AKA: Zombi Holocaust, Zombies unter Kanninbalen, Zombie Cannibal Ferox, Island of the Last Zombies, Zombie 3, La Regina dei cannibali, Queen of the Cannibals, Dr Butcher MD, Medical Deviate.

Tag Line : Not for the faint hearted...

Following the success of Zombie-Flesh Eaters, producer Fabrizio De-Angelis came up with the interesting idea of making a sort-of follow up that would cross both elements of the "flesh eating" genre to good effect. Taking the basic plot of Zombie Flesh-Eaters and working in elements of the many cannibal films which were proving popular at the time, the end result was Zombie Holocaust, a film about zombies and cannibals clashing on a south-east Asian island.

The film starts off in New York, where a hospital porter is found to have been devouring body parts taken from the corpses he's been mutilating in the morgue. It turns out that he was originally a native of one of the Asian Molukk islands, and similar corpse mutilations have been occurring in other city hospitals where immigrants from this region are also working.

In order to try and find out why these people have taken to cannibalism, a group of senior doctors from the hospital decide to mount an expedition to see what the natives there are up to. Leading the them is Dr Peter Chandler (Ian McCulloch) and his colleague George (Peter O'Neal). They take with them one of the staff nurses, Lori Ridgway (Alexandra Delli Colli), as she's also an anthropology expert and has visited the islands before (she also provides the film with some of the more interesting nude scenes) , and also joining them is a nosey journalist named Susan Kelly (Sherry Buchanan), who is George's girlfriend.

The expedition does not go well however, as soon as they arrive on the island they are attacked by cannibals, who kill and eat several of their native guides (blood and guts everywhere), and then after beating them back, they are then attacked by zombies (yet more gore).

Peter and Lori escape and make it to an old building where the local medical missionary, Dr. Obrero (played by a Harvey Kietel lookalike named Donald O'Brien) is supposed to have his practice. Unfortunately, they find it's the doctor who is the cause of all this mayhem, and has not only has he been encouraging the natives to revert to their cannibalistic ways, but has been conducting bizarre experiments on the dead and bringing them back to life as zombies.

Lori however gets captured by the cannibals, who decide instead of eating her to turn her into their queen (cue some rather interesting body painting scenes). She then uses her influence to convince them to attack the Doctor's mission building and destroy the zombies, and so both cannibals and zombies end up clashing in a final spectacular punch-up!

The plot is in many ways similar to Lucio Fulci's Zombie Flesh-Eaters, on which producer De-Angelis also worked. The film also uses cast members (most notably Ian McCullough), shooting locations, and even footage from that film, which had been made only the year before. Equally gory, and even more ridiculous, than Fulci's pic, zombie fans will undoubtedly love it. If you got a kick out of Zombie Flesh-Eaters, you'll definitely like this one.

Overall Marks : 6/10.

Other Information.

• Alternate tag lines : "He's a depraved, homicidal killer...and he makes house calls!"

• Director Frank Martin (real name Marino Girolami) had over 70 films to his credit prior to his work on Zombie Holocaust. He made 6 more films, before retiring from the film industry some 3 years later. Zombie Holocaust is undoubtedly the film he'll be best known for.

• Fabrizio De-Angelis has worked with Lucio Fulci on the pics "New York Ripper", "The Beyond", "House by the Cemetery" and of course "Zombie Flesh-Eaters". Apparently he had previously worked as a mailman, before getting a career in the Italian film industry.

• Alexander Delli Colli went onto star in the Fulci's "New York Ripper", and and ended up getting her kit off all over again.

• This was the second Italian film that Ian McCullough starred in. He had previously worked on "Zombie Flesh-Eaters" and went onto star in the film "Contamination" by Luigi Cozzi. Fans of 70's cult BBC TV show "The Survivors" may remember him from the role of Greg Preston.

• The film was re-edited by the American distributors for its US release, and retitled "Dr Butcher MD". This version had an additional, totally unrelated, intro, taken from an unfinished zombie film by Roy Frumkes, which showed a zombie rising out of a grave. The music was also changed from the serious sounding orchestral score to an annoying cheesy melodic synthesiser track (this can be heard on the US trailer).

• An additional scene, showing Ian McCullogh and Alexandra Delli Colli walking through the jungle, was excised from many prints for continuity reasons. This scene appears to have been filmed as an afterthought to help pad out the plot. However, it was all to obvious that the surroundings were not that of a tropical jungle, but of a woods during the autumn. This scene can be found as an extra on the UK and German DVD releases.

• The film had previously been available on video in the UK, in a heavily censored format, back in the early 80's. However, being an uncertified video, was outlawed by the Video Recordings Act in 1984. Distributors, Stonevision, submitted the full uncut version to the BBFC for a video release in 2000, and to the surprise of everyone managed to get it passed intact!

Cast & Crew.

Cover Gallery.

US theatrical trailer. (1.68MB)

German theatrical trailer. (1.95MB)

Buy the UK DVD.

Buy the UK DVD.

Buy the US DVD (spec ed).

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