Hell of the Living Dead is a bizarre zombie/cannibal movie crossed with a wildlife documentary also known as "
Zombie Creeping Flesh", "
Zombi 4", "
Zombi 5" and "
Virus" among other things, directed by
Bruno Mattel. The story is set in the New Guinea jungle where a secret science facility called "Hope 18" starts to leak toxic, zombifying gas. After the scientists in the lab have been transformed into mindless,
flesh-hungry monsters, the gas leak begins to affect the native inhabitants of the jungle.
A small group of reporters are on the island to investigate... something that eludes me now... and soon run into a small shanty town of flesh eating, slow moving maniacs. Once the team is down to only two members they are rescued by a four-man squad of commandos, sent in by the military to destroy all evidence that "Hope 18" has any connection with the strange happenings in the area. The commandos decide that the best way of protecting the surviving reporters is to take them on their mission to "Hope 18". Unfortunately to reach the research base they must travel through the native infested jungle, and the natives just happen to believe it is bad to bury the dead and leave them on display in their villages... just the kind of place that you don't want a zombie creating gas to be leaked!
Luckily the surviving female reporter just happens to be an anthropologist specializing in tribal studies and they soon realize that she just needs to paint her face and get her tits out to be able to befriend the natives. Before long the reporters and the SWAT team are getting wasted and partying with the tribe, but the jollity soon ends when the dead begin to get hungry.
The majority of the rest of the movie is masses of
zombie gore, the unconvincing mental decay of the commando's and the random wildlife shots until they finally reach the research facility where the zombie making gas was initially released. More zombies, more madness, more blood, guts and gore... and quite a surprising ending!
A lot of this movie is made up of stock footage from nature documentaries and poorly dubbed over news which is un-seamlessly edited in (I guess to just make up the time), plus it is spliced with a genuine New Guinea burial ritual (once again not quite seamless). The acting is terrible, the dubbing is terrible, the effects are poor and I'm guessing the budget was a schoolboy's saved up pocket money, but I can see why it is a
classic horror movie. It's all about gore and that's sometimes exactly what is needed in a movie, storylines and scene relevance just get in the way of the blood. Most of the zombies are horribly deformed in some way or another, no one dies quickly and a lot of the violence is just random. Just what the witchdoctor ordered!