Director: Marino Girolami
Year: 1980
Country: Italy
Alternate Titles: Doctor Butcher, M.D., Island of the Last Zombies; Queen of the Zombies
Genre: Zombie; Jungle Cannibal
Plot:
During a routine autopsy, a medical student notices the cadavers are being eaten which soon turns her onto a mystery about a symbol on the victim that resembles a sign from a small island and heads there where the team encounters a strange doctor performing operations on the locals.
Review:
This was a pretty pleasant surprise. Among the better features of this one is that it feels like a great mixture of two big genres, namely the cannibal and zombie sub-genres. That it convincingly uses the tale-tell signs of the two makes this one a really entertaining and clever entry. The first half here gets the group ready for the trip to the island by showing the series of debilitating incidents around the hospital with the bodies having parts of their bodies removed and then devoured by the secret cannibal at the center of everything which soon involves the search into his home island all provides the kind of worthwhile starting point for what’s going on here. The use of their strange symbols and ideology that helps put the pieces together about what’s happening is a great touch, and when the group arrives there the island crawling with the cannibal tribe and the doctor there happens rather nicely in turn revealing the truth about the zombies in a not-exactly-new twist revealed towards the end.
This leads into the series of wild antics on display once they start going through the jungle which is a big plus. The cannibals get the majority of the screentime as it's all about going to their home based on speculation of their existence and going through the events that take place here involving the group making it sagely through the jungle that’s a true death trap for all involved. There's also plenty of gore in the film as this one has some pretty nice kills in it. There's a really impressive one where a victim is impaled from a trap that shoots up from behind to impale through the body rather than the other way around, with a severe series of dismemberments and skin devouring to follow, some really great impalements, surgical amputations and a rather shocking scene where a victim gets their face torn up by a rotating motorboat engine. That's not to include all the really wicked surgeries done in the film to test his experiments which are also quite impressive and really bloody. That there's also some really juicy skin-devouring really helps to make this one bloody and gory. The fact that it remains watchable all the way through to the end is another big plus, as this one doesn't really get boring and features enough action spots to stay interesting, and only without a big taste for cheese will this one fail. These all make it quite entertaining.
There isn't a whole lot wrong with this one. One of the big ones is its incredibly high cheese factor as there's a lot of that in the film which can be evidenced by the general plot description. This also has marks for it in that category for its gore and general atmosphere which is a mark as this one revels so heavily in it making it something to be avoided by those who aren't that into that style. This one also has a problem in that it doesn't really make the big points from its meshed styles. For a zombie film, these don't really feel like zombies most of the time as they rarely do anything more than stand around and take orders and aren't in the film very long to begin with. They're involved in the last twenty minutes of the film and it doesn't really feature them a whole lot in that period. As well, there isn't a lot of time spent on the cannibal tribe getting to know them. All that's known about them is the name and island where they live which is basically it which means it needed more information on them. Otherwise, the cheesiness is the main problem with this one holding it back.
Overview: ****/5
While not the greatest entry in either the Italian cannibal or zombie genres, this one does have enough to like about it that fans of both will be happy. See this one if you're a fan of either of those two genres or are just in the mood for a quick, cheesy time, while those not in the mood for such a film or aren't fans altogether should seek caution.
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