After making three back-to-back compilation tapes, Charles Band and Ken Dixon made one more to end it all. As mentioned before, Band acquired the rights to numerous low-budget horror films for his label, Wizard Video. Many of these were European and directed by exploitation filmmakers like Lucio Fulci, Jess Franco, and Pierre Chevalier. Also, by the mid-1980s, zombie movies were popular thanks to Return of the Living Dead and Day of the Dead. Luckily for Band, plenty of European zombie movies came out after the success of George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead. Band and Dixon would use clips from various zombie movies using a wraparound story instead of hosts for this compilation. This was their last compilation tape, as Ken Dixon later directed 1987’s Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity. But before then, Charles Band released their zombie compilation Zombiethon to a ravenous fanbase.
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Synopsis
A zombie chases a young woman (Karrene Janyl Caudle) into The Historic El Rey Theater, occupied by various zombies. The young woman takes a seat as she and the other undead patrons watch clips from multiple zombie movies. We start with Lucio Fulci’s 1979 classic Zombie, most infamous for a brutal eye-gouging and zombie vs. shark death match. Unfortunately, the quality goes downhill as we move onto the notoriously bad 1981 schlockfest Zombie Lake. Things only get worse when we go to Jess Franco’s Oasis of the Zombies, followed by Murder Syndrome, aka Fear. Then, we get two 1970s offerings: 1970’s The Invisible Dead and 1973’s A Virgin Among the Living Dead. To cap off this compilation, we end with Ted V. Mikel’s The Astro-Zombies from 1968, previously featured in Filmgore. Stay away from any graveyards, as the liveliest Festival of the Dead is about to begin!
Review
Of all four of the compilation tapes made for Wizard Video, Zombiethon is undoubtedly one of them. It’s not as fun as The Best of Sex and Violence, but it’s a step above Famous T & A. This one tries to be unique by having a wraparound story instead of the usual host segments. These wraparound segments add charm due to their cheesiness but are disjointed, confusing, and repetitive. Each sequence boils down to a pretty girl getting chased by a zombie, running into a theater, rinse and repeat. In place of makeup, all the zombies wear masks, which come off as cheap but add to the campiness. Unfortunately, the wraparound has no resolution, as it ends with the zombies sitting in the theater. We never find out what happened to the various women who were chased inside, so I guess they’re dead.
As for the clips shown, there’s a decent variety, but the compilation somewhat blows its load a little early. They start with a truncated version of Lucio Fulci’s classic, only to transition into progressively worse movies. Also, according to the book Empire of the B’s, the compilation features Dawn of the Dead, Burial Ground, etc. Unless they watched a different version than me, none of the other movies they mention are featured. Either way, this compilation does succeed in helping you avoid sitting through some utter garbage. Why sit through all 82 minutes of Oasis of the Zombies when you can watch the highlights shown here? Considering that Empire folded a few years later, it’s unfortunate we didn’t get more of these compilations until years later. Overall, Zombiethon isn’t the worst of the Wizard Video comp tapes, and it’ll make for some good background noise.
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