REVENGE OF THE DEAD aka ZEDER (1983)

REVIEW MOVIE\ DEADLY REVENGE'\ REVENGE OF THE DEAD - DIRECTED BY PUPI AVATI. AT THE PI ALLEY AND SUBURBS,\ UNRATED. MENACING ATMOSPHERE AND OCCASIONAL GORE .

Boston Globe - June 16, 1984

Author: MARK MURO

Heard of any bartending jobs?

Know anyone looking for a gardener?

How about a garage that needs a mechanic?

If so, please call.

"Revenge of the Dead," dubbed with semi-hilarious consequences into English from the Italian, is a prohibitively dull zombie flick and, friends, we must - repeat must - find a new line of work for Pupi Avati, its director. We better hurry, too.

This movie, you see, is deadly. Involving a mysterious typewriter, a lot of mumbo-jumbo about undead personages and a murderous priest named Don Luigi Costa, the plot follows a mousy-looking novelist's attempts to figure out why everything is so weird in Bologna, Italy, in Chartres, France, and everywhere else he goes. Clues accumulate, strange old ladies administer the evil eye, but very little happens. Though our hero - a cut-rate ringer for the young Humphrey Bogart - wanders around constantly in dark crypts and houses full of inexplicable heavy breathing, what we wind up with is a thriller totally devoid of thrills. Six rather routine maimings are not nearly enough to sustain so witless and incomprehensible a little movie.

There is, however, one fun snort of idiocy. This occurs late, with the score standing Undeads 4, Good Guys 0. "I have to understand what it's all about," snivels our hero to his cheap cutie of a girlfriend. "Too many things don't make sense." That said, he almost cries. You know how he feels.