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Released by: Intervision Picture Corp.
Released on: February 10th,2015.
Director: Bruno Mattei
Cast: Yvette Yzon, Paul Holme
Year: 2007
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The Movie:
When this Bruno Mattei helmed trash-epic begins, a woman named Sharon (Yvette Yzon) is rescued by the Coast Guard and dropped off at a hospital to recover. When she does, we learn that she was the last survivor of a crew that was decimated by… something. The company that employed her figure she's nuts and they let her go and from there, she heads off to a Buddhist Temple to find herself and come to terms with what has happened. It is here that she's approached by a man named Paul Barker (Paul Holme), a scientist employed by the Tyler Corporation. It seems that they need her help - his crew know of the island she was rescued off of and what lurks there: horrible, flesh eating zombies! They even went so far as to gather some specimens from the island to study but unfortunately… they lost them. To make amends for this they've put together a team of crack commando soldiers and they figure her expertise in this type of situation will come in handy. She begrudgingly agrees to join them.
From here, the team head to the remote island where they learn the reality of the situation and how these zombies came to be. The further inland they go the more horrifying things get - not only are there regular zombies, but there are also the dreaded baby zombies to contend with. These are all part of the Tyler Corporations grand experiment to genetically engineer a race of super humans but obviously things have gone horribly wrong. Despite this, Paul does what he can to prevent the team from killing everything they come into contact with, because whether he'll admit it or not, we know he answers to the evil corporation behind all of this.
Zombies: The Beginning is basically Bruno Mattei doing Aliens with zombies used in place of Giger-esque space monsters. All of the various commando types employed by Paul's team adhere to what are now stereotypes perpetuated by Cameron's film, from the tough talking lady to the class clown of the group, while Sharon is essentially Ripley. Instead of chest-bursters we have zombie babies cracking through rip cages and we even get a sort of zombie hive modelled after the aliens' base of operations for our team to mosey through. The similarities are not only uncanny, they're practically endless. If 'borrowing' from Cameron weren't enough, you can also be on the lookout for some submarine footage (obviously the best way for our commandos to get to the island is to travel by submarine) that will be familiar to those with an affinity for submarine movies (hint: he swiped it from Crimson Tide!). Ah, Bruno….
The film is also remarkably gory - not only do we get the completely awesome zombie baby birth scene completely spoiled for you in the screen caps below but we get all sorts of throat tearing and biting, plenty of blood and entrails and a weird, yucky zombie tube thing that once again kinda-sorta ties back to the whole Aliens rip-off Mattei and company were going for here. They didn't pull back for this one, it's gory as all Hell.
The movie also features (and sort of benefits from) some particularly atrocious English dubbing. Every single character in the movie sounds like they're on another planet and there's such a weird range of voice actors here - some remarkably enthusiastic about the material and others possibly in a coma - that the very lack of consistency on hand is genuinely impressive. The highlight of all of this, however, is one of the commandos who sounds like he was dubbed by the infamous waiter from Samurai Cop! Add to that plenty of very familiar sounding library music and this one comes up a winner - a low budget Eurotrash aficionado's horrible, beautiful dream made real!
Video/Audio/Extras:
Zombies: The Beginning was shot on digital video and is presented on DVD in 1.78.1 anamorphic widescreen. Like pretty much everything that Bruno Mattei was involved in, this movie was shot fast and cheap but for the most part the movie looks alright. The transfer offers up about as much detail as you can realistically expect while color reproduction looks quite good, those gooey, gory reds in particular. Some minor compression can and does pop up in a few spots but unless you're specifically looking for it for the purposes of calling it out in an anal retentive review such as this you probably won't be bothered by it. No problems here - Zombies: The Beginning looks like the early 2000s shot on video low budget trash epic that it is!
The English language Dolby Digital 2.0 audio on the disc is fine. It's all dubbed in post so nobody's lips really match the dialogue but that's half the fun of the movie right there. Levels are balanced well enough and there are no problems with hiss or distortion. The music sounds fine and the goofy sound effects worked into the track are about as effective as they can be.
The main extra on the disc is a featurette called Zombie Genisys in which we spend seventeen and a half minutes with screenwriter Antonio Tentori . He speaks quite openly about the influence of Lucio Fulci on his writing and then goes on to talk about how this got him his start in the Italian film industry. He talks about working with Joe D'Amato and then later with Mattie and also talks about how and why they worked some of the ideas from Aliens into the script for this movie.
Outside of that we get a trailer for the feature, menus and chapter selection.
The Final Word:
Zombies: The Beginning is an absolutely ridiculous movie but damn it all, it's a lot of stupid trashy fun. Originality be damned, this is Mattei doing what he does best - aping better, bigger budgeted films and compensating for what he doesn't have by loading up the gore and the nonsense. Intervision deserves a big high five for bringing this one to domestic DVD shores.
