The Nights of Terror

The Nights of Terror
Aka: Burial Ground
Aka: Zombie 3
Original Title: Le notti del terrore
Directed by: Andrea Bianchi
Italy, 1981
Horror / Zombies, 82min
Distributed by: Japan Shock

There’s something very potent with certain bad movies. Movies that are so bad that they in some screwed up way become good. Bad movies that you know are bad, but can’t really make yourself discard it as a real bad movie. Because certain bad movies are so bad that they become good because we all know them and keep on going back to them. They live on because of their flaws, they live on because of their cult status, and they live on because what may seem as a bad movie could very well be a good movie. They live on just like the pasty zombies in The Nights of Terror…

Andrea Bianchi’s The Nights of Terror is definitely one of the classic so bad that it’s good movies. It’s cheap, it’s cheesy, it’s violent, and it’s sleazy. It’s a gem simply because it’s one of the cultural low marks of Italian Genre cinema – and I mean that in the best possible way. It’s one of those movies that people who don’t know, or get, genre cinema will say – “That was the worst film I have ever seen, it’s shit!” Whilst those initiated and with a deeper understanding and tolerance for genre cinema will say, “That was the worst film I have ever seen, it’s brilliant! “

Like so many of his colleagues in the Italian genre sphere, Andrea Bianchi also came from a background in journalism and television production. Always holding a keen eye for the sexier approach to his work he debuted with Diabólica malicia (Night Child) 1972 for which Bianchi handled the riskier euro version that saw a fully naked Britt Ekland in some very suggestive scenes with a barely thirteen-year-old Mark Lester. Bianchi continued to churn out sexploitation movies and continuously used traits that stayed sleazy with a couple of interesting titles along the way. Among the highlights you find the sleazy Giallo Nude per l’assassino (Strip Nude for Your Killer) 1975 - a classic Giallo, using classic Gialli narrative, as Edwige Fenech portrays one of the nude photo models threatened by a gloved, motorcycle helmeted, machete wielding killer, then there’s Malabimba 1979 - a pretty cheesy, but sleazy, semi Exorcist/Nunsplotiation rip off that sees Mariangela Giordano as a nun, and the hilarious stinker Commando Mengele 1987 - where sleazy French production company Eurociné bagged both Bianchi and Jess Franco in the same movie and sported some fantastic state of the art computers… and there’s obviously the one that Bianchi will forever be remembered for – the infamous The Nights of Terror.

Do you really need a quick fix for this one? I’m guessing that you have seen it, because if you haven’t, then you really have no time to waste sitting here reading bollocks online, you should be watching or re-watching the fabulous The Nights of Terror….

After a hefty Santa bearded archaeologist, Professor Ayres [Raimondo Barbieri] discovers something so gobsmacking that he has to keep it secret by concealing it though some really crap dialogue, but he can’t keep his fingers out of the cookie jar and starts banging away like a raving maniac on the walls of the cave he's found with his pickaxe. And obviously zombies emerge from the now open tomb, and ignoring his “No, no, stand back… I’m your friend!” they tear his fucking throat out and devour his flesh. - How’s that for an initial attack!

Following a pretty funky title sequence that shows the cast arriving at the mansion where the shit is about to hit the fan, the obvious counterpart to death is set in motion – sex. Already as the aristocratic bunch park their cars and ask the maid and butler why they didn’t answer the gate to let them in it’s insinuated that they where busy having it off on the second floor. Moments later the various couples start to get down to their sleazy business, Leslie [Antonella Antinori] gives James [Simone Mattioli] a little burlesque dance leading up to some great seedy dialogue - Didn’t you like my little show? You looked just like a little whore… but I like that look on you! Evelyn [Mariangela Giordano here as Maria Angela Giordano] checks in on her hideous son Michael [Peter Bark] to assure herself that he’s asleep before some nocturnal activities, but as soon as she’s on top of George [Roberto Caporali] the weird looking lad walks in on them interrupting their moment of pleasure and also delivering the first of several mulligan’s as the audience suspects the shadows cast through the hallways will be the zombies from the opening… Finally the last couple, Mark [Gianluigi Chrizzi] and Janet [Karin Well] where she predicts that something terrible will happen… Mark assures her that she’s got nothing to fear as she’s safe with him… which ironically proves to be sort of true as she eventually will be the last victim before the movie comes to it’s nihilistic climax.

