Following the success of
"Zombie-Flesh Eaters", producer Fabrizio De-Angelis came up with the interesting idea of making a sort-of
follow up, but working in elements of the cannibal films, which were also popular at the time. The end result being
"Zombie Holocaust", a film about zombies and cannibals clashing on a south-east Asian island.
A group of doctors at a New York city hospital discover some of the immigrant workers from South-East Asia have been mutilating corpses in the morgue and devouring the body parts. Discovering they all come from the Maluku islands, they decide to mount an expedition to find out what's going on there (wouldn't a police investigation be more prudent?)
Heading up the expedition is Dr. Peter Chandler (Ian McCulloch) and his collegue George (Peter O'Neal). Who take with them staff Nurse Lori Ridgway (Alexandra Delli Colli), as she grew up in that region and studied anthropology (and to provide nude scenes), and a nosey journalist named Susan (Sherry Buchanan).
Needless to say, things do not go well for them as they arrive at the island, only to get attacked first by cannibals, then by zombies, producing a lot of blood and guts. They then come across the seemingly friendly Medical missionary Dr Obrero (played by Harvey Kietel lookalike Donald O'Brien), who offers to help them, only to find he's the one encouraging the natives to practice cannibalism and has been creating the zombies, and it seems he has them in mind for his next experiment.
Directed by Marino Girolami, the plot is in many ways similar to "Zombie Flesh-Eaters", on which producer De-Angelis also worked. The film also uses cast members (most notably Ian McCullough), shooting locations, and even footage from that film, which had been made only the year before. Equally gory and even more ridiculous than Fulci's pic, zombie fans will undoubtedly love it. If you got a kick out of "Zombie Flesh-Eaters", you'll definitely like this one.
