No, not an official entry in Month Of The Living Dead; just a scheduling coincidence!
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In which a mad scientist encourages a bunch of natives to become cannibals, so that he can turn them into zombies.
Featuring a lot of blood, a few boobs, one bare butt and a scattering of maggots. So, yeah – NSFW.
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EDITED TO ADD: Association of ideas. I have also re-formatted and added screenshots to my review of Zombie Lake….and you better BELIEVE it’s NSFW!!!!
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Liz Kingsley is the insane genius behind And You Call Yourself a Scientist!
#1 by The Rev. D.D. on October 22nd, 2009
Man, another review already? You’ll spoil us!
I wonder…should I try and track this down before I read this review? It’s one of the only Euro-Zom movies I’ve not seen yet. I get the feeling I’m not going to be spoiling much by reading your review, but who knows? (I mean, if it’s got a “WTF?!” ending like City of the Walking Dead or The Gates of Hell, I definitely don’t want to lose that moment.)
That zombie…ever since I saw a screencap of it a few years ago, it’s intrigued me. The way its face is rotted, it looks like it has a muzzle, which makes it look like a giant cat-man-zombie. It looks like the critter from Sleepwalkers got zombified. Does it feature prominently in the movie?
(Please feel free to continue to spoil us, by the by.)
#2 by lyzard on October 22nd, 2009
It’s a knock off of Zombie; same basic structure. I guess I already gave away the main surprise, that it is (by my definition) science fiction instead of horror. It doesn’t have a WTF ending – it doesn’t really have any ending – but there are certainly a few moments worth seeing cold, so if you have access to a print, I’d watch it first.
And no, for a film called “Zombi Holocaust“, there is very little zombie action.
#3 by Carl on October 22nd, 2009
Lyz, if you were impressed by Lori Ridgeway’s bedroom, you should look at Interior Desecrations: http://www.lileks.com/institute/interiors/
#4 by Baron Scarpia on October 23rd, 2009
Hurrah! Zombie Holocaust is a favourite of mine; it was the first Italian zombie film (and cannibal film) I ever saw. And you’ve got to love the Amazing Reattachable Arm.
I now want you to review The Zombie Dead. I want to see your reaction when you watch That Scene (and don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about…
).
#5 by lyzard on October 23rd, 2009
Well, it seems that I can give the same response to Carl and to the Baron:
What, I haven’t suffered ENOUGH!?
#6 by The Rev. D.D. on October 23rd, 2009
Well, if it’s out on DVD, I can probably find it. We’re planning on resubscribing to Netflix very soon, so maybe I can get it from there.
I must admit, though, that the temptation to read your review immediately is very strong. Damn you and your high-quality output!
#7 by Todd on October 23rd, 2009
I was “lucky” enough to see this as Dr. Butcher, MD in the theater when it first played in the U.S. My recollection of the poster was that “MD” was said to be short for “Medical Deviant”, but now, thanks to your illustration, I see that it was really “Medical Deviate”, which… well, that doesn’t really make sense at all, does it?
And, hey, if a movie is going to be as useless as Zombie Lake, it might as well give us an opportunity to spice up out websites with a little nudity, eh?
#8 by Nathan Shumate on October 23rd, 2009
Hey, I’ll consider it an official MOTLD entry.
#9 by Nathan Shumate on October 23rd, 2009
By the way, in defense of gut-munching (“The guts. Why the guts?? WHY, of all the possibilities, would you choose to eat just the guts??”), uncooked internal organs are much easier for non-carnivorous teeth to get through than uncooked muscle tissue. Surely, as a scientist, you know that.
#10 by Joshua on October 23rd, 2009
Surely, as a scientist, you know that.
Holy moley! What kind of scientist is she?!
#11 by Joshua on October 23rd, 2009
By which I mean: what field of science involves eating both uncooked organs and uncooked muscle?
#12 by KeithA on October 23rd, 2009
And she calls herself a scientist!
#13 by Nathan Shumate on October 23rd, 2009
What do you mean, Joshua? Science is science!
