With “Mission Impossible 4” and “Sherlock Holmes 2” currently in theaters, I decided it was about time to review this classic from famed Italian director Lucio Fulci.  He should go back to making da pizza!!!  Sigh.  This movie was bad, with a few memorable scenes inflating an otherwise truly wretched rating.  The acting was terrible, only slightly forgiven sometimes due to the horrendous script and horrendous direction.  Who is this Lucio Fulci anyway???  Though, on the flip side, the horrendous cube (horrendous acting X horrendous script X horrendous direction) was just horrendous enough to sometimes be funny, but definitely not often enough.  And sadly, it would seem, completely unintentional.  I would only expect something to be this bad if it was intentional.  Too many scenes shot past the “funny” bad and went straight to the “uncomfortable, I find this so awful I feel bad for the moviemakers” bad. 

 

Do you remember the scene from Austin Powers (the original) where Austin is driving a steamroller at ridiculously slow speeds and there is a security guard about fifty feet in front of him yelling “NOOOOO” even though he has a good minute to get out of the way?  Now imagine…and this might be difficult…a scene in the middle of a horror movie that attempts this seriously.  Not a steamroller persay, but it may as well have been:

 

(Earth starts to move)

Dummyhead girl: What’s that?

(creature starts to come out of the ground at the rate of .023 miles per hour)

Dummyhead girl: Oh no.  (zoom in on her face showing her starting to panic)

(creature continues to come out of ground…good time in movie to take quick bathroom break as it takes him a while)

Dummyhead girl: (gasps, starts to cry.  Backs up.  ONE FREAKING STEP)

(creature starts to slowly walk towards her…good time to get popcorn)

Dummyhead girl: (Screams…zoom in on her screaming)

(creature starts to slowly raise one of his arms…good time to take nap)

Dummyhead girl: (continues screaming, watches arm raise)

(creature kills girl…no one could have seen this coming…continue napping)

 

The main star of the movie has excellent stare quality.  Heh.  Seriously, nine out of ten scenes finds her staring awkwardly at nothing in particular. 

 

Now for the good.  There were a few interesting ideas that could be useful in, say, a good movie.  Zombies underwater was a cool idea and was done extremely well, particularly the zombie battle with a shark.  Most impressive.  The topless scuba diver is…quite frankly…hilarious.  What the hell is going on?  What did I watch??  And the death scene of the girl hiding in a bathroom was a lot of fun. 

 

So I’ve gone over some of the bad and a little bit of the good.  I could go back to more of the bad, but this movie has already exhausted me enough.  Don’t watch this one.  You can do better.