The bourgeoisie couples ponder the grounds of the mansion and obviously end up in smutty snog sessions here and there as the Etruscan zombies finally break out of the earth and start causing mayhem amongst the group. It’s also at this point that the Oedipal traits that can be found in many of Bianchi and screenwriter Piero Regnoli’s movies are put into play – well actually it’s started when Michael interrupts his mothers shag session with George earlier, but here it becomes painfully obvious as Michael snatches his mom’s hand away from George and kisses it jealously… George walks to the background of cinematographer Gianfranco Maioletti’s composition and very visually and emotionally set aside. A mere minute later George will be dead and once again the gory glory of death is put in harsh contrast to the lovemaking as the couples have it off on the mansion grounds.

This is pretty much how Andrea Bianchi’s The Nights of Terror plays out, smutty groping of horny hands set against smutty groping of dead hands. Life is not a precious thing in this movie and by the end of the flick it’s profoundly obviously that death is always just around the corner.

There’s no questioning that The Nights of Terror is a blatant attempt at cashing in on the surprise success of Lucio Fulci’s Zombi 2 (Zombie) 1979. It even has special effects by the one and only Gino De Rossi, and even goes as far as copying the iconic maggot infested zombie rising from the dirt gimmick and the outrageous splinter versus eye scene frame by frame, well it tries to at least. Although it should also be noted that Rosario Prestopino who worked as special makeup effects artist on the movie previously had worked on Fulci’s Zombie, and Paura nela città dei morti viventi (The Gates of Hell) 1980, along side with De Rossi, so the grotesque factor of the movie shouldn't all be credited to De Rossi alone, but also to Prestopino too. Later Prestopino would go on to work on many other chunky movies that certainly pack a punch with their special effects like Fulci’s Lo squartatore di New York (The New York Ripper) 1982, Lamberto Bava’s Dèmoni movies 1985-1986, Dario Argento’s Opera 1987 and Michele Soavi’s La Setta (The Sect) 1991 which also featured Mariangela Giordano in a leading role. But back to The Nights of Terror – Yeah the zombies are pasty, the dialogue is cheesy, the effects aren’t very special and at times the movie feels like a perverted doped up episode of Scooby Doo as the cast evade the zombies by running from one location to another through out the entire movie. But that doesn’t really matter, because the movie undoubtedly has some fantastic moments during it’s 82 minute run. But with some great smutty moments, burning zombie and several fantastic moments where the zombies get really inventive and use a bunch of garden tools to get to their victims, the movie is a jolly kick in the balls and definitely a very personal favourite for many reasons.

But The Nights of Terror is also a fantastic testament to how inventive low budget directors took the ever-popular apocalyptic nihilism of the zombie genre and blended it in with their own universe - and that’s exactly what appeals to me with this movie. Much like Joe D’Amato used every genre possible to set his sexploitation vehicles in, Bianchi, Regnoli and producer Gabriele Crisanti also stayed safe in the sphere of that genre that they had become accustomed to since they first worked together - be it Quelli che contano (Cry of a Prostitute) 1974 Bianchi and Regnoli, Le impiegate stradali – Batton Story (The Used Road) 1976 Regnoli and Crisanti, or Cara dolce nipote (Dear Sweet Niece) 1977 which saw all three of them getting together for the first time. And it’s this path that they would comfortably stick to on the more than a half dozen movies that they would make together – the trail of the gritty trashy sleaze movie. You name it and they brought their bag of depraved misogyny, butt naked women, grotesque violence and cheap sleaziness that we associate with the movies of Bianchi - and if you know what movies Regnoli wrote scripts for, you will now exactly what I mean. The Nights of Terror is a hilariously entertaining piece of horror with a big dollop of sleazy kinkiness to go around. If you want blood – you got it, if you want pasty chunky faced zombies – you got it, if you want naked Italian actors and actresses – you got it, if you want a fantastic droney pop score by Berto Pisano – you got it. Although that Pisano score is more or less lifted off several other movies that producer Gabriele Crisanti produced previously… like Mario Landi’s Giallo a Venezia (Giallo in Venice) 1979, which like many of Crisanti’s movies featured the feisty Mariangela Giordano.

In the aftermath of the Video Recordings Act 1984 – the law struck down by the British government in response to the videonasties panic of a few years earlier - Bianchi’s The Nights of Terror was a difficult movie to see in the UK, especially as it had just over ten minutes chopped out by the distributors and then another three by the BBFC before it was released in its just over an hour running time. But not living in the UK at the time, it really shouldn’t matter at all what the British censors do…. although nothing travels faster than word of mouth, and I’m certain that it’s acts like that - a butchering far more serious than anything a filmmaker could have put in their movie – that make up part of these “good/bad movie legends”, after all a movie that was so severe that it had to have almost twelve minutes taken out must be something to see, mustn’t it. And for every person who actually saw the movie in some uncut form – either imported from Holland, Greek Ex-rental or on some third generation dupe, the movies reputation grew. And you know exactly what we heard, there are loads of zombies, guts galore and there’s this really creepy kid that bites his mom’s tits off.

