Virus Cannibale (1980) Dir: Bruno Mattei

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Directed by Bruno Mattei, this Italian and Spanish horror film has more names than I could comprehend, which made deciding what to list its name in this review rather stressful, so, in the end, I settled for the original one. I had no idea what to expect from the film, aside from zombies, but I was hoping for something a little camp and a lot of fun - like so many classic zombie films of the Eighties.

This film was a lot to digest, in more ways than one. It had some bizarre and off the cuff cinematography, which seemed a little shoddy and amateurish, at times, but surprisingly stimulating at others. I did find the film to be a bit needless in its depiction of explicit content - not even just blood and gore, but the unnecessary nudity of its female lead, and the culturally insensitive and disrespectful depiction of indigenous tribal people too.

Clumsily shoe-horning real stock footage in-between the more deliberately shot and framed footage was not only extremely noticeable, but also painfully jarring and awkward to watch. This was especially true when not-only inserting real footage of a legitimate indigenous tribe, but then, in order to shoot certain interactions, dressing up actors in half-arsed and frankly offensive versions of the aforementioned tribes clothing and paint - not very tasteful.

The film had a distracted and flimsy narrative, which lacked focus, direction, or a particularly interesting narrative. It instead kept getting caught up in the awkward vision of the director, who seemed intent on inserting all manner of random and unnecessary shots and scenes, instead of telling a tight and compelling story. The only parts of the film that really had any proper structure were extremely tropy and dull, including the ending, which was extremely typical.

Margit Evelyn Newton kept the film interesting far more and far longer than it deserved, with what was a committed, wild, and extremely memorable performance, which was genuinely the only thing that made me continue watching the film, at points. Performances from Franco Garofolo and Selan Karay deserve a brief mention for the effort they put into their roles, but the actual acting wasn't great.

Overall, I thought this was an extremely messy and poor zombie horror, which didn't seem to really understand what it was trying to do - it had too many thoughts happening and not enough cohesion. This was as unfocused a film as I've watched in a long time, and it was a real struggle to sit through. The only saving grace was the leading performance of Margit Evelyn Newton, who deserved so much better than the awful film she was in.