Burial Ground, (1980)

AKA ‘The Night of Terrors,’ ‘Le Notti del Terrore.’

     So, a professor, researching some old magical rite of immortality, inadvertently reanimates a massive cemetery full of ancient Etruscans. Who promptly eat him.

   
     How’s that for gratitude!?!

    
     Shortly thereafter, a group of people arrive at a gorgeous and sprawling Italian villa to meet up with said professor and enjoy some time in the country air, blissfully unaware, (if only briefly,) of the crumbling and lumbering corpses meandering about the estate. The expected ensues.

     Ah, but these zombies are great! Oh, sure, not the make-up, (or in many cases, ‘masks’) that’s really not convincing at all. But the way they move: So painfully slowly. Extremely creepy, especially seeing such a hoard of dusty, bedraggled undead attacking in the bright mid-day sunlight early in the film.

Nice 'rising from the grave' scenes in this, too!

Ancient, crumbling and laden with writhing worms, (like Fulci’s ‘Zombi,’) but purposeful, silent, and unrelenting, (like Ossorio’s ‘Blind Dead’,) these Zs are mostly 'Romeros' in nature, (shambolic and shuffling, ‘kill the head to kill the dead,’ and zombism transmitted through bites,) but does add an element of some simple tool use, albeit very slowly!

   The living characters are nice enough, but without much, or any character development, and are as forgettable as the teenagers in contemporary U.S. slasher films. And like those unfortunate teens, the living here are dispatched in brutal and gruesome ways. Oh, yeah, and eaten, with plenty of slurping and gory gusto.

A little late-night snack.

   The fact that there is hardly any backstory or explanation for these people seems completely unimportant, because movie really has no time for it. The undead are up and attacking in the opening scene and lurking about, occasionally tearing someone into many pieces during every minute of this movie. In fact, the non-stop action of the movie very nicely balanced and enhanced the slow movements of the zombies.

   I held it up to my Zombie Movie Rubric for an objective rating and found that Burial Ground earned a solid 3.0 out of 4 points, with the pacing and the zombies doing most of the heavy lifting.

   A highly recommended entry in the 80s Italian, (English-dubbed) Zombie catalog!

   YouTube has a trailer of the originally titled ‘The Nights of Terror,’ in the Italian language. CLICK HERE! And honestly, the language barrier makes little difference. But English-dubbed copies of this baby are easy to find.

One of the many different DVD cases in which this can be found!

   I enjoyed this one a lot. One just needs to get over the zombies’ faces... And the weird-looking kid!

It is good they didn't make a real child do what this actor did... AWKWARD!!!