And what about that phenomenal cast - what a great bonus they are for this movie! The mysterious and fascinating Mariangela Giordano… She holds an aura that is reminiscent of so many other great Italian genre piece leading ladies, but never really has the same varnish that they did. There’s something of a chipped doll about her that appeals to me, and at the same time she must be applauded for still accepting key parts in movies that indeed where very misogynistic and violent. If you know her filmography, she’s certainly one of the most violated Italian actresses ever. And it’s fascinating that she, no matter what age she was, still continued to take parts that required her to get her kit off. There are not too many actresses who at the fine age of fifty-nine would strip down for the cameras, like she did for Jess Franco in Killer Barbys 1996. She’s an impressive leading lady that brings a lot to this movie, especially in that freaky incestuous relationship she holds to her son in the film. You have to admit that no matter how much the perversity of their relationship is insinuated, it is a pretty tender moment and a most ironic reunion of mother and child before he takes that mouthful out of her breast. And that chest chomp may be something of a fetish for Piero Regnoli, as he also wrote a similar tit-chomping scene for Umberto Lenzi’s Incubo sulla città contaminata (Nightmare City) 1980.

Not to forget HIM, as if you ever could, Michael, Evelyn’s son played by non other than the remarkable Peter Bark, who only starred in enough movies to count on one hand, but still made an everlasting impression insanely cast as a child when he actually was twenty-six years old. Why Bianchi didn’t go with any of the more common child actors like Giovanni Frezza or one that at least looked like a child. But instead he chose a too old, oversized midget with the most terrifying hair ever… But my goodness what a scene it is, and what an impact it has made. It’s one of the most classic moments of this movie and taking the part as Michael it also gave Bark his only acting credit and secured him a spot in Italian genre history. But there's no space for debate at all, Mariangela Giordano and Peter Bark own this movie, without them it would simply be yet another sloppy Italian zombie flick, but with those two, theres a magic vibe to the piece.

So for once and for all – Yes, Andrea Bianchi’s The Nights of Terror is the brilliantly trashy stuff that legends are made of and definitely one of the best bad movies ever to crawl out of the Italian underbelly!

Image:

Widescreen 1. 85:1

Audio:

Dolby Digital Mono, English Dialogue, optional Dutch subtitles.

Extras:

Original trailer, slideshow. Booklet.

Let Sleeping Corpses Lie

Let Sleeping Corpses Lie

Original Title:

Non si deve porfanare il sonno dei morti

Aka: The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue,

Breakfast at the Manchester Morgue,

Do Not Speak Ill of the Dead,

Don't Open the Window and many more.

Directed by: Jorge Grau, 1974

Italy / Spain, 95min

Distributed by: Anchor Bay Entertainment

Story:

An antique dealer plans on spending a quiet weekend in the countryside but finds his plans shattered when a young woman accidentally crashes into his motorbike at a gas station. Edna offers George a ride to his destination, but on the way plans are changed once again and he ends up driving her to her planned visit to her sister who lives in the countryside. The road there unfortunately takes them the wrong way and as they stop to question at a farmyard a stranger wanders up from the river and towards the car. A stranger who has been dead for a month!

Me:

Jorge Grau's excellent “Undead” (I'll be saying undead from here on, as nobody in the movie ever says the word zombie. But we all know that they are zombies don't we!) movie Let Sleeping Corpses Lie, with all of its many a.k.a. titles is a great piece of genre cinema, and one of my personal favourites of the genre. Following in the wake of the groundbreaking Night of the Living Dead, it's possibly one of the best entries into the genre brought to recognition by George A. Romero in 1969. Luckily it's one of those Italian-Spanish coproduction’s that relies more on story than gut munching effects of the later wave of the zombie genre. Not that those movies are bad, quite the opposite, the apocalyptic world of the flesh eater is a tantalising one to say the least.

Producer Edmondo Amati, (producer of such greats like Fulci's A Lizard in a Woman's Skin 1971, One on Top of the Other 1969, Alberto De Martino's The Antichrist 1974 and Antonio Margheriti's Cannibal Apocalypse 1980) decided that he must to get in on the zombie niche after Romero's movie became a hit, and in Spain he found his perfect candidate, the young Jorge Grau. Grau had a decent background in movies, not the horror genre per say, but a majority of his works had elements of the fantastic in them and had received an overall fine reception. Amati approached him with the question “Do you like Night of the Living Dead?” A movie that Grau indeed was a fan of, but as he was trying his hardest to get his Ceremonia sangrienta 1973 (aka The Legend of Blood Castle) off the ground since 1964 when he first heard of the Countess Bathory legend during a film festival in Czechoslovakia, the two could not collaborate on the project Amati was trying to pitch. Some years later after the completion of Ceremonia sangrienta, Amati approached Grau once again with the Sandro Continenza penned script, asking if he still liked Night of the Living Dead. Giving Grau a free hand to change the script and take the time he needed to make it more realistic, the two started their relationship, which would end up being Let Sleeping Corpses Lie.

