One
might assume that if you combine the "talents" of Joe D'amato (15 Dec
1936 – 23 Jan 1999), Laura Gemser and George Eastman, you would end up with a
mildly entertaining film. (Then again, maybe not.) In any case, if that is what
one does assume, Erotic Nights of the Living Dead proves that one doth assume
too much, for "Italy's first sexually explicit zombie film" is one
damn boring film. Which doesn't mean that it doesn't have its appeal, it's just
that the appeal it has is a bit like a major car accident: you might want to
rubberneck, but do you really want to watch for over two whole hours?
Regardless of how many dead bodies litter the street, it gets boring after
awhile. That said, an accident of any kind probably makes more sense and has
more coherence than this exercise in, well, cinematic, pornographic and horror
ineptitude.
PG
trailer to
Erotic Nights of the Living Dead:
Let's
get the porn out of the way first. There is a palpable contractual division amidst
the actors involved, in that it quickly becomes evident that Gemser, Eastman (nee
Luigi Montefiori) and Playboy centerfold
Dirce Funari (Italian issue, Aug 1978) had a "no-hardcore" clause, at
least for the this film. In Funari's case, she was obviously willing to go
further than either Gemser or Eastman (the latter never even manages to undo
his belt or drop his trousers for his sex scenes), but true clinical detail is
never shown in her scenes; even when she gives head or fingers herself, the
scene is shot so you don't see anything. (The average 1970s "softcore"
Great
Uschi movie shows more.)
Not so with the fourth main character of the
movie, played by some mustachioed guy named Mark Shannon, nee Manlio Cersosimo, who
shows the full monty and even shoots a quick load in an early sex scene
involving two hookers. The only truly memorable thing about his sex scenes, however,
is that he has warts on his testicles. That alone says everything about how
"hot" the obviously non-fluffed porn aspects of Erotic Nights of the
Living Dead are. Indeed, when it comes to the explicit sex scenes, those of Erotic
Nights of the Living Dead are so un-erotic, so high on the incompetently shot
and framed and presented ick-level, that one could easily turn sex-negative — and
that despite the fact that most of the lithesome, primarily A-cupped, heavily
bushed women are actually very attractive. (Assuming D'amato did his own
casting, the man was obviously a fan of A-cups.)
Erotic
Nights of the Living Dead is definitely way too long for the slim story it
proffers, though a more talented film-maker than D'amato, or at least someone
with a bit more artistic drive or intention, might nevertheless have been able
to make an interesting movie with the flick's bare bone(r)s. Some blame, of course, must
also go to George Eastman, who may have gone on to become a talented and
respected Italo-TV scriptwriter but displays absolutely no creative ambition
in the script he provides here. The paucity of the movie isn't in any way
improved by the insertion of a number of idiotic and/or extraneous scenes that
do little to advance the plot but do pad the already excessive running time.
The
opening and closing framing narration at a unisex insane asylum is a prime
example of the unneeded. Here, we meet the obviously unhinged Larry O'Hara
(Eastman) and the less-obviously unhinged Fiona (Funari), who easily sneak off
to the basement to shag softcore with crazed abandonment. Whereupon, in
flashback, we learn how the two came to be sex-crazed inhabitants of a
loony bin. But therein, too, there is padding, sexual and zombie-wise.
For example, the first two zombie scenes of the movie:
the first is of a local fisherman who is killed from behind (despite having one
of the magic anti-zombie talismans that keep popping up throughout the film),
and the second is of a disbelieving coroner who becomes lunch while preparing
to dissect a "dead" body. Those scenes, while gory and perhaps funny
enough, do nothing to advance the actual plot and have absolutely no real relevance
to the rest of the movie. Once shown, they are never mentioned or referred to
again, though particularly the death of the local coroner, one might think,
would or should have some sort of narrative echo elsewhere in a traditionally plotted
movie.
A
few more padding scenes later — including those featuring warty testicles and a
memorable "dance" scene in which a woman, definitely a compeer of
sorts to Honeysuckle
Divine, uncorks a Champaign bottle in a most creative manner — the actual
narrative of Erotic Nights of the Living Dead finally kicks in. Ship captain O'Hara
(Eastman, of way too many noteworthy films to include any here) gets hired by the
visiting land developer John Wilson ("Mark Shannon", who supposedly
began his career with an uncredited appearance in Stephen C. Apostolof's Motel
Confidential [1969 / scene]
and went on to such "classics" as Voodoo Baby [1980 / music],
Porno Holocaust [1981 / music],
and The Emperor Caligula: The Untold Story [1982 / trailer]) to take Wilson
and his sexy receptacle Fiona (Dirce Funari of Escape from Women's Prison [1978
/ trailer], Midnight Blue [1979/ soundtrack], and Blue Movie (1978 / trailer]) — "I picked her up in a
high-class gutter", Wilson tells O'Hara at one point — to the truly
beautiful Cat Island, where the company Wilson works for plans to open a luxury
resort. There, they run into what appear to be the only inhabitants of the "deserted"
island, the beautiful Luna (Gemser) and her blind grandfather (an uncredited old
man who was surely cast due to his facial tumor). Warning signs abound that the
trio should skedaddle while they still can, but Gemser's bush and Wilson's
capitalist greed keep them there until, well, it's too late and the zombies
attack in an ungainly lumbering mass.
It is no spoiler to reveal that O'Hara
and Fiona survive, as that is already revealed in the opening nuthouse scenes,
but now they are cackling sex-obsessed crazies because, hell, that's what you
become when you have sex with Gemser and survive a zombie attack on a tropical
island.
For
all the ineptitude displayed in Erotic Nights of the Living Dead, or perhaps
because of it, the film does achieve a certain (if extremely low) level of
watchability, especially since it does occasionally offer something to laugh
and giggle or at least loudly snort at — including the consistently hilarious
use of day-for-night shots, some amazing non-sequitur dialogue, and persistently
incontiguous action. Unluckily, the few unintentional perks the flick might
offer pretty much get lost in the movie's glacial pacing, which is so slow that
by the time the see-it-coming-a-mile-a-way bite-the-dick-off scene transpires,
the viewer is pretty much too anesthetized to care. And while some of the
graphic softcore scenes do offer a level of humor or passable sleaze, the
hardcore ones repulse: the movie would definitely be improved (though perhaps
less memorable) by the removal of the warty-testicle scenes. (Which, we hear,
one circulating version of the movie does.)
One
might argue that Erotic Nights of the Living Dead does deliver what it promises,
which is a mixture of porn and gore, but that is a bit like saying, dunno, that
salami pizza is still an appreciatable salami pizza even if it doesn't go into
the oven as long as it has dough, tomato sauce, cheese and salami. Is an uncooked pizza
with all the promised or needed ingredients still a pizza worth eating?
A
Schrödinger's cat question, perhaps, but while the predicate "good"
is often subjective, there are nevertheless horror porn flicks out there that
deliver their ingredients and remain both immensely watchable and
"fun". (Want a "fun"
or "good" hardcore "horror" movie where the heavily haired
sex scenes and the narrative work? Go for the surreally batshit Hardgore
[1974] or the consciously culty Thundercrack! [1975 / scene], neither of which have
zombies but both of which never bore.) Erotic Nights of the Living Dead, on the
other hand, is truly an example of a movie that contains what it promises but
fails to succeed as porn or horror or porn horror, and thus delivers nothing
that makes it worth watching.
Erotic
Nights of the Living Dead is, basically, like an uncooked salami pizza... but it
stinks like unwashed, warty testicles.
