DVD review: Zombies: The Beginning (Video 2007)

Sharon (Yvette Yzon)  survived the attack of the zombies on a desert island, but no one believes her home the story of bloodthirsty undead. Only Barker (Paul Holme), representative of a pharmaceutical company believes her. With a small private army both return to the Isle of Dread, to solve the mystery and to search for the team at that time. Fast flowing first blood when they collide with the zombies, but soon you get an even worse secret to the track: A horrible new generation of zombies the noose draws ever closer ... Zombies: The Beginning is written by Antonio Tentori and Giovanni Paloucci (but honestly they should have given writing credits to James Cameron and screenwriters of Aliens (1986 ) as this is that movie with a few alterations) and is directed by Bruno Mattei. The acting is bad and dubbing is of course hilarious, the camerawork and editing is decent. The setting and costumes are pretty good, the private army looks good with matching outfits and their equipment and guns look like the real stuff (although I must say the flamethrower looks like a toy) and not like those airsoft guns that populate most low budget features nowadays. Bruno Mattei is well known as a filmmaker who often used footage, music and plots from other movies and I will be reviewing a few of them in the future. Zombies: The Beginning is gory, people are ripped apart or eaten. There´s a lot of squibs and a lot of zombies get their heads blown off. The make-up design for the zombies and the new generation of zombies is pretty decent (they´ve got fangs and so on).There´s no T & A in this.
This review is based upon the german region 2 DVD release from KSM Gmbh, it´s uncut and english audio is available.
Rating: 3½ out of 7. Zombies: The Beginning is another shameless and hilarious Bruno Mattei flick, they have more or less copied the script for James Cameron´s Aliens (1986) page for page, it´s like they have used a freaking xerox machine!! Seriously, Cameron and company could have sued their asses off. Zombies: The Beginning delivers lots of action, lots of zombies, lots of carnage and a lot of hilarity, it isn´t very good but it´s very entertaining. I realized that this is the sequel to Island of the Living Dead (2006) which I have in my collection but haven´t seen yet so you can expect a review of it soon. Highly recommended if you're a die hard fan of Bruno Mattei the uncrowned king of plagiarism.

/JL