‘When the dead first walked, they had no time for appetizers.’
Zombies: The Beginning is a 2007 Italian horror film – original title: Zombi: La creazione – directed by Bruno Mattei (Hell of the Living Dead; Rats: Night of Terror; Snuff Trap) as Vincent Dawn from a screenplay by Antonio Tentori (A Cat in the Brain; Dario Argento’s Dracula; Virus: Exteme Contamination) and producer Giovanni Paolucci.
Main cast:
Yvette Yzon, Alvin Anson, Paul Holme, James Gregory Paolleli, B.B. Johnson, Dyane Craystan, Gerhard Acao, Mike Vergel, Miguel Faustmann and Gene Zwahir.
In the US, the film was released on DVD on February 10, 2015 by Intervision Picture Corp.
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Plot:
Sharon, the only survivor of the explosion of the salvage ship Dark Star, is having a hard time with the insurance company in furnishing them with a satisfactory explanation about her accident. She tells the story of her horrible experience, but is considered crazy – no one believes her when she tells about the existence of living dead on an island that can’t be found on any nautical map…
Reviews:
Bruno Mattei’s partner piece to his 2007 film Island of the Living Dead is another no-budget, no talent production shot in the Philippines for pocket change. Mattei made crappy zombie films even in the heyday of the Italian horror boom of the early 80s, so it shouldn’t really be any surprise that his more recent efforts, when Italian genre cinema has gone down the toilet, are irredeemably horrible.
The story follows on directly from Island of the Living Dead: sole survivor Doctor Sharon Dimao (non actress Yvette Yzon) is packed off back to the zombie island with a bunch of half-wit soldiers and dubious scientists. When there, she discovers that as well as zombies, there are also weird zombie children with ping pong eyeballs who could or could not be part of the next master-race, as well as a disembodied brain connected to lots of air conditioning pipes which seems to be in control of everything.
This looks unremittingly ugly, features uniformly terrible performances and is undeniably dumb. But in its attempts to be a two-bit zombie version of Aliens it’s actually rather fun, in a so-bad-its-good kind of way. But don’t take that as a recommendation!
Matt Blake, moviesandmania.com
“it really isn’t all that bad. It’s dumb, and it’s derivative; but by comparison even to Island of the Living Dead, there are very few moments where you find yourself howling at the television in outrage. In fact, once you get past the fact that the whole thing’s an obvious plagiarism, you can even begin to enjoy the places where the movie decides to stray from its sources.” Braineater.com
“I have, today, watched both a Timo Rose movie and the worst, arguably, science fiction movie of the eighties. But neither could possibly hold a candle to the transcendent, outrageous, offensive badness that is Zombies: The Beginning. The late Bruno Mattei truly outdid himself this time. The crapmaster’s final offering to the world of Z-grade cinema is also his worst film.” Robert Beveridge, Popcorn for Breakfast
“There are none of the supernatural trappings of the first movie (grimoires, ghosts, curses); instead, here there’s a disembodied brain sucking fetuses out of women through tubes. It’s a tediously one-dimensional movie, but fans of Mattei will undoubtedly have a soft spot for these last two zombie offerings.”
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