RG
Roberto Giacomelli
•Humanity is shaken by a mysterious plague that brings the dead back to life, turning them into cannibals. The few survivors attempt to flee to a hypothetical uncontaminated place, where a father and his daughter also hope to arrive, wandering in their car on an isolated country road. During the journey, they pick up a girl, Carmilla, unaware that she is actually a vampire. Now, the two humans will have to defend themselves, not only from the zombies, but also from the bloodthirsty passenger.
It is even hard to tell about this unlikely and embarrassing film that poorly mixes two mythical figures of the horror imagination. The film's title, as well as the poster, explicitly reference the successful film by Ronny Yu « Freddy vs Jason », but in this case, two monsters from the classic tradition are involved: zombies and vampires.
The living dead, who appear in very few occasions, are made in a ridiculous way, with a very fake makeup; moreover, the story of the virus that wakes the dead is only briefly mentioned and clearly seems artificial. The vampires, on the other hand, are much more present on the scene, although they seem out of place with the « story » told and the director, also screenwriter, even took the responsibility to cite in the name of the vampire co-star (Carmilla) the character created by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu.
The story is almost non-existent and the photography is bad, as well as the semi-amateur direction and the school play-like performances of the actors. The characters appear and disappear without logic, some, moreover, seem particularly useless for the plot, as well as some passages of the film (see the long sequence in the gas station) probably added in the screenplay only with the intention of lengthening a film that has absolutely nothing to say.
The only positive mention goes to some semi-splatter scenes in the final part of the film, made in a completely amateur way but, overall, appreciable.
Only one question arises in the mind of the unfortunate viewer who comes across this abomination: but why does the Italian market strive to acquire the rights to films of this kind? Considering that titles of much greater interest are still unreleased in our country; it is enough to think of the second chapter of the series « Ginger Snaps » or « Bubba Ho-tep » by Coscarelli.
In conclusion, « Vampires vs Zombies » is a title, distributed only for the home video market, from which you should particularly stay away; a bad film, but so bad that it even makes you reappreciate notoriously bad films like « Paganini Horror » and « Non aprite quella porta 4 », earning one of the top spots in the ranking of « the worst horror films in history ».
Terrible only because there is no lower rating!