#14 by lyzard on October 23rd, 2009
Most of ‘em.
What, you didn’t know?
#15 by lyzard on October 23rd, 2009
Todd – a “little” nudity? Is that what you call it?
Actually, Dr Dreylock says “Deviate”, too; I typed that on the first go through and then thought what you did: “Hey, wait a minute…” I wasn’t sure if it was an American thing, though, like alternate/alternative.
Rev – it is certainly out, through Media Blasters/Shriek Show, and Netflix seem to have it. Beyond that, being an interested party, I can’t advise you.
#16 by Todd on October 23rd, 2009
Okay, how about “Nudity beyond the wildest imaginings of even the most hormonally over-active fifteen year-old boy”?
#17 by The Rev. D.D. on October 23rd, 2009
“Beyond that, being an interested party, I can’t advise you.”
I have a feeling the motto of this website would apply here…
Naturally, I won’t know for CERTAIN that I’ve seen worse until I watch this, but I’ve seen Zombi 4 and Hell of the Living Dead, so I feel safe on that point.
I will have to watch it, too. Zombie movies have almost as strong a pull on me as giant monster movies.
#18 by Ed on October 23rd, 2009
Great piece as usual, Liz. Any chance of you checking out Contamination? It’s a riff on Alien from Italy starring Ian McCulloch. If nothing else it would have you covering all three of the man’s main Italian films.
#19 by Nathan Shumate on October 23rd, 2009
So, so safe.
#20 by lyzard on October 24th, 2009
Hmm. What does it say about me, that people try to sell me movies by telling me that Ian McCulloch is in them??
Every chance in the world, Ed, although I couldn’t tell you exactly when.
#21 by Read MacGuirtose on October 24th, 2009
Hm… well, actually, according to the [i]Oxford English Dictionary[/i], “deviate” [i]can[/i] be used as a noun:
[quote][b]deviate[/b] (ˈdiːvɪət), [i]sb[/i]. [f. the vb.] [b]1.[/b] A person who, or thing which, deviates; esp. one who deviates from normal social, etc., standards or behaviour; [i]spec.[/i] a sexual pervert.[/quote]
So, remarkably, the poster’s and movie’s use of the word isn’t actually wrong… though that may be entirely coincidental.
#22 by Read MacGuirtose on October 24th, 2009
Bleah… oops… messed up the formatting again… I don’t know why I was thinking this site used BBcode. (Wish this place had a Preview button. Or an Edit Post button. Or both.) OK, here’s what I meant to say:
Hm… well, actually, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, “deviate” can be used as a noun:
So, remarkably, the poster’s and movie’s use of the word isn’t actually wrong… though that may be entirely coincidental.
(By the way, out of curiosity, how is “alternate/alternative” an American thing? How are those two words used elsewhere differently than in America?)
#23 by lyzard on October 24th, 2009
Coincidental, accidental – you won’t convince me they did something right on purpose!
I find that Americans use “alternate” to mean “alternative”; whereas elsewhere, “alternate” means “first this one, then that one” – alter-NATE – while “alternative” means “choice” or “option”.
(FYI, the formatting here uses ‘em’ for italics and ‘strong’ for bold.)
#24 by Read MacGuirtose on October 24th, 2009
Well… “I” for italics and “B” for bold also work; they just have to be in HTML angle brackets instead of BBcode square brackets…
As for alternate/alternative… hm. My initial impulse was to say that I think even in America, alternate and alternative do have the separate meanings you describe, but on a little further thought, I guess you’re right; sometimes “alternate” is used to mean “alternative”. And yeah, here the OED backs you up on it being an American thing:
So… I guess there you go.
Though now I’m left with something else that confuses me. According to the pronunciation in the OED, “alternate” is accented on the second syllable. But I’m used to hearing it accented on the first—and that’s the way I pronounce it myself. Is “alternate” actually accented on the second syllable outside the U.S., and is the first-syllable accent another “American thing”?…
#25 by lyzard on October 24th, 2009
Hmm…it might be noun/verb usage: al-TER-nate might be like “alternative” (noun), while AL-ter-NATE might be a verb; the latter pronunciation (meaning, eg, red-then-white-then-red) is more commonly used here.
