Hell of the Living Dead

Hell of the Living Dead (Virus – L'inferno dei morti viventi, or simply Virus) is a 1980 Italian horror film directed by Bruno Mattei. The film is set in a laboratory in Papua New Guinea that releases a dangerous chemical, turning the technicians and locals into zombies. A French news reporter (Margit Evelyn Newton) and her crew land on the island to investigate.

Hell of the Living Dead was a project developed by producers and given to director Bruno Mattei, who attempted to create a film similar to Dawn of the Dead but lighter in tone. It was shot in five weeks in Spain with a script that was not Mattei's first choice and a score by the band Goblin, taken from other film scores that the band had performed. The film generally received negative reviews, noting bad dialogue and its obvious derivation of 1978's Dawn of the Dead.

Plot
At a top-secret chemical research facility called Hope Center #1, a rat causes a chemical leak and dies. As two workers investigate, the rat suddenly comes back to life and kills one of the men, who likewise revives and attacks his co-workers. Subsequently, the entire staff of the plant turns into flesh-eating zombies.

A four-man team of Interpol commandos, consisting of Lt. Mike London, Osborne, Zantoro, and Vincent, are deployed to eliminate a group of eco-terrorists who have taken hostages at the US Embassy in Barcelona, Spain. The terrorists demand the closing of all the Hope Centers, which both the government and the military deny exist. Under orders of the local authorities, the press does not publicize the terrorists' demands or mention the disaster at Hope Center. After another team pumps tear gas into the building, Lt. London and his three commandos burst in, killing the terrorists.

Once the mission is completed, the team loses contact with Hope Center #1. Thinking that terrorists have infiltrated the complex, the team flies to Papua New Guinea. There, they meet journalist Lia Rousseau and her cameraman Max, who are investigating a series of mysterious, violent attacks on the locals. While stopping at a native village, they encounter several zombies. The commandos and the journalists travel through the New Guinea jungle in the commando's jeep, trying to survive while evading the zombies. The group takes refuge at an abandoned plantation, only to come under attack from the zombie residents. The walking dead kill and eat Osborne, forcing the survivors to flee.

Rousseau and London's men battle their way to a beach, escape by raft, and finally arrive at Hope Center #1, where they find all of the workers either dead or roaming the facility as zombies. The zombies kill Max and Zantoro and infect London. Rousseau and Vincent learn about the experimental chemical accidentally released, which is causing the zombie infestation. Rousseau theorizes that the chemical, codenamed "Operation Sweet Death", has been invented to curb the Third World population by driving it into eating each other. She vows to tell the world, but a horde of zombies – including their now zombified comrades – close in and devour the last survivors of the team.

Sometime later, the zombie contagion has spread beyond New Guinea's borders and throughout the world. While politicians and scientists dispute the matter, a young couple in the developed world is attacked and devoured by a horde of zombies in a city park.

Cast
• Margit Evelyn Newton as Lia Rousseau

• Franco Garofalo as Zantoro (credited as Frank Garfield)

• José Gras as Lt. Mike London (credited as Robert O'Neil)

• Selan Karay as Vincent

• Gabriel Renom (Gaby Renom) as Max

• Josep Lluís Fonoll as Osborne

• Piero Fumelli as Coroner on TV

• Bruno Boni as Reporter

• Patrizia Costa as Josie

• Cesare Di Vito as Newscaster

• Sergio Pislar as Technician Lawson

• Bernard Seray as Technician Fowler

• Pep Ballenster as Josie's Husband

• Víctor Israel as Zombie Priest

• Joaquin Blanco as Professor Barrett

• Bernard Seray as Professor Barrett's Assistant

• Attilio Pelegatti as Man in Bar

• Esther Mesina as Woman in Bar

• Antonio Spinnato as Zombie in Park

• Genarrino Papagalli as Mr. Farrara, TV Executive

• Antonio Molino Rojo as SWAT Leader

• Tito Lucchetti as Terrorist Leader

• Óscar Daniel as Josie's Son

Production
Director Bruno Mattei noted that the production began as a specific request from the producer. Mattei planned to make a film inspired by 1978's Dawn of the Dead, but wanted a lighter tone for the film. Mattei said that initially two screenplays were written, and that the producers rejected the screenplay that Mattei preferred. The film was Mattei's first to be made under the name Vincent Dawn, a request made specifically by the film's Spanish production side.

Claudio Fragasso stated he wrote Hell of the Living Dead with Rossella Drudi, his frequent co-scripter. Fragasso felt there had been several zombie films made recently, and wanted to do something different after watching Dawn of the Dead suggesting the film would be like Soylent Green as well as envisioning the film as "an undead epic, a kind of Apocalypse Now".

Among the cast was Margit Evelyn Newton as Lia. Newton recalled that she felt a great sense of responsibility at the time, playing the film's protagonist. Newton felt nervous in a scene involving nudity in front of the indigenous people. She asked that everyone be removed from the set, with only indispensable cast and crew remaining. The scene was shot in one day.