Made in an age before the realistic gore exploded onto screens with movies like George A. Romero’s sequel Dawn of the Dead 1978, Andrea Bianchi’s Nights of Terror 1981, Marino Girolami's eclectic Cannibal/Zombie hybrid Zombie Holocaust 1980 and Lucio Fulci’s epic mother of all Euro Zombie flicks Zombi2 1979, Grau chooses, much like Romero to rely heavily on the realism and everyday drama of the people caught up in this strange new world rather than focusing on the specific gut munching and reigning chaos of a zombie infested landscape.

Let sleeping Corpses Lie is a pretty straight forward story, George [the fantastic Ray Lovelock] sets out for a weekend in the countryside, getting away fro the stress of inner-city life, which is made quite obvious during the start of the movie, the citizens walk aimlessly, stare blankly as they await busses, in the heavy trafficked core of modern civilization. People are seen wearing facemasks to avoid breathing in the fumes (which interestingly enough makes one think of the swine flu pandemic and fear that we are living with right now. It makes the movie contemporary even today) the further George gets out of town on his motorbike, cross cut with images of fuming industrial towers, urban decay, dead birds, the imagery lightens up and instead of the close-ups of decay, we start seeing wide shots of open country, fresh air and swaying fields. George is closing in on his safe haven, but when stopping at a petrol station to fill up his bike Edna accidentally crashes him into. Edna [star of Massimo Dallamano’s What Have You Done to Solange? 1972 and Luigi Cozzi’s top notch Giallo The Killer Must Kill Again 1975, and who also won the best actress award for her part in the movie at the 1974 Sitges film festival] offers to drive him to his destination. But they end up going the wrong way, into the middle of nowhere. George gets out at a nearby farm to ask for directions and two important storylines are introduced. The ecological cause of the forthcoming outbreak is established, which has George make a political statement. Don’t mess around with Mother Nature. No sooner has he said his than Edna has her first encounter with the undead, as Guthrie [the recently deceased Fernando Hilbeck], a local tramp tries to attacks her. Edna manages to evade him and runs up to the farm too, but George and the farmer can’t believe what Edna tells them, and laugh off the shocking experience she just had, as Guthrie couldn’t possibly have attacked her. He died almost a month ago.

A subplot with Edna’s sister Katie [Jeanine Mestre] is set in motion. Katie, a recovering drug addict has been forced out into the countryside by her husband Martin, [José Lifante] and Edna is on the way there to convince her to sign into a rehab programme and get of the drugs once and for all. But she just can’t seem to stay of the smack and as she secretly prepares to shoot up in the barn, she finds herself in the dark stood face to face with Guthrie! This encounter leads up to the death of Martin and it’s at this point of the movie that the real antagonist makes his entry, The Inspector portrayed with bravura by Arthur Kennedy. The Inspector quickly makes up his mind that these city folks, these damned hippies with their longhair and drugs, are the real culprits and that they have killed Martin, not the fantasy figure that Katie claims did. Now this in one cop who always gets his man. We can understand that from the way he moves, talks and acts. He isn’t afraid to go out on a limb to bust a case, and his loyal men are always standing by, ready to act on his every demand. Just watch as he lays pressure on Katie, trying to make her confess, not giving a damn that she just watched her husband be killed.

The movie moves forward as George and Edna try to figure out the whereabouts of Guthrie as both sisters now claim he is the real killer After an infant unexplainably in a fit of rage bites George at the nearby hospital he takes Dr Duffield [Vincente Vega] back to the farm where scientists explain the strange experiments they are conducting in the fields outside the village. Using ultrasonic radiation they are fighting off insects and bugs, who instead of eating crops go insane and kill each other instead when they hear the noises the strange machine makes. Really it’s a modified combine harvester, but it looks believable, and it gives a possible reason for the dead rising from their tombs.

George and Edna’s quest leads them to a crypt under the village church, and low and behold, they find him, the undead Guthrie. This is followed by a wonderfully long sequence where they battle their way out of the underground tomb chased by several more undead that Guthrie awakens by wiping blood on their foreheads. Once again their success in the horror narrative is their damnation in the drama narrative as the Inspector arriving at the cemetery finds his officer sent out to trail the suspects gutted and three burned corpses. Yeah, the undead now dead again.