I do find that “alternate” is the more common choice of word in American writers, which is where I notice that usage; I always assumed it was just a cut-down, like turning “aluminium” into “aluminum”, but it might be a legitimate variant.
(Tell me, how exactly did a discussion of Zombi Holocaust turn into a debate about our more obscure linguistic usages??)
#26 by Nathan Shumate on October 24th, 2009
I don’t know, but on aluminum you’re mistaken. “Aluminum” isn’t an American “cut-down” like “flavour” or whatnot; both variations have been around since the beginning, since the discoverer couldn’t make up his mind.
http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/aluminium.htm
#27 by Carl on October 24th, 2009
To this American, “one from row a and then one from row b” is alternating.
#28 by Nathan Shumate on October 24th, 2009
I thought it was “the lunch special at the Chinese place.“
#29 by El Santo on October 24th, 2009
“Hmm…it might be noun/verb usage: al-TER-nate might be like “alternative” (noun), while AL-ter-NATE might be a verb; the latter pronunciation (meaning, eg, red-then-white-then-red) is more commonly used here.”
Normally I’m a big fan of the Oxford English Dictionary, but I can’t agree with it on the subject of how Americans pronounce the noun and adjective versions of “alternate.” In my 35 years on Earth, I’ve never once heard anybody pronounce it with stress on the second syllable. “AL-ter-NATE” (first-syllable stress slightly stronger than third) is indeed how we say the verb, but “AL-ter-nate” (with the “a” in the last syllable squashed into a schwa) is the only way I’ve ever heard the noun or adjective spoken. Also, I detect a subtle but important difference between “alternate” and “alternative” as nouns in American English: “alternate” is a concrete noun, whereas “alternative” is abstract. When two outcomes or courses of action are possible, those are alternatives. When two people or objects might be selected for a particular purpose, those are alternates. The same distinction seems to apply in adjectival usage as well.
#30 by Read MacGuirtose on October 24th, 2009
Bleah, that’s annoying… just wrote a long post, and when I tried to post it got a message saying that it “seemed a bit spammy” and that I should “Please go back and try again”. Maybe because of all the links to online dictionary entries I included. Okay, let me try breaking it into separate posts and see if I can get it through.
Gah, this is annoying; even when I break it down to only a couple of links per post, it still won’t let the message through. Dagnabbit. All right; guess I’ll have to take out the dictionary links and you’ll just have to take my word for what the dictionary entries say, or find them for yourself.
And it’s still not letting my post through, even without links. I’m not sure what’s going on here…
#31 by Read MacGuirtose on October 24th, 2009
Okay, it let that through, so maybe my entry, even without the links, was just too long. I’ll try again…
Nope. Even just the first paragraph isn’t getting through. Maybe because I repeat the word “dictionary” so often, so it looks like linkspamming? Okay, I’m going to try breaking it apart into smaller pieces…
To clarify, the Oxford English Dictionary doesn’t give the stressed-on-the-second-syllable pronunciation as the American pronunciation of “alternate”—it gives it as the pronunciation. [CONTINUED]
#32 by Read MacGuirtose on October 24th, 2009
Seriously. That’s all it let me post. One sentence. I tried including the second sentence, I got flagged as “spammy”. I don’t know why. Let’s move on…
…Which is why I assumed that must be the pronunciation outside America—I don’t think the OED necessarily gives the American pronunciation when it differs from elsewhere, and I too, have only heard it stressed on the first syllable, which is why I was wondering if perhaps it is indeed stressed on the second syllable in other English-speaking countries. (Though from Lyz’s last post, I’m still not sure whether this is the case—though it’s also possible that the al-TER-nate pronunciation is only in England, and that for this particular word the usage in England and in Australia differs… For what it’s worth, though, the Macmillan dictionary concurs with the OED, but dictionary.com places the accent on the first syllable. [CONTINUED]
#33 by Read MacGuirtose on October 24th, 2009
…Merriam-Webster, however, does clarify that it’s accented on the first syllable in the U.S. and Canada and that the pronunciation with the accent on the second syllable is “Chiefly British” (no word on the Australian pronunciation), so I guess that more or less settles that. (Also, wait, just noticed that the Macmillan dictionary actually has some separate entries for American and British pronunciations, and that the one I was looking at was specifically the British version… the American page… um, gives both pronunciations… Well, after all, Webster did say chiefly British; maybe there are some American dialects (New England?) that do accent the second syllable, though I don’t recall ever having heard it myself.)) [CONTINUED]
#34 by Read MacGuirtose on October 24th, 2009
…(Also, again, to clarify, the above paragraph refers only to “alternate” as an adjective or noun; as a verb, the given pronunciation is indeed given as stressed on the first and third syllables, which is how I’ve always heard it—though, interestingly, the OED does say the verb was formerly accented on the second syllable.)
