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Burial Ground!!!

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Burial Ground: The Nights Of Terror ~ 1981, Andrea Bianchi, Italy

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Burial Ground is a film about a lot of things… It’s a film about overcoming adversity, it’s a film about confronting the past, it’s a film about survival… but mostly it’s a movie where a full grown man plays a child who really wants to bang his mom. Yep. Now, granted, this is a very small man, but he’s definitely an adult human being, and not a child by any stretch of the imagination. And again, as I mentioned a moment ago, he really, really wants to have sex with his mom, and the reason why any of that was included in this film remains shrouded forever in mystery and lost to time. This is a movie where rotting corpses rise from their graves to tear human beings apart and devour their flesh, and none of that is even one tenth as creepy as this fucking kid/mom/incest subplot. 

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Plus, he looks like that.

burial-ground-nights-of-terror-1981-10THE PLOT~ When some professor/archeologist/whatever type guy removes an engraved plate from an ancient ruin, he unwittingly triggers a centuries old curse that reanimates the dead and imperils every lusty Italian in the immediate area. What a dumb ass, huh? Meanwhile, our cast of totally forgettable characters all arrive at the beautiful, stately Italian villa which may or may not belong to the aforementioned professor, and which also appears to be on the same property as this ancient tomb for some reason, for a weekend of aggressive sex in as many locations as possible, as often as possible. Solid plan. Sadly, none of these idiots is yet aware that the zombie apocalypse is upon them, so they only get in about fourteen or fifteen sex scenes before the place is just crawling with ghouls and everyone is forced to switch to survival mode. From there it’s your typical Night of the Living Dead style survival zombie film, they barricade, they fight, they die, the end. It’s actually pretty fun!

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Burial Ground is a rip off, and no buts about it. If you read the plot blurb above, the you already know that these guys watched Romero’s contributions a time or two, but this flick is also clearly indebted to Lucio Fulci’s Zombie, at one point even going so far as to directly copy of one of that film’s most memorable eyeball related gore gags. Even so, in watching Burial Ground, you’re more likely to be reminded of Jean Rollin’s Grapes of Death, or even the uber-shabby mummy/zombie mash up Dawn of the Mummy, as Burial Ground is tonally dissimilar to the work of either Romero or Fulci.

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I actually sort of love it it. The make up effects are truly terrible, but the music is really great. It’s much more ambient and freeform than the synth scores you would get from Goblin or Fabio Frizzi, but it suits this film excellently. Burial Ground is also super pleasant visually, whoever managed to acquire this location for the film should be given a freakin’ trophy, because it probably saved the movie in the end. The grounds and house are both beautiful, and do more to push this film in the arty/poetic direction that Rollin has on lock than any other element in the mix by far. That’s not to say that the movie feels anywhere near as poetic as the work of Jean Rollin, and truthfully, it doesn’t want to be, which is okay. The proof is in the pudding, and Burial Ground is very forthcoming about its intentions; it wants to entertain, and deliver. In this film we don’t waste any time with plot, character development, or really anything that takes too much mental energy. Instead, we get zombies; we get them fast, and in as much abundance as is available, and to hold us over while we wait the scant few minutes it takes to fetch our wobbling ghouls, we are compensated with liberal doses of naked Italians gettin’ busy. Folks, Burial Ground isn’t here to judge. Burial Ground knows what you want, and you don’t have to pretend with Burial Ground. Burial Ground isn’t the kind of movie you take home to mother, but it’s the kind of movie you meet in a back alley when you really need a fix.

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VIDEO NASTY BREAKDOWN

Yep! is also made the list of gnarly flicks which raised the English Ire back in the rough and tumble 1980’s! So, how does it compare to all the other films it tries so very hard to imitate? Pretty damn well, actually. Burial Ground has lots of footage of people having their guts fondled and yanked out by grizzled old zombies, but it also has a few memorable gags and scenes that stick out to the viewer; such as a somewhat elaborate sequence involving a dart and a scythe. More than anything else, what probably put Burial Ground on the map for both British Censors and psychotronic film fans is its puzzling inclusion of the aforementioned incest subplot, as well as the hardcore off-putting choice of casting a full grown man to play the role of Michael, who is supposed to be the child in question. We’re pretty much forced to assume that the biggest reason behind these decisions was that it was one more way to jazz the film up with sensational content that was smutty, and which felt markedly inappropriate, both traditionally seen as desirable traits for Italian Genre films. In the end no matter how you feel about the movie, Michael’s horrifyingly wrong relationship with his mother makes Burial Ground difficult to forget, and it also adds a lot of weight to later scenes in the film, wherein we learn the fate of young(?) Michael. Burial Ground’s blood and gore isn’t quite as over the top as some other films in the Video Nasty lexicon, but it hits home, because Burial Ground doesn’t work hard- it works smart. And by smart, I mean they cast an adult man as a child who wants to bang his mom, and then we see his corpse being eaten, and it’s super bloody and I love it. You probably will, too.burial10

It also has one of the most bleak and nihilistic endings of any zombie film ever, which is quite a statement indeed. Suffice to say, nobody survives this one, and we end with a freeze frame, followed by this text (spelling errors included):

 

 

“The Earth Shall Tremble…
Graves Shall Open…
They Shall Come Among the Living as Messengers of Death and there shall be the Nights of Terror…

Profecy of the Black Spider.”

