| Zombie Holocaust | |
| Director: | Marino Girolami |
| Screenplay: | Romano Scandariato[1] |
| Story: | Fabrizio De Angelis |
| Starring: |
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| Music: | Nico Fidenco |
| Cinematography: | Fausto Zuccoli |
| Editing: | Alberto Moriani |
| Distributor: | Variety Distribution |
| Studio: |
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| Country: | Italy |
| Language: | Italian English |
| Gross: | 300 million lire |
Zombie Holocaust (Italian: Zombi Holocaust) is a 1980 Italian horror film directed by Marino Girolami. 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.[2]
In New York City, a hospital worker is found to have been devouring bodies in the morgue. Morgue assistant and anthropology expert Lori discovers he was from the Maluku Islands where she grew up. Dr. Peter Chandler 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. 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.
The film was released in Italy in 1980[3] and grossed a total of 300 million Italian lira. It was released in the United States in 1982 in modified form, under the title Doctor Butcher M.D.,. The "Doctor Butcher" cut features the film uncensored and uncut, but features a new prologue which consists of footage from an unreleased film shot by director Roy Frumkes, intercut with footage of the zombies from the film and footage of a swinging sign outside a building that said "Doctor Butcher M.D.". 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.
The Doctor Butcher M.D. version of the film was originally released on home video by Wizard Films on VHS. When the film was released on DVD in 2002, Shriek Show released the film under its original form as Zombie Holocaust. The US film's prologue and the Doctor Butcher M.D. trailer would be included as extras on the DVD. The film was made available both separately and in a triple feature package. The Zombie Pack Vol. 2 contains Zombie Holocaust, and Flesheater.[4] Shriek Show released the film on Blu-ray for the first time in the U.S. on June 28, 2011,[5] [2] with 88 Films giving the film its UK Blu-ray debut in 2015.[2]
In 2016, Severin Films 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.[6]
In The Zombie Movie Encyclopedia, academic Peter Dendle stated that "Some of the gore effects are quite good, but other than that the movie is a stock accumulation of familiar motifs."[7] Bloody Disgusting rated it 5/5 stars and recommended it to fans of Italian gore films.[8] 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 Perverse Titillation: The Exploitation Cinema of Italy, Spain and France, 1960–1980, 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".