In case you always wondered (or worried) whether or not you would get aroused by the sight of zombies having sexual intercourse...you still won't find out by watching this weirdo-flick. In spite of what the title suggests, "Erotic Nights of the Living Dead" does not feature copulating undead or strip-dancing corpses. This merely is a routine Italian zombie film, like "Zombi 2" or "Zombie Holocaust", with a handful of hardcore sex sequences thrown in during the first half hour. And as crazy as it may sound, it actually is a pretty decent zombie movie if you just ignore these totally redundant porno moments and focus on the beautiful island location and rather stylish gory make-up effects. There's the typically obnoxious businessman who buys a tropical island with a vicious reputation and intends to build a tourist resort there. Along with a macho sailer and a whore he picked up in some hotel, he goes to scout the place but stumbles upon an uncanny old man and his ghostly granddaughter that rule over the island. Laura Gemser, ravishing cult siren and regular D'Amato nymph, stars as the mysterious island girl but her role is rather limited and she doesn't really show much of her enchanting body. George Eastman clearly is in great shape again as the stud, but he still doesn't manage to script down one reasonably good dialogue. There are a couple of atmospheric zombie-attacks and explicit gore. You can't possibly expect more from a Joe D'Amato film, apart from sleazy oddities in the script maybe, like the girl who ingeniously uncorks a bottle of champagne by using her vagina only (!).
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Coventry30 December 2005
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Ky-D21 May 2005For a film to have 'erotic' in the title, the film should have erotic scenes. If a film has 'living dead' in the title, there should be some good gut munching. And finally, if a film has 'night of' in the title, the film should be shot at night. But then again, this is a Joe D'Amato flick.
Story: people go to investigate an island,come across some creepy natives, have lots of sex and get eaten.
There is plenty of nudity and hard-core sexual escapades on display (if you have the uncut version), but not a bit of it is erotic or arousing. Some male/female, female/female, pick your poison. Matters are further complicated by the obvious fact that some of the actors are not at all comfortable with bearing it all, taking the blandly shot scenes and making them all the more dull.
For a film like this, violence is the answer, or should have been. D'amato is unusually thin-skinned about laying on the gore. There are a couple of choice bits, but nothing spectacular. If it weren't bad enough that the zombies don't do a whole hell of a lot, it's worse that they take forever to finally start reeking havoc. I suppose the intention was to build suspense, but with a film like this what's the point.
So how well is it made then? For a film supposedly occurring mostly at night it is readily apparent that most all of the movie was shot during then day then given the day-for-night treatment. The dubbing is dubious and the limited effects some what suspect.
A mid-range rating for a bad movie that will undoubtedly find a niche audience; you know who you are.
5/10 -
movieman_kev27 October 2005An American businessman wants to build a hotel on a remote island, so he has someone sail him and his girlfriend there to check it out. The zombie scenes seem tacked on as an afterthought, so as a horror film this doesn't really work that well. However due to the ridiculous dialog and the hardcore sex scenes the film MIGHT be worth it for drunken party type viewing, but even that is stretching it (pardon the pun) Feel free to skip this one, as it's only remote interesting as a curiosity. That being said the way champagne is uncorked in the film is ingenious.
Eye Candy: more than you can shake a decaying limb at
My Grade: D
DVD Extras: 27 minutes of Alternate footage; Production stills & Laura Gemser stills gallery; X-rated Trailer; and trailers for "Zombi 2", "Emanuelle And The Last Cannibals", "Nightmares Come at Night", & "Slaughter Hotel"
Easter Egg: In the main menu, highlight scene access and press down to get to a hidden skull, click on it for the French opening credits -
Moshing Hoods19 February 2002One of the most interesting consequences of the brief period of "porno chic" in the early 70s was the resulting effect on the Italian exploitation industry. Never quick to miss an American cinematic "craze", a lot of film-makers found themselves curiously crossing genres and stuffing hardcore porn into other genres, as well as vice versa. The absolute master of this was the ubiquitous Joe D'Amato, and here he fuses porno with the zombie movie (which at the time was in the midst of enormous popularity in Italy).
THE EROTIC NIGHTS OF THE LIVING DEAD was shot back-to-back with the similar, but more sex-oriented, PORNO HOLOCAUST. In its full uncut form, the scenes of XXX are strangely innocent. There are a few explicit shots here and there, but no actual "penetration" (other than when one of the female characters hilariously opens a bottle of champagne with her genitalia!), plus many of the scenes seem to cut away at strange times. Whether this is due to an incomplete review print (a Midnight Video release, clearly made from two different prints spliced together) isn't clear. What is obvious is that as a sex movie, this fails horribly. Many of the "erotic" scenes also fall victim to Luigi Montefiori and Laura Gemser's obvious unwillingness to perform in hardcore sequences. Many of the sex scenes are made up of Montefiori watching a female character masturbate, before pretending to have sex with her- often without removing his trousers first!
The real benefit for Massacessi is that the sex allows him to pad out a horror movies that, in actuality, has only about 30 minutes of material. Almost all of the first hour revolves around sex, and the "horror" portion of the story really only kicks in after that. Massacessi was the first to admit that horror was not his forte (although after seeing this, it has to be said that porn clearly wasn't either!) and by structuring his film in this way, he can basically cover up his shortcomings whilst still producing a marketable zombie movie.
