Death House – 1988, US, 90m. Director: John Saxon.
Flesh-Eating Mothers – 1988, US, 89m. Director: James Aviles Martin.
Zombie 4: After Death – 1989, Italy/Philippines, 84m. Director: Claudio Fragasso.
DEATH HOUSE (1988) Decorated Vietnam vet Dennis Cole is framed for murdering gangster Anthony Franciosa’s girlfriend and sent up river, where death row inmates are used as guinea pigs in experimental tests involving a virus made to create super-soldiers. The virus mutates and goes airborne, turning victims into unstoppable killing machines. One prisoner tears off his shackles mid-electrocution and rips off another’s hand before taking out several guards. The building is put under lockdown, giving Cole and his fellow non-infected inmates the perfect opportunity to run rampant and seize control of the place. A sleazy corrections officer rapes a prisoner and ends up getting his head torn off during a failed negotiation between inmates and the warden (John Saxon) responsible for the viral outbreak. The infected eventually turn into Romero zombies and go about as if they’re in a reenactment of Day of the Dead. Cole uses Franciosa’s gay brother (Michael Pataki), a fellow inmate, to get revenge—which he does when Franciosa is escorted into the prison and mauled by a zombified Pataki. A low-grade bit of malarkey that never ceases to be just entertaining enough to pass the time. Also known as Zombie Death House. C+
FLESH-EATING MOTHERS (1988) The mothers in a suburban neighborhood are turned into cannibalistic psychos via a sexually transmitted disease in this limp horror-comedy filmed in upstate New York. A man find his ex-wife eating the severed arm of their son, the young boy’s hand still gripping a baseball glove. A girl walks in on her mom devouring the family baby. A dinner party for the local Women’s Coalition ends in bloodshed when several of the moms decide to order off menu and feast on their female comrades. The neighborhood’s teens band together with a doctor to find a cure as the bloodthirsty mothers physically transform into extras from The Evil Dead. But Flesh-Eating Mothers never transforms into a good movie. A deservedly forgotten bit of absurdity with nothing to offer aside from a couple of inventive special FX pieces. D–
ZOMBIE 4: AFTER DEATH (1989) Another entry in the unofficial Italian sequel series to George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead that was started by splattermeister Lucio Fulci in 1979, but which petered out by the end of the eighties thanks to a steep decline in production values and dwindling interest in the subgenre. The film is a hodgepodge of Zombies past, mixing Caribbean voodoo, science, and gun-toting meatheads into a story involving the zombie takeover of a tropical island. The zombies rise up as part of a voodoo plot aimed at unwanted scientists who’ve set up shop on the island and are seen by the superstitious locals as ungodly intruders. The offspring (Candice Daly) of one of the scientists returns to the island with a gang of mercenaries who do a lot of talking and beer-drinking before discovering the old trick of shooting the zombies in the head. One impatient mercenary, who resembles Frederic Forrest’s unhinged Chef from Apocalypse Now (1979), runs into a pack of zombies and gets zombified, all in the name of camaraderie. The characters are dull and portrayed by stiff Italian and American actors, including gay porn legend Jeff Stryker (credited as Chuck Peyton), who at least gives the movie some much-needed eye candy. The ending, which depicts a failed attempt at closing the portal to Hell by turning Daly into a one-eyed ghoul, is, like the majority of this ridiculous production, amusing for all the wrong reasons. C
