actually be a goblin). The hollow-eyed, fishbowl-headed, turtleneck-wearing "boy" was creepier than anything that came from the grave. They actually had an adult dub the dialogue for the "son," which made it all the more repugnant when he was around.
Did I mention he was Star Wars Cantina patron ugly?
I saw this film with a coworker, realising that I've never managed to get someone to go to these shlock double features with me twice. Even so, he didn't go home sick like my bald friend did, claim to be possessed like my lawyer friend did, or spit on me in disgust like my Irish friend did. I guess that's promising.
The most memorable moments involved the aforementioned, and ludicrously ugly "child" (who I suspect was a dwarf of some sort) and his disturbing relationship with his mother. He watches her as she makes love, with a blank (zombielike expression) on his horrid face and tries to breastfeed from her later. In one scene, after watching his father torn apart by the living dead, the "boy" embraces his mother, begins to kiss her (yep, on the mouth), feel her up, and reach under her skirt to . . .
Well, it was memorable.
My, this was a bad movie. Still, the "Michael" character was bizarre enough to almost recommend the film. Indeed, if anybody ever recommends it, it's almost certainly because of him.
Best Scare: Nope, not even close. There were some gross-outs, though. Stolen liberally from Zombie and Romero's two Dead films. But hey, I already said that.
I'd Recommend It To: A suicidal relative I hated, maybe.
Posted: September 12, 2005

Total Skulls: 38

Sequel
Sequel setup
Rips off earlier film		Night of the Living Dead
Horror film showing on TV/in theater in movie
Future celebrity appears
Former celebrity appears
Bad title
Bad premise
Bad acting
Bad dialogue
Bad execution
MTV Editing
OTS
Girl unnecessarily gets naked
Wanton sex
Death associated with sex
Unfulfilled promise of nudity
Characters forget about threat
Secluded location
Power is cut
Phone lines are cut
Someone investigates a strange noise
Someone runs up stairs instead of going out front door
Camera is the killer
Victims cower in front of a window/door
Victim locks self in with killer
Victim running from killer inexplicably falls
Toilet stall scene
Shower/bath scene
Car stalls or won't start
Cat jumps out
Fake scare
Laughable scare
Stupid discovery of corpse
Dream sequence
Hallucination/Vision
No one believes only witness
Crazy, drunk, old man knows the truth
Warning goes unheeded
Music detracts from scene
Death in first five minutes
x years before/later
Flashback sequence
Dark and stormy night
Killer doesn't stay dead
Killer wears a mask
Killer is in closet
Killer is in car with victim
Villain is more sympathetic than heroes
Unscary villain/monster
Beheading
Blood fountain
Blood spatters - camera, wall, etc.
Poor death effect
Excessive gore
No one dies at all
Virgin survives
Geek/Nerd survives
Little kid lamely survives
Dog/Pet miraculously survives
Unresolved subplots
"It was all a dream" ending
Unbelievably happy ending
Unbelievably crappy ending
What the hell?