Burial Ground: The Nights of Terror Reviews

a basic 70's horror movie.

a scientist/archaeologist of some sort opens up a grave and suddenly zombies poor out from all over inside the cave. no explaination is ever given for this event. before he meets his untimely death immediately upon opening the tomb, he had called a number of...honestly i'm not sure what they were supposed to be; friends, colleges, who knows...to his home. they come and set about having sex here and there which is interrupted by the zombies. which is actually a good thing because i thought for a moment the film was going to turn into bad 70's porn. instead the rest of the movie is a typical zombie movie where the people are trying to survive an invasion of zombies.

these are not you typical zombies though. yes they are abundantly slow and grunt, old school style. but they retain and use at least some intelligence. they organize, they use weapons, and they plan. thats a bit surprising and quite a nice change. especially after you see the rather crude face and hand masks, you don't expect much from them.

there is unfortunately nothing really shocking, scary, nor exciting about the film. a few good gore scenes, a fairly simple plot, and thats about it. the ending isn't exactly typical but not exactly exciting either.

what almost ruins the entire film...and i'm sure it will ruin it for some...is the man who plays one of the couple's kid. he's small enough, but obviously acting younger than he is. the dubbing (on the dvd i have you only have the choice of dubbed) is probably worse than it was originally but the kid's whiny voice is downright annoying. he whines "mommy" so much you definitely take pleasure when he's eaten by a zombie...until he freakin' comes back again (in a slightly less annoying state as a zombie). still, he's aweful. as if it wasn't annoying enough, they add a really stomach turning incestuous oedipus moment that is just beyond disturbing. his mother rejects him but then worse yet, they bring it back at the end and she embraces him. its good for a grotesque moment but it barely watchable for its context. honestly this is one movie i wouldn't mind if someone went back and spliced out the kid subplot from the movie altogether. it's irrelevant and tasteless. i could do without. i gave this movie a lower rating for this alone. its that horrid.

otherwise the movie is fine, nothing great but a zombie fan will enjoy most of it.