Director: Anrdea Bianchi
Writer: Piero Regnoli
Producer: Gabriele Crisanti
Cast: Mariangela Giordano, Peter Bark, Karin Well, Cianluigi Chirizzi, Simone Mattioli, Antonella Antinori, Roberto Caporali, Claudio Zucchet, Anna Valente, Renato Barbieri
A professor (Renato Barbieri) is studying Etruscan magic at his friend’s Italian country estate. While exploring a nearby catacomb, he accidentally rouses a horde of dead monks back to life and is killed by them. George Conte (Roberto Caporali), the owner of the estate, returns with his lover Evelyn (Mariangela Giordano) and her young son Michael (Peter Bark) along with two other couples as his houseguests. They are soon besieged by the reanimated, rotting corpses that are hungry for their flesh.
The Flashback Fanatic movie review
In 1968, director George A. Romero, along with co-writer John Russo, introduced cannibal zombies to the world in Night of the Living Dead. In the ’70s there were several Spanish films, such as director Amando de Ossorio’s Blind Dead series and the Paul Naschy starring Horror Rises from the Tomb (1973), that may have been influenced by Romero’s seminal film. However, they were not without their own unique quirks and hardly just rip-offs. This slow and sporadic influence may have been because Night of the Living Dead was not an immediate blockbuster, but rather a film of limited releases and rereleases over the years that eventually made it into a cult film whose huge influence could not have been imagined.
It was the immediate success of Romero’s 1978 sequel, Dawn of the Dead, which really turned cannibal zombies into a worldwide horror trope and incited a horde of bloody imitators. In the ’70s and ’80s, the Italians always seemed ready to exploit the latest movie trends with their own takes on proven money-making subjects. Italian director Lucio Fulci’s Zombie (1979) was one of the first Euro-horrors to follow the Dawn of the Dead trend. Andrea Bianchi’s Burial Ground soon followed.
Burial Ground is a zombie movie about the things that typify the modern zombie film. This film does not really tell a story; it just depicts a situation. We are shown a group of people trapped and trying to fight off an ever-growing mob of reanimated corpses that are trying to eat them. Director Bianchi also manages to add some sex and perversity to the formula. If this is all you require for eighty-five minutes to be entertained, you should be satisfied, but that’s all you get.
With a setup this basic, it’s all about the execution and a few bizarre variations to make this film at all memorable. The characters are barely even one-dimensional, and most are never given last names (the professor is called Prof. Ayers only in the English dub). The three couples all seem to be of that well-to-do or professional status that typifies victims in the Italian giallo films. They all have the same idea as soon as they arrive at the isolated country estate: going to their separate rooms and having sex.
There are absolutely no character traits of any interest in these people except for the strange looking Michael. He is played by the small and slightly built adult actor Peter Bark as an odd boy of indeterminate age that has an incestuous fixation on his beautiful mother, Evelyn. It is Michael, and his increasingly uncomfortable scenes with his mother, that have made this film notable and a bit notorious. His final scene with her is one for the horror history books.
Regarding the zombies themselves, we are given no reason for their reanimation. The professor removes some sort of stone tablet from the catacomb that he is exploring and returns to the study at his friend’s estate to examine it. While comparing it to some documents, he arrives at one of those “Oh shit!” revelations. However, we are never privy to just what the professor has discovered. He returns to the catacomb that night and then becomes a midnight snack for the first zombie monks. At least, they appear to be monks as they are all wearing loose robes. It is mentioned later that the professor was studying Etruscan magic regarding the “survival of the dead.” That is all the explanation we get for this undead phenomenon.
The zombies are in various states of decay and no zombie resembles another. A few of them seem to be fairly recently deceased, yet rotten, while others are so decayed that they barely look human. Like their Romero movie inspirations, they need to have their heads destroyed to put them out of action, but they ooze brown liquid from their wounds and their skulls bust open like piñatas if struck hard enough. Although they are slow moving, these zombies can work in unison to use a log as a battering ram and wield gardening tools with deadly efficiency.
Most of the film’s main action takes place in a sumptuous mansion and its picturesque grounds. This interesting location is Villa Parisi, a grand 17th-century country estate. It has been featured in many other Italian productions such as Nightmare Castle (1965), Bay of Blood (1971), Blood for Dracula (1974), and Patrick Still Lives (1980). It seems a shame that these randy couples can’t take full advantage of this setting’s hospitality for an entire weekend of sex and sucking down that J&B Scotch instead of ending up on the menu for undead party crashers.
Elsio Mancuso and Burt Rexon provide an interesting score that alternates between some moody and intriguing synthesized music, horror stingers, and a lively cool jazz theme that plays under the opening credits while the main cast drives to the estate.
Director Andrea Bianchi strives to make Burial Ground a simple and derivative product that exploits the recent popularity of Romero’s Dead films with none of the social satire or commentary. It is only the addition of the Peter/Evelyn relationship that distinguishes this movie from other zombie horror films. Bianchi’s 1975 giallo, Strip Nude for Your Killer, was also rather generic, but still served generous dollops of sex and violence to satisfy the connoisseurs of that genre.
Burial Ground is the zombie film stripped down to its non-plot essentials. As such, it may seem too simplistic and monotonous to maintain interest in the seasoned horror fan, or it may still disturb with its utter nihilism. Its main claim to infamy is that it takes titillation in a surprising, new direction. Remember, ladies, it’s never a good idea to serve milkshakes to a zombie.