Hell of the Living Dead was shot in 5 weeks. The film includes stock footage to suggest that the film was set in New Guinea. Fragasso stated that when the crew arrived in Barcelona to shoot the film they found they had no money and had to improvise and rewrite the previous script. The production had this footage from the beginning of shooting the film and had rebuilt some of the locations from the stock footage in Spain, where the film was shot. Fragasso commented on the use of stock footage in the film as producers wanted to reuse footage they had, which led to Mattei adding footage of a documentary New Guinea, Island of Cannibals into the film. Parts of the film were improvised on set, such as when a character enters a room imitating Gene Kelly in his film Singin' in the Rain. The score is credited to the band Goblin, but is mostly taken from other film scores Goblin performed, such as Dawn of the Dead and Contamination. Mattei was a fan of their music and secured rights to it for the film through Carlo Bizio. Fragasso stated that the music was from other films and from their album Roller as Goblin were too expensive at the time to get for an original score.

Release
Hell of the Living Dead was released in Spain in November 1980 and in Italy in August 1981 and released in the United States in 1983. It was described as "moderately profitable" in Glenn Kay's book Zombie Movies: The Ultimate Guide. It has been released under several titles, including Virus, Night of the Zombies and Zombie Creeping Flesh.

Critical reception
In a contemporary review, Steve Jenkins (The Monthly Film Bulletin) noted that the possibility of a subversive subtext involving Third World victims corrupted by scientific research was "truly buried here in an orgy of flesh chewing and vomiting, as well as dialogue that beggars belief." The review commented positively that the film had unexpected pleasures, such as "the ludicrous attempts to dub speech on to stock footage (featuring humans) and a story, low-budget UN meeting consisting of a handful of delegates hurling pieces of paper at each other."

From retrospective reviews, Glenn Kay (Zombie Movies: The Ultimate Guide) also noted the poor dialogue, as well as bad shot composition—with scenes changing from day to night between cuts, slow pacing and overacting. AllMovie described the film as "cluelessly bad" with a script of "dreadful characterizations and dialogue," noting that it would be enjoyed by fans of cult and trash cinema. John Kenneth Muir (Horror Films of the 1980s) stated the film was not enjoyable to watch and that it added little originality to the zombie genre in the vein of other films such as The Return of the Living Dead and Day of the Dead. Both AllMovie and Muir noted the film's similarity to Dawn of the Dead, with Muir referring to it as "perhaps the most blatant rip-off of Dawn of the Dead ever produced".

Mattei later expressed that he felt the film's dialogue was "pretty stupid" and that like all his films, he would reshoot it if possible. When asked how she felt about the film in 2013, actress Margit Evelyn Newton responded that "Obviously seeing it now, I would change some things. But that is okay. Virus has helped me get more work." Fragasso commented on the film later saying that the film "designed with lots of love, but in the end it came out a test tube baby, a kind of abortion [...] But I'm satisfied with the end results."

Corona Zombies usage
In 2020, a horror film was released titled Corona Zombies (titled after the COVID-19 pandemic, which had started impacting travel, tourism and socioeconomic life throughout much of the world that same year). Corona Zombies was discovered upon release to be largely created by taking footage of Hell of the Living Dead and just dubbing over the original film with new American English dialogue, changing the story from a chemical factory accident to a story set in a "Chinese bat soup factory" where unsanitary conditions involving deceased vermin eaten by human beings leads to an outbreak of COVID-19. Corona Zombies was largely panned by critics, with Stuart Heritage of The Guardian saying, "in truth, Corona Zombies barely qualifies as a film. It’s only an hour long, and you can only watch it by subscribing to the Full Moon Features streaming service (other available films include Evilbong 666 and Swedish Boarding School Girls)... it’s fun for 20 minutes, but then burns out as the central gimmick wears on. Only a certain amount of coronavirus[sic] jokes exist at this point, and Corona Zombies tells them all repeatedly." Niall Browne, a critic for Movies in Focus, also complained about the usage of footage from a pre-existing film, but argued that Corona Zombies was trying to be fun and not serious.

A critic for Culture Crypt suggested that it wasn't the usage of pre-existing film footage that made Corona Zombies problematic, but instead that Corona Zombies was an example of a broader decline in the quality of releasing company Full Moon Features, also citing the jokes in Corona Zombies as annoying, stating, "gags consist of things like the toilet paper hijacker being revealed as “a failed French-Canadian gymnast who turned to a life of crime after losing a Matt Dillon lookalike contest.” I’d love for someone to break down that line and detail where the laughs are hiding.  Is it that he used to be a gymnast?  Is it that he’s angry not enough people think he looks like Matt Dillon (he doesn’t)?  Seriously, what about this is funny? A lot of dialogue just randomly blurts a bunch of topical references, often without context, a setup, or a punchline.  One guy simply shouts “Postmates!” when he kicks open a door. Someone else moans about calling an Uber if the other person doesn’t like his driving. One angry soldier complains to a zombie, “thanks to you I can’t even hook up on Tinder anymore..." Another angry Corona Squad member shouts, “this is for Joe Exotic!” while setting a zombie on fire. Again, what does this have to do with anything?  Does someone hear that and go, “oh hey, I watched Tiger King too!” and then laugh out loud?"