Finally they all gather for a fantastic ending with several shocking events back at the local hospital and the movie comes to its climax with a bang to say the least. In some ways the ending is kind of silly, but at the same time it’s the ending we always wanted for Ben [Duane Jones] in the movie that inspired this one to start with, Night of the Living Dead. Even though the special effects by Gianetto De Rossi are quite restrained, I’m sure that in 1974 they where quite shocking, even the masterpiece from the other side of the Atlantic, Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre 1974 isn’t’ as visually spectacular as this movie is. And the movie is a wonderful time capsule of De Rossi’s realistic effect wizardry only a few years before he really took it to the limit in those splendid Italian genre pieces.

Symbolism and negative counterparts play a part in Grau’s movie. During the very start of the movie we see a fertility stature the symbol of life, a few moments later the camera focuses on a haunting painting which look like a strange blend of the iconic atomic bomb mushroom and a harrowed face of a dead person. Also in a wider perspective it’s somewhat ironic to start a movie that ends on such a down note with a symbol of life. The struggle for human survival is conquered not by the monsters, but by humans themselves. The Cops, who are supposed to be the good guys, turn out to be the bad guys. It’s all wonderfully sinister isn’t it, and one can only imagine the degree of social criticism Grau brought into the movie here, as the idea that the police force represents Franco and his dictatorship over the people of Spain isn’t too far from bay.

Much like The Exorcist 1973, Jaws 1975, and the recent Swedish hit Let the Right One In 2008, it’s the realism of the drama that makes the movie work. The movie is set in a real world and is actually a drama with horror themes and elements. Also i's the very ordinary characters who help drive the movie. George is a simple antique dealer who only wants’ to get to his rural house in the countryside to get away from the hectic tempo of the inner city. Edna is an everyday woman on her way to visit her sister who also lives in the countryside. There are no superpowers at play here, no secret army training, no suitcases full of weapons, just two common people in the middle of a terrifying setting. It’s the simple choices that they make that make them believable characters. Running for their lives, much like you and I would do.

The explanation for the undead coming back to life is also quite reasonable, and in many ways a critical standing point. The human element is to blame, not a freak of nature, but our own need to control our environment. An ecological theme that we are to blame for our own downfall much like in Romero’s Night of the Living Dead and Jean Rollin’s Grapes of Death 1978. And it works, because we can relate to it, much like we still relate to discussions concerning the environment still today. It’s easier to swallow than radiation from outer space isn’t it?

One of the more sophisticated tools used by Grau in Let Sleeping Corpses Lie, is that George is a sceptic, it’s not until we pass half of the movie that George actually believes that the dead have come back to life, and from then on starts fighting with his life at stake. This is a cunning device as we grow into identification with George as he grows into the believer, his scepticism is the same as ours, there can’t be monsters, but as he changes and develops as a character we go along on the ride with him and he bring us into the story. As he comes to terms of the reality of monsters, so do we.

All of these splendid storytelling tools are used to crate a magnificent movie that still almost forty years later makes it a really disturbing, believable, engaging and highly entertaining movie. A masterpiece of the horror genre to say the least. A definitive must see movie for any fan of early European Zombie Horror.

Finally a word on Giuliano Sorgini’s excellent soundtrack. (Sample above!) It’s honestly one of the most impressive scores conceived for an Italian genre movie because where it starts out as a rock funky jazz thing so typical of the Italian movie scene at the time, it quickly degenerates into a terrifying mixture of primitive growling and guttural sounds which are really disturbing and go perfectly with the images of the undead feasting on the bleeding flesh of mankind. Great stuff, perhaps not as proggish as Goblin or as melodic as the Fabio Frizzi and Alexander Blonkensteiner tunes of the later wave of gut-munchers, but definitely a disturbing soundtrack for a fascinating movie.

Image:

1.85:1 widescreen

Audio:

2.0 Dolby Digital Stereo

Extras:

This version is the limited edition tin boxed set so it has the following extras; A few TV spots, a couple of Radio Spots (which I’d love to have had on CD with the Score! That would have been an extra!) A galley of posters and stills, a novelty Toe Tag replica, a small replica of the German poster! (Surely they could have found a Spanish one, that image is beautiful!) And the best, an interview with Jorge Grau and a 24page booklet, which reproduces text by Nigel J. Burrell from the long out of print Midnight Media book on Let Sleeping Corpses Lie.

And if you really, really want to know… I have no. 1547 of the 5000 limited run.