Put them together and you get a completely mindless movie! Yes, the title of this film is completely misleading (the Zombie Holocaust one) as when I hear it, I imagine hordes of zombies rampaging the countryside. Instead, what we mainly get is a cannibal horror film fused together with a mad doctor film with a dash of zombies in it for taste. It shares a lot of similarities to Lucio Fulci's Zombie movie too as it features Ian McCulloch and another actor from that film and it appears to be on the exact same island! When they first drive to the one doctor's house they go down a street and it looks exactly like a scene out of Zombie, heck the donkey may have even been in Zombie. They depart in terms of plot; however, as this one does not focus on the zombie aspect. Well, it does not really focus on anything, as nothing anyone in this film does makes much sense. I think they just tried to fuse to many sub genres together without a complete script or something.
The story of this one is the weakest element of the film, because at times it almost seems like there is none. There are mutilations in a hospital in New York and it is soon learned that it is the work of a cannibal. Other cannibals turn up here and there because somehow they can just get jobs at hospitals. A group of four people travel to an island for reasons that are really no one's business, because them going makes absolutely no sense. They meet a doctor who provides them with some yummy looking lemonade and then they are off to another island where the cannibals live. The group which now includes three very expendable helpers and another dude soon find themselves under assail from the cannibals who get scared by zombies going "Ah" and nearly everyone is killed, but the two survivors decide to try and figure out the mystery even though it literally accomplishes nothing.
The film moves at a rather fast pace and it features some good Italian splatter and some good nudity too. That makes the film at least watchable, but the plot is so horrendously bad that I just cannot score it any higher. Some of the effects are rather horrible too, as at one point one of the cannibals is caught in New York and he proceeds to jump out a window. It is obviously a mannequin and when it impacts the ground, its arm pops off! I realize they may not want to redo the scene, but they could have at least jump cut and edited that part out! The mad doctor is the only person who seems to know what he is doing, but making a race of ineffective zombies seems kind of a waste of time. Just too much bad in this one to overcome even with the nice gore and very hot blond.
So this film is a combination film, but I think they just tried to do too much. At times it is a cannibal film, at other a mad doctor and then a bit of zombies in there for effect. Heck, the scenes where the blond undress could be considered soft core porn because the music is right out of one! They just tried to do much, and as I have said, I just do not think they had fully completed script to go along with it all. Though another interesting aspect of the film is its similarities to Zombie; however, that one is the superior film as it makes a bit more sense why things are happening and why they go to the island. Here, it just makes no sense at all.