Carl: to me, at least, there’s a difference between “alternate” and “alternating”—”alternating” would be, for instance, taking one from column A, then one from column B, then one from column A, then one from column B, et cetera, while “alternate” would be taking every other item from a single column. If that makes any sense.
El Santo, interesting note on the “alternate/alternative” distinction. You may be right; the OED doesn’t make that distinction, but then I think it focuses mostly on British usage, so it’s not surprising it doesn’t say anything about such a subtlety in American word use.
As for how we got on this topic in the first place… well, heck, why not? For me, at least, though, while I do find this sort of thing interesting for its own sake (and therefore would undoubtedly have gone off on this tangent anyway), this is actually potentially useful information for me—I’m an actor, and occasionally am called upon to do roles in an English accent. (And, incidentally, yes, I know there are many different “English accents”, and I’m not enough of a dialect expert to really know the difference between them (well, the more subtle differences; obviously I can tell the difference between, for instance, RP, Scouse, and Cockney); at some point I plan to get some professional dialect coaching.) So if I’m ever in a role where I’m required to say the word “alternate” in an English accent… I guess now I know which syllable to put the stress on…
#35 by Read MacGuirtose on October 24th, 2009
Okay, it let me post that last big chunk all as one post, so I’m not sure why it wouldn’t allow me to post larger chunks at the beginning… what the heck is that spam algorithm, anyway? Ah, well… um… sorry to monopolize this thread rambling about the pronunciation of “alternate”. I’ll… I’ll shut up now.
#36 by Nathan Shumate on October 24th, 2009
I think that two of the spam metric you’ve run afoul of are:
1) Number of links.
2) Long sentences or paragraphs. Since lots of spam is auto-generated nonsense, it often ends up being run-on “sentences” with periods only infrequently. Obviously, that kind of metric clashes with the verbose character of the posters and commenters on this blog, but that’s just the price we pay.
#37 by Read MacGuirtose on October 24th, 2009
Well, even without the links, it wouldn’t accept my message… but yeah, I guess #2 still got me. That first paragraph was pretty long, and the second sentence was the longest part of it. Next time this happens, I’ll try breaking up my sentences and paragraphs. I’m afraid I tend to be somewhat verbose. (Not just in my writing, either… I actually write more or less the way I talk.)
Anyway, sorry again to have taken up so much of this thread… but hopefully now that I know a little more about the spam metrics I can avoid this happening again. (Or, you know, I can just not be so darn longwinded and not try to make such long posts in the first place, but I’m not sure I can promise that…)
#38 by Rel on October 24th, 2009
How timely – I saw Ian McCulloch on Friday. He turned up at the Sheffield Showroom’s new horror festival to present Zombie Flesh Eaters, as it’s known here. It was rather strange – he stated that he had only seen Zombi and Contamination in the last month, and hasn’t seen Zombie Holocaust at all. After the screening, he went on about how shit (his choice of word) the film was. It wasn’t the approach I expected, really.
I was going to ask him how life as an actor with three strikes on the Video Nasties list had been, but as he almost immediately gave up and became a farmer after Contamination, the point was moot.
