Island of the Living Dead

Island of the Living Dead is an awesome zombie film that reminds me of those 80s zombies flicks everyone knows and loves.

Plot: A group of scientists end up on an uncharted island but they are out alone. All of the people who once inhabited the island have now be come the living dead and a hungry for flesh. From there its a struggle for survival for the group.

Acting: The film was dubbed so its hard to tell if the acting is good or not but, all in all, the whole cast was pretty convincing. The two standouts are Yvette Yzonne and Ydalia Suaraz. They are true beauties.

Directing: Bruno Mattei does a wonderful job here. This was shot on high end digital video and looks very professional.

Overall: An awesome zombie flick. Feels like the 1980s again.

Yes gave thisso called Zombie flick 1/10 because its just so bad it stinks more than the zombies!

I love the Italian 70's & 80's zombie movies and could see they were trying to replicate those classics but oh my it falls hard on a huge scale.

The zombie make up was well done to an extent and the gore was a major let down because it looked so cheap.

My biggest gripe was the zombies using weapons like swords which made zero sense?

Acting was atrocious and mediocre to say the least.

If you love zombie movies give this movie a wide berth as it fails on every level sadly.

Island of the Living Dead (2006)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

The one and only Mattei got to end his career with a couple zombie movies, which will be good news for fans of the genre and horrid news for non-fans. In the film, a group of treasure hunters got lost in a fog bank and in the morning they notice what appears to be a deserted island. The group goes on shore and sure enough there are zombies running around. If you're looking for any type of actual story then you're obviously not too familiar with the work of Mattei. He's considered one of the biggest hacks in Italian history but at the same time he's made some rather entertaining bad films. This one here really doesn't work but there's enough gore and badness for fans of bad cinema to at least want to give it a single viewing. As is the normal case with the director, we get all sorts of stuff stolen from other movies including dialogue lifted from NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, the infamous eye/splinter sequence from Fulci's ZOMBIE and the Blind Dead movies are certainly playing a big key here. We also get stock footage which is another Mattei trademark. It's pretty hard to judge the acting in the film because the dubbing is so horrendous you really can't tell what's going on. I'm not sure who did this dubbing job but it's among one of the worst tracks I've ever heard but this does lead to some rather campy moments. I think zombie fans will enjoy some of the gore here as we get some (bad) CGI as well as real effects. We have heads being blown off, arms ripped off and plenty of flesh being eaten with all types of blood flowing at ease. We also get some rather bizarre zombie stuff including some having fangs, a few ghost zombies and one that can grow his dead parts back after they're shot off. On a technical level pretty much everything here is bad but those checking this title out are going to know that going in. The film's biggest flaw is its 90-minute running time, which is just way too long for a movie like this especially when you've only got enough plot for a half-hour movie and not enough attacks to justify the long time.

Given my love of all things horror and my fascination with all things zombie, of course I needed no persuasion to sit down and watch the 2007 movie "L'isola Dei Morti Viventi" (aka "Island of the Living Dead"), as I had the opportunity to do so here in 2025.

Granted, I must admit that I harbored zero expectations to the movie, as the cover had that particular 1980s Italian low budget zombie feel to it. And the movie actually looked, felt, and sounded like exactly that. So hey, if 1980s low budget Italian zombie movies is your thing, then you're in for a treat here. However, if you are hoping for a more contemporary zombie movie, don't get your hopes up.

The dialogue in the movie was pretty horrible. It was so campy and cheesy, and so poorly delivered and dubbed, that it has to be experienced and heard in order to fully grasp.

The acting performances in the movie were questionable. Now, the movie is listed here on IMDb to be in English language, but I think it was a poorly done dub, because the dialogue was atrociously delivered and didn't match with the movement of the lips. Needless to say that I was not familiar with a single actor or actress on the cast list, and that was actually one thing that spoke in favor of the movie.

The special effects in the movie were exactly that; special. Again, if you enjoy 1980s low budget zombie movies, then you know what you are in for here. Don't expect over-the-top special effects in any way. And when there was suddenly vampire fangs introduced into the narrative, I was good and ready to just call it a day and give up on the movie; that was seriously some of the most ridiculous stuff I've seen in movies in a long time, and I watch a lot of questionable movies.

Since this particular subgenre of zombie movies isn't really something I enjoy, then "L'isola Dei Morti Viventi" didn't exactly rock my boat.

My rating of director Bruno Mattei's 2007 movie "L'isola Dei Morti Viventi" lands on a very, very generous three out of ten stars.

This film begins during the 17th Century on an island somewhere near the Bermuda Triangle where some Spanish soldiers are fighting for their lives against an incredible number of zombies. The scene then shifts to the present day where a small group of treasure hunters find their ship engulfed by a fog bank and because of a collision with another ship are forced to take refuge on a nearby uncharted island. Sure enough, this just happens to be the same island in the previous scene and the treasure hunters soon find themselves in the same situation as the Spanish soldiers 320 years earlier. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this was a typically bad low-budget film by Bruno Mattei which suffered from a bad script, bad character development and bad acting. Everything was bad. It also features some of the most incredibly stupid people to have ever walked on the planet as each of them stumble from one bad predicament to another based entirely on their limited decision-making processes. And things then go from bad to worse. That being said, those who may have enjoyed the movie "The Evil Dead" might find some similarities with this film-but even then there isn't really much of a comparison between the two. Personally, other than the presence of two fairly attractive actresses, Yvette Yzon (as "Sharon") and Ydalia Suarez ("Victoria") there really wasn't much of anything here that caught my eye and for that reason I have rated this movie accordingly. Definitely below average.