Super Infra-Man - He has see-through eyes!

We at CF were treated to a rare a wonderful thing a chance to see a bad movie classic on the big screen. This one was barely able to sneak onto American screens, even when it was originally released in 1976. In a well-made and respectable foreign film, we often consider dubbing to be nothing short of annoying on a level that could only be matched by Britney Spears' acting or Jar Jar Binks. Nails on a chalkboard, etc. That being said, the English dubbing in Super Infra-man is not only acceptable, but preferred - only a few movies I can think of benefit from English dubbing. See also: Story of Riki.

Ripping off Ultraman and pre-dating the Power Rangers, Infra-Man is a schlock classic, ranking with the best of the bygone rubber monster craze. Starring a baby-faced Danny Lee years before The Killer made him famous when he went down in a blaze of glory with Chow Yun Fat. He was off to an embarrassing start in the seventies, wearing the tight red rubber Infra-Man suit that also sports antennae.

When a volcano explodes and spits out the secret headquarters of Princess Dragon Mom, a blonde-haired Chinese woman who cracks a giant whip and wants to control the earth, the world's greatest scientific minds leap into action, creating a superhero with see-through eyes (according to the trailer). We know they're scientists because they all wear white coats and hang out in a futuristic-looking room full of randomly-blinking lights, as every B sci-fi scientist seemed to.

Princess Dragon Mom commands a legion of guys wearing bike helmets with skulls painted on them, as well as half a dozen rubber-suited monsters. They also have speedboats and go around tearing down power lines and brainwashing people - EEEEEEVVVVVILLLLL! The story is incredibly simplistic, and really just shuttles Infra-Man from one confrontation to the next. There's a strange scene with the professor and his daughter that's good for some unintentional laughs, and lots of great stuff with PDM hamming it up in her sekrit base.

This movie is a lot of mindless monster fun, but it's got some pacing problems, especially if you try to watch it with subtitles. It's best enjoyed auf English, as the Germans would say, with a big group of acquaintances with senses of humor.

Is this movie worth your $2?

No doubt! The English-dubbed version has enough laughs to leave any fan of bad movies happy. The more people to share the laughter will only amplify your enjoyment of this film!

Burial Ground: This cloth smells like death

At this juncture in time, even non-horror fans can be remotely familiar with parts of the Italian zombie canon, thanks to the wide availability of this stuff on DVD. At the very least, you shouldn't be surprised to talk to the "normal" people who can remember seeing that distinct giant box for Fulci's Zombi 2 (AKA Zombie) turning white on a video store shelf of a bygone rental store.

If you really want to test an Italo-schlock fan's mettle in a contest of "yes, but have you seen this," you'd do well to bring up Andrea Bianchi's Burial Ground, a considerably lesser-known Italian horror clunker from that glorious year of 1981. The '80s truly was the decade that proved to be the swansong for anti-PC tax write-offs that were dumped straight to the shelves of video stores, but, thanks to DVD, we can enjoy films like Burial Ground until the apocalypse.

The story begins with some guy (we later learn he's a "professor") wearing a glued-on beard chipping away at a bunch of dirt. He's been hard at work studying some mysterious runes, which look more like Internet emoticons (seriously – look carefully - there's a smiley face carved onto the tablet!). Lo and behold, zombies emerge from the wall. Before they start munching on him, he tries to reason with them, screaming, "No! I'm you're friend." This would be stupid enough, but the bad dubbing that plagues the rest of the movie just makes it that much better.

Next up, you get your typical cast of ugly Italian zombie fodder driving up to the mansion where the professor was conducting his studies. The credit sequence is accompanied by some of the worst nu-jazz this side of Kenny G / pornography. The acting is awful, and the dialogue is so unbelievably bad that you can rest assured not a soul on the set spoke a lick of English. Actually, this pushes the movie even higher, as the characters deliver one howler after another. It truly is magical.

The vacation party is there to frolic, and they do just that for a good chunk of running time. I've seen reviews level the charge of "boring" on these sections of the movie, but I really have to question what they're doing watching bad Italian zombie films if they're there solely for the mayhem. Slow down, smell the roses, appreciate the finer points of bad filmmaking – we get hilarious dialogue between characters, sleazy, uncomfortable sex scenes, and totally laughable editing. The centerpiece of the movie turns out to be this weird "child" named Michael. You see, for the purposes of the script, he's supposed to be around the age of ten, but due to the unavailability of a real kid (pesky laws), the director opted to cast what appears to be a thirty-year-old man with some kind of dwarf condition, and then had him dubbed by a guy attempting a falsetto. He has to be one of the scariest, most bizarre things I've ever seen in a horror movie – and it's completely unintentional!

Michael's overall creepiness is compounded by the fact that he has a strange Oedipal fixation on his mother. At one point, she rebukes an advance from him, and he responds, "What's wrong?! I'm your son!" You can see where this is going. I'm not sure who urged this subplot be added to the "script," but you will not soon forget it.

The zombies in the movie look cheap, but simultaneously effective. I can certainly appreciate a director who works with the effects he's got. Bianchi's living dead, clad in moldy cloaks and covered with green pus and maggots, are the "smarter" breed of zombie that are able to use tools; this is the only zombie film I can think of where we see the undead teaming up to knock down a door with a battering ram. Thankfully, they're not modern athletic zombies like those found in 28 Days Later or the Dawn of the Dead remake. This doesn't matter, though, because the characters in the movie are so incredibly stupid when faced with their impending doom that they sit in one place and wait to get eaten. There are some memorable yet cheap gore scenes, including one obviously inspired by the eye impalement scene in Zombi 2, and another involving the creepy "kid" that will remain with you for the rest of your life.

Burial Ground is a terrible movie. Entry-level film school students would have a field day picking apart the inconsistencies and moviemaking rules that are violated, but that's precisely why it's so easy to love. The pace moves along at a fast clip, and the stupidity hits monumental levels.

Is this movie worth your $2?:

Yes – if you're a zombie movie or Italian trash cinema fan, Burial Ground is absolutely worth a rental. I recommend ownership – it ranks with classics like Riki-Oh, Robocop, Commando and Bad Taste as one of my favorite "party movies." Throw it on, and then watch your friends clear out of the room or question your sanity!