Lake Mungo played on the same evening, and I’d like to recommend it to everyone. Very creepy and unexpectedly poignant. It was the hit of the festival for me, even more than… well, the official UK premier is elsewhere, so we’re not supposed to saw we saw the one with… ‘happenings beyond the normal’…
#39 by lyzard on October 24th, 2009
Driven into retirement by a career in Italian exploitation, hey? Sad, but perhaps inevitable.
If he thinks Zombie is shit (an opinion with which I respectfully disagree), it’s probably for the best that he’s never seen Zombi Holocaust.
#40 by Rel on October 24th, 2009
Apparently he was hired without an interview or a test, because the TV series Survivors was a big hit in Italy.
His remembrance of Zombi confirmed everything I love about Italian cinema of the time. He went for his visas, saying he was filming with Variety Pictures in New York and Dominica. ‘We have no record of a permit to film for Variety Pictures in New York,’ said the woman on the desk. ‘Sorry, I got it wrong,’ said Ian, after a hurried phone call, ‘we’re flying to Dominica via New York, then filming.’ ‘Do you you think we’re f*cking idiots?’ replied the woman.
Working on a sex comedy at the same time, the Italian crew proceeded to film on the plane to New York, the plane to Dominica, at both the hotels, opposite a New York Police station and on the plane back home.
You just don’t see that sort of ‘can-do’ attitude these days, do you?
#41 by lyzard on October 25th, 2009
You know, much as we joke and jeer, that is actually true; as with the Roger Corman brigade, there’s something just plain admirable about that “Damn the torpedoes” attitude. You don’t get people like that any more, or stories like that.
#42 by Nathan Shumate on October 25th, 2009
Well, do you but they’re all from the digicam brigade.
#43 by lyzard on October 25th, 2009
Yeah, but too often a digicam is all they’ve got. Where’s the talent? – or in lieu of that, where’s the unmitigated chutzpah?
#44 by Nathan Shumate on October 25th, 2009
The chutzpah comes when they send a copy to me as if it were an actual motion picture suitable for viewing.
#45 by ProfessorKettlewell on October 26th, 2009
Can you imagine how GREAT ‘Survivors’ would have been if it had had cannibals and zombies in it, instead of a grumpy Welsh alcoholic?
#46 by lyzard on October 26th, 2009
The “Survivors” part of it might have been a bit doubtful, though.
#47 by supersonic on October 27th, 2009
More funner than the average review. Or even the median one.
#48 by supersonic on October 27th, 2009
re alternate – Santo’s shades of meaning are exactly right. If you send your second string quarterback onto the field or tell the understudy to take over tonight for an indisposed actress, that’s an alternate. If you ask a wide receiver to play quarterback, or replace the missing actress with a standing cardboard cutout of Lt. Worf, that’s an alternative.
#49 by Read MacGuirtose on October 28th, 2009
Well, yeah, it’s not hard to think of examples that support the argument, which is why I said it may be right. I’m still not sure it’s really a universal rule, though.
#50 by Read MacGuirtose on October 28th, 2009
And in fact, come to think of it, it’s not; I can come up with counterexamples, too. I’ve often heard the phrase “an alternate solution”, for example—but as a “solution” is an abstraction, by El Santo’s rule, this should be “alternative”.
Actually, in fact, the understudy and quarterback examples aren’t really examples at all, since that’s an entirely separate meaning of “alternate” with its own dictionary entry (definition B-2 in the OED); it doesn’t really touch on the alternate/alternative distinction. As for the cutout and the wide receiver… well, you wouldn’t (or at least I wouldn’t) really call those “alternates” or “alternatives”… they’d be substitutes.
So, yeah… it’s a good thought, but I’m afraid El Santo’s rule doesn’t seem to hold up after all. (I think the special additional definition of “alternate” somewhat muddied the waters.) It’s not hard to find examples of “alternative” being used for concrete objects, and “alternate” being used for abstractions. Some people may draw distinctions between the words, but in general (in the U.S.) they seem to be more or less interchangeable.