DAMN! That’s the most metal shit I’ve ever heard in my LIFE. So, yeah, if you want to know more about The Black Spider and whatever his deal was, then be my guest and google that shit. Meanwhile, this is a pretty amazing way to end a zombie movie, and I don’t even know if that caption is bogus or not. I really don’t care. At the end of the day, Burial Ground pretty much delivers in the same way that junk food does, it’s not good for you, but if that’s what you wanted, you wouldn’t have bought those Cheetos in the first place.

A-

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SUSPIRIA!!!!

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Suspiria– 1977, Dario Argento, Italy

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There was a period of time spanning from 1960-something all the way up into the 1980’s when Italy and Spain were cranking out THE greatest movies on the planet, bar none. Italy especially was on a hot streak at that time, and the United States wasn’t even in third place. This was a true golden age for Euro-horror, and that twenty year window gave us near innumerable gruesome classics, many of which remain largely unappreciated by the American mainstream (get on it, guys). Among the bumper crop of European made creep ass masterpieces I am speaking of, Dario Argento’s Suspiria stands out as being among the very best. Routinely singled out as one of the greatest horror films of all time, and lovingly revered by horror enthusiasts and cinema snobs alike, Suspiria is very likely Argento’s single greatest work. This movie rules, bro.

THE PLOT~ A young American woman travels to Germany where she has enrolled in a prestigious school of dance, only to immediately face mysterious and frightening goings on constantly from the moment she steps off the plane. After doing the absolute minimum amount of independent investigation required to learn absolutely anything, she discovers that her new school/home was actually founded by a coven of malicious witches, and for some reason, she doesn’t haul ass back to America immediately. It stands to reason that she therefore deserves what she has coming to her. Things get freaky.

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What the hell is that thing?

So, clearly, the plot isn’t anything to write home about, but the execution is phenomenal. Suspiria is wild and engrossing, it’s dreamy and unnerving, and, if viewed under the proper circumstances (i.e. not streamed off of fucking Youtube or whatever) Suspiria is totally and completely overwhelming. The score is a big part of what makes everything work, Suspiria’s soundtrack is a massive, atmospheric masterwork by Italian synth-rock band Goblin, themselves responsible for 99% of Italy’s soundtracks in the 70’s and 80’s. The group turns in their best work ever for this film, and the Suspiria theme song specifically is probably the single greatest piece of music the band ever recorded. That’s all well and good, but what really counts is how how Argento cuts this music to picture; and this ends up being an invaluable asset to the overall potency of the work. These songs are LOUD, eerie, uncomfortable, and constant, which is exactly what this film needs, because equal care has been paid to Suspiria’s visuals. This movie displays the most obsessively precise and deliberate visual experience ever seen in an Italian horror film, ever. Suspiria’s brilliant, but rigidly structure visuals are more in league with what you see in Wes Anderson’s catalog than anything else.

suspiria04See? It’s just like The Grand Budapest Hotel… Except it was built by Satan worshipping Germans!

Suspiria-10Hey, Dario, where’s Jason Schwartzman? Harharhar…

Suspiria-051Harhar, hey, Dario! Who does Bill Murray play in this one- Oh… Oh hell….

Suspiria is certainly not the goriest film to have come out of the Euro-Horror wave of the 1970’s, not by a long shot, but it does have it’s share of blood and guts. It’s also fairly spooky from time to time. The tagline spoken toward the end of the trailer states that “The only thing more terrifying than the last twelve minutes of Suspiria… are the first 92…” I always hated that. So, what, it’s less scary at the end? Wouldn’t that really be about the last thing a horror movie should aim for? Well, don’t worry, the end of this film is by far the scariest part, but that shouldn’t matter much, since humanity has been so freaking desensitized by now anyway. This thing does pack a punch, but it’s a 1977 punch, so you might not even notice.

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Jazz hands!

Really, if I was going to try and anticipate what sort of complaints you may hear from a first time Suspiria watcher, I would imagine that all or most of these criticisms would be directly attributed to the fact that this film is Italian, and was made in the 1970’s. Italian films from the 1970’s have some traits that today’s more mainstream movie goer may not find that appetizing. Sometimes, the pacing can feel slow, due to our rapidly deteriorating attention spans, and this can make these films seem boring to the X-Box addled Millennial. Additionally, like nearly every single European film from this era, there was no on set sound recordist for Suspiria, and so all of the audio, dialogue included, was recorded in post. Often, the voice actors, especially for English dubs, don’t do the original actors any favors, and to some people, this can make it hard to take a movie seriously. This is a true pity, because it was a nearly universal practice across Europe in that day and age, and if you can’t get over that, you’re going to miss out on a huge library of rad movies.

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There are a lot of Americans who truly love horror films, but who have had minimal exposure to the European classics of yesteryear. If that describes you, and you’re open, my recommendation isn’t just that you watch Suspiria, but also that you watch Suspiria under the proper conditions. This is a movie that was made before home video and online streaming was a game-changing fact of life. This movie was designed to be experienced big, loud, and in the dark. While it’s probably not possible for you to catch a showing of this at your nearby Regal Cinemas, at the very least, turn off your lights, turn the volume up, and pay attention. Suspiria deserves that courtesy, and in the end, the experience will be rewarding.

A+

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