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Released by: Shriek Show/Media Blasters
Released on: 8/23/2011
Director: Andrea Bianchi
Cast: Karen Well, Mariangela Giordano, Peter Bark
Year: 1981
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The Movie:
"Mother, this cloth smells of death!" Rarely does such a simple proclamation result in one's legacy being so firmly cemented in cult film history. However, Peter Bark's place in movie history was definitely sealed like an old musty tomb with this line (among a few others) from Andrea Bianchi's one and only stab at cashing in on the Italian zombie movie craze, 1981's Burial Ground.
When the film begins, a crazy looking bearded professor who bears an uncanny resemblance to Rasputin looks at a rock and proclaims that he has discovered a secret! From there he shuffles off to a tomb where he's promptly chewed up by some zombies.
Cut to a mansion, a very fancy house that has seen better days. Here a trio of adult couples arrives: Janet (Karin Well) and Mark (Gian Luigi Chirizzi), Leslie (Antonella Antinori) and James (Simone Mattioli), and Evelyn (Mariangela Giordano) and George (Roberto Caporali), the later couple with their strange son, Michael (Peter Bark), along for the ride. It seems they've been summoned to this house by the professor who has to tell them something very important - but he's nowhere to be seen so they, as well as the maid and butler, make themselves at home and wander around the house and the grounds eating, drinking and screwing, something Michael seems rather unsettled by, given the way he looks at and behaves around his mother.
As night sets in, those zombies who made short work of the crazy looking bearded guy show up with reinforcements in tow and proceed to wander around en masse and eat people, attack people with tools, and generally make things difficult for those waiting for the professor to arrive.
Gory, sleazy and incredibly stupid, Burial Ground really is in a category all its own. With a fair bit of gratuitous nudity courtesy of Karin Well and the milftastic Mariangela Giordano, Bianchi's film is far more concerned with gut the munching effects from Gino de Rossi and wonky zombie make up appliances from Rosario Prestopino than with storytelling or atmosphere, though it does make very good use of the mansion in which the bulk of it was shot. Throw logic out the window when thinking about this film - don't pay attention to the fact that the zombies all appear in largely varying states of decay and appear to have been buried in large green sack cloths and ignore the fact that these zombies are down with using tools and team work to catch their prey, something they appear to be very adept at despite the fact that they shamble and shuffle around at a snail's pace. The fact that there are gigantic plot holes here means nothing and takes away none of the enjoyment to be had from a deliriously screwed up film like this.
And then there's the aforementioned Peter Bark, the ultimate horror movie man child (sporting a toupee no less!) who was reportedly twenty-five years old when cast in this film to play a kid half his real age. If the fact that he looks like the bastard love child of an aged Dario Argento and Weng Weng weren't weird enough, his character whines constantly and speaks in a nasal voice. The icing on the cake is his incestuous relationship with his mom, the ultimate cinematic Oedipus Complex resulting in the film's most infamous scene. Bark's presence overpowers everyone else in the film and while you can't say that his work here is 'good' in the traditional sense, he's completely unforgettable in the part and makes for one of the most bizarre casting choices of all time. The dude is just fucking weird.
Wrap all of this up in a tweaked out electronic score that sounds like it was recycled from a late sixties sci-fi movie rather than composed for an early eighties horror film and shoot it all with a fair bit of style and you wind up with a pretty awesome package overall. There's no disputing the film's awfulness but neither is there any disputing its bold attempt to avoid making any sense and, as such, it's non-stop entertainment value.
Video/Audio/Extras:
The AVC encoded 1080p high definition transfer for Burial Ground follows Shriek Show's previous Blu-ray releases, Zombie Holocaust and Beyond The Darkness, and it shows some of the same issues as those discs. There is some grain but more obviously some noticeable mosquito noise which is very visible - though there isn't much in the way of heavy print damage outside of some specks and minor debris. In some scenes, the grain and noise seems to mix together and clump up, if that makes any sense. Colors look okay and are improved from the DVD but are far from reference quality. The red levels do look to be a bit pumped up in a few shots, but this is minor. Close up shots tend to show the best detail but this varies depending on lighting it seems. This is an improvement over the DVD release, no doubt, but not the best that the format has to offer by a long shot and detail is sometimes very much on the soft side. Object and character edges can sometimes look strange. How much of this has to do with existing elements and who the movie was shot versus what is an oddball transfer will probably be the subject of some debate, but this is what we've got here - the transfer is... odd and you'll notice from the screen caps that the framing has more black on one side than on the other - the picture quality here is curious indeed.
The only audio option is a DTS-HD 2.0 mix, in English, with no alternate language options or subtitles provided. Sometimes the audio is a little bit on the shrill side but thankfully this isn't a constant problem. The levels are generally okay sounding and there's maybe a bit more range here than there was on the DVD, but don't expect a whole lot more than that.
Previous Shriek Show Blu-ray releases have been DVD/Blu-ray combo packs, but this release contains a Blu-ray disc only. The extras have been ported over from the previous release, however, including an interview with leading actress Mariangela Giordano who talks for about nine minutes about where the movie was shot, what it was like working with Bianchi and about her role in the picture. She's quite gracious and lovely here and this interview is a good one. Producer Gabriele Crisanti also pops up for an eleven minute interview and he discusses, with a very sour look on his face, the success of the film the casting, and Bianchi's directorial talents.
New to this release (and therefore not included on the previous DVD) are some outtakes which don't appear to have ever made it into any release of this movie in the past. There's 9:30 worth of material here, some of which involves a would be romantic encounter in a moving car on the way to the home and most of which is the characters riding around in cars. There's also more of the 'sexy lingerie' scene, some gratuious nudity and love scene extensions, some trimmed bits from the outdoor photo shoot scene, and a great scene with Peter Bark playing with a human skull, Hamlet style. Oh, and zombies. There are some extra shots of the zombies here too and a bit with the maid and her death scene. This material is presented in HD (all the other extras are SD) but there was no sound for this material so it has no dialogue, just some canned music over top.
A trailer for the feature, trailers for a few other Media Blasters DVD and Blu-ray releases, a still gallery, animated menus and chapter stops round out the supplements.
The Final Word:
It's a shame Media Blasters couldn't put any other new extras on the disc (though the outtakes are cool to see) and it's a shame that Media Blasters couldn't dig up the Italian track for this DVD. It's also a shame that the transfer isn't better than it is here, even if it is an improvement over their own DVD release from a few years ago. With that said, the movie itself remains an awesome headscratcher, a mind meltingly awful and awesome slice of gory Italian zombie horror and if nothing else it deserves credit for introducing the world to the one and only Peter Bark.
Click on the images below for full size Blu-ray screen caps!
And now by popular demand, some screen caps from the outtakes!
And now by popular demand, some screen caps from the outtakes!
I really have to purchase a multi-region player... :)
Thanks for the review, Ian. I've been curious about this release for a while. Despite its apparent deficiencies, I think I'll order a copy asap.
Belatedly: thank you very kindly Mr. Jane (mon capitan) for confirming the region status of the disc for us all. Greatly appreciated! Can buy in confidence now. :)