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Review

Just a decade ago, Euro-horror connoisseurs had to contend with enjoying Italian genre fare of the 1960s-80s largely through ultra-fuzzy umpteenth-generation bootleg videotapes dubbed from ancient Greek or Swedish video releases with video quality that left much to be desired even in their original forms. Now, even the most obscure Italian exploitation efforts have been unearthed and lovingly restored for American DVD releases, and the digital consumer is currently faced with the appallingly ready availability of something like Erotic Nights of the Living Dead (which must stand alongside Strip Nude for Your Killer and Erotic Nights’ own companion piece Porno Holocaust as one of the most wonderfully titled Italian films of the era). As the 1970s progressed, prolific Italian director Joe D’Amato (a.k.a. Aristide Massaccesi…as well as about a billion pseudonyms) created increasingly outrageous (and often very funny) exploitation films driven by explicit, transgressive content: his genuinely unnerving 1979 horror film Beyond the Darkness features some of the most repulsive gore effects of any Italian horror endeavor, and his positively astonishing 1977 sex film Emanuelle in America - an entry in the Black Emanuelle series that D’Amato hijacked in the 70s – must be seen to be (dis)believed. D’Amato’s Erotic Nights of the Living Dead is a logical extension of the boundary-pushing exploitation ethic of the late 1970s: a gory horror film that also functions as a XXX-explicit hardcore porn effort, the film is perfect entertainment for those who always thought that graphic on-screen fellatio and undead entrails-munching were two great tastes that would taste great together. The “story” concerns a real estate developer who travels to a Caribbean island to open a resort hotel, but finds his goals thwarted by an army of zombies who attack him and his companions; Euro-cult icons Laura Gemser (Black Emanuelle herself) and George Eastman appear, though they do not directly participate in the hardcore sequences. Much of Erotic Nights is centered around the sexual interactions of the various characters, and horror fans should be cautioned that the flesh-biting and corpse-shuffling don’t really enter the picture until fairly late in the running time. But there’s still an undeniable fascination involved with seeing D’Amato casually morph two of Italian exploitation cinema’s thriving genres, porn and zombie horror, and Erotic Nights is indeed recommended for anyone with a love of the extremes of Euro-sleaze filmmaking.