''Zombie Holocaust'' ( it, Zombi Holocaust) is a 1980 Italian

horror film Horror is a film genre that seeks to elicit fear or disgust in its audience for entertainment purposes. Horror films often explore dark subject matter and may deal with transgressive topics or themes. Broad elements include monsters, apoca ...

directed by

Marino Girolami Marino Girolami (1 February 1914 – 20 February 1994) was an Italian film director and actor. Biography Marino Giorlami was born on 1 February 1914 in Rome, Italy. Formally a Professional boxer, Girolami ended his boxing career when he was 20. ...

. The film is about a team of scientists who follow a trail of corpses in New York to a remote Indonesian island where they meet a mad doctor ( Donald O'Brien) who performs experiments on both the living and dead in his laboratory. The team face both zombies and cannibals in an attempt to stop the doctor. The film was re-edited and released theatrically in the United States in 1982 under the title ''Doctor Butcher M.D''.

Plot

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, a hospital worker is found to have been devouring bodies in the morgue. Morgue assistant and anthropology expert Lori (Alexandra Delli Colli) discovers he was from the

Asia Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an area ...

Molucca The Maluku Islands (; Indonesian: ''Kepulauan Maluku'') or the Moluccas () are an archipelago in the east of Indonesia. Tectonically they are located on the Halmahera Plate within the Molucca Sea Collision Zone. Geographically they are located ...

islands where she grew up. Dr. Peter Chandler ( Ian McCulloch) investigates, and he and Lori discover that similar corpse mutilations have occurred in other city hospitals, where immigrants from this region are working. Peter leads an expedition to the islands to investigate, where he liaises with Doctor Obrero ( Donald O'Brien). Included are his assistant George, George's eager journalist girlfriend Susan, Lori, local boatsman Molotto assigned by Obrero, and three guides. The crew is hunted by cannibals and zombies, the latter created by the sinister Doctor Obrero, who is experimenting with corpses. Lori is accepted as queen of the cannibals and sends them off against the mad scientist and his zombie army.

Cast

* Ian McCulloch as Dr. Peter Chandler * Alexandra Delli Colli as Lori Ridgeway * Sherry Buchanan as Susan Kelly * Peter O'Neal as George Harper * Donald O'Brien as Dr. Obrero/Dr. Butcher (US version) *

Dakar Dakar ( ; ; wo, Ndakaaru) (from daqaar ''tamarind''), is the capital and largest city of Senegal. The city of Dakar proper has a population of 1,030,594, whereas the population of the Dakar metropolitan area is estimated at 3.94 million in 2 ...

as Molotto * Walter Patriarca as Dr. Dreylock

Release

The film was released in Italy in 1980 and grossed a total of 300 million

Italian lira The lira (; plural lire) was the currency of Italy between 1861 and 2002. It was first introduced by the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy in 1807 at par with the French franc, and was subsequently adopted by the different states that would eventually f ...

. It was released in the United States in 1982 in a heavily edited form under the title ''Doctor Butcher M.D.'', which incorporated footage from an unreleased film shot by director

Roy Frumkes Roy Frumkes is an American independent filmmaker. Frumkes directed the 1985 documentary '' Document of the Dead'', a film detailing the production of '' Dawn of the Dead''. Biography The cooperation of George A. Romero allowed Frumkes extensive a ...

. In addition to the title ''Zombie Holocaust'', the film has since been released under various other English titles, including ''Island of the Last Zombies'', ''Queen of the Cannibals'' and ''Zombie 3''.

Home media

The film was first released on DVD on May 21, 2002 by

Shriek Show Media Blasters, sometimes abbreviated as MB, is an American entertainment corporation that was founded by John Sirabella in 1997 and is based in New York City. It is in the business of licensing, translating, and releasing to the North American ...

and was available both separately and in a triple feature package. ''The Zombie Pack Vol. 2'' contains ''Zombie Holocaust'', '' Burial Ground: The Nights of Terror'' and '' Flesheater''. Shriek Show released the film on

Blu-ray The Blu-ray Disc (BD), often known simply as Blu-ray, is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released on June 20, 2006 worldwide. It is designed to supersede the DVD format, and capable of sto ...

for the first time in the U.S. on June 28, 2011, with 88 Films giving the film its UK Blu-ray debut in 2015. In 2016,

Severin Films Severin Films is an American film production and distribution company known for restoring and releasing cult films on DVD and Blu-ray. History The label was created in 2006 in Los Angeles, and other offices were founded in New York City and Londo ...

issued a deluxe edition two-disc Blu-ray that included both ''Zombie Holocaust'' and ''Doctor Butcher M.D.'', as well as a multitude of bonus features. The first 5,000 copies of this edition also included a replica of the " barf bag" given out at some original screenings of ''Doctor Butcher M.D.''

Reception

In ''The Zombie Movie Encyclopedia'', academic

Peter Dendle Peter Dendle is a professor of English at Penn State Mont Alto, teaching classes on folklore, 20th and 21st century representations of the Middle Ages, Old and Middle English (language and literature), and the monstrous (in film, folklore, and s ...

stated that "Some of the gore effects are quite good, but other than that the movie is a stock accumulation of familiar motifs."

Bloody Disgusting Bloody Disgusting is an American multi-media company, which began as a horror genre-focused news site/website specializing in information services that covered various horror medias, including: film, television, video games, comics, and music. ...

rated it 5/5 stars and recommended it to fans of Italian gore films. Author Glenn Kay of ''Zombie Movies: The Ultimate Guide'' referred to it as "a bad movie; for Italian zombie gore fans only." Danny Shipka, author of a book on European exploitation films, noted that ''Zombie Holocaust'' showed how quickly the zombie subgenre "degenerated into stupidity" and that the film "fuses the cannibal genre and the zombie film into an incoherent mess".

Footnotes

References

* *

External links

*
''Zombie Holocaust''
at

Variety Distribution Variety Distribution is an Italian-based film distribution company. It distributes Italian films worldwide, produced from the 1930s onward. History Variety Distribution (formerly Variety Film and Variety Communications) has been in the film ...

{{Zombi series 1980 horror films 1980 films Italian zombie films Cannibal-boom films Films set in New York City 1980s Italian-language films English-language Italian films 1980s English-language films Films directed by Marino Girolami Films set in Indonesia Films scored by Nico Fidenco 1980 multilingual films Italian multilingual films 1980s Italian films