Still, as ever, this is strangely enjoyable. The final 30 minutes is actually quite atmospheric, and there is some nice gore in there. I hear that this movie is very difficult to get hold of in an uncut form (review print was in unsubtitled Italian), but as far as I can tell from my copy, it is certainly worth seeking out as the "cut" print looks absolutely anaemic in comparison... -
The_Void7 October 2007Anyone who has seen Porno Holocaust will know exactly what to expect from Erotic Nights of the Living Dead, as the two films feature basically the same cast and plot lines. Joe D'Amato is often held in high regard by cult horror fans, and he has made some excellent classics in the genre; but to be honest, I really don't know where he's coming from with the whole porn/zombies thing. Last time I checked, the living dead aren't sexy and mixing an average zombie film with a load of porn isn't exactly a guaranteed recipe for success. As mentioned, the plot is basically the same as the one in Porno Holocaust and focuses on an isolated island. A group of sex starved (or not) people travel to the island for some reason or another, but naturally the island is infested with zombies. This doesn't stop the travellers having sex with each other every five minutes, the zombies do prove to be a bit of a nuisance. That's about the long and short of the plot really...
This film is slightly better than Porno Holocaust, but only slightly. The two films suffer from the same main problems: Erotic Nights of the Living Dead is also far too long, and it takes too long for anything to happen too. The sex is mostly quite boring too, which obviously does the film no favours. The film features two of exploitation cinema's biggest stars in George Eastman (also the writer) and Laura Gemser. Gemser, however, doesn't turn up until we get over the halfway point. There's a fair bit of gore in the film, some of it quite hardcore, but it's clear that the sex is the main focus. The zombies themselves are the typical Italian style crusty looking things; not very convincing! As mentioned, the film is far too long and the plot really drags on numerous occasions, which is a shame. There really isn't much to this film; it's very much what you'd expect, so if you're looking for something substantial then look elsewhere! I can't really say that I found Erotic Nights of the Living Dead all that enjoyable so I won't be recommending it, but I guess some sleaze fans may get a kick out of it. -
macabro35727 August 2004(aka: EROTIC NIGHTS OF THE LIVING DEAD)
Just saw the un-cut, newly-remastered Shriek/Media Blasters DVD of this and I must say, I was bored by the whole thing. However, 'everybody else' must have liked it because the cast stuck around for D'Amato's next Caribbean offering, PORNO HOLOCAUST (1981)
OK, I admit I was turned on by the hardcore threesome between Manlio Cersosimo and the two Dominican whores he had up in his room, but the rest of the film was totally un-interesting, horror-wise or sex-wise. Gemser should have continued played Emmanuelle and I'm surprised she didn't here. Especially for a Joe D'Amato movie.
There's surprisingly little gore for a film of this scope, and the zombie plot looks like it was thrown in there as a pretext for the soft-core lesbian scenes between Gemser and Funari. There's also soft core sex scenes between Eastman and Gemser and between Cersosimo and Funari as well as the previously mentioned hard-core sex scene.
Plot concerns George Eastman taking Manlio Cersosimo and his girlfriend (Dirce Funari) to an island so he can scout locations for a new hotel resort. A female spirit (Laura Gemser) and an old man conjure up the dead buried on the island to go after these three and stop any development from taking place.
Some of the zombies get impaled on sticks by Eastman and some brown & green stuff (blood?) comes flowing out, and there's a couple of zombies who get torched, but that's pretty much all the action. Eastman and Funari wind up in a 'mental institution' after all this.
Shriek/Media Blasters did their usual, impeccable wide-screen treatment of this DVD, far more than the actual film deserves. Not much in the line of extras, though. There's also a half-way decent electronic score by Marcello Giombini.
Mostly deserves a yawn...
3 out of 10 -
Erotic Nights of the Living Dead was made back-to-back with Joe D'amato's other zombie shagathon Porno Holocaust (released in 1981), and shares much of that film's cast, plus its island location. It also shares its ability to bore me witless, with the quantity and quality of sex seriously waning after the first half an hour, and very little in the way of decent gore, despite featuring more of the undead.
D'amato regular George 'Anthropophagus' Eastman plays Larry, a sailor hired by mustachioed architect/stud John Wilson (Mark Shannon) to take him (and his current woman) to a mysterious island, which, according to local legend, is home to flesh-eating zombies which are ruled over by a cat. Once there, they meet a strange old man and his beautiful daughter (Laura Gemser), have sex, and run into lots of mouldy reanimated corpses.
As you've probably surmised, it doesn't make whole lot of sense, and, at 112 minutes (in its uncut form), is extremely tedious. As always Eastman stays well clear of any hardcore action, preferring to keep his trousers on during sex, whilst Gemser indulges in purely soft-core fumblings. And all of the humping is strictly between the living (unlike Porno Holocaust, which featured a very randy zombie).
Very occasionally, the film offers those seeking sleazy treats something to make them smile—a woman displays a unique way of removing a cork from a champagne bottle, and Gemser bites off Wilson's todger—but, on the whole, Erotic Nights of the Living Dead is a dreary mess. -
Well this is a real mess of a film. It's worthy of watching at a drive-in, where you don't have to pay much attention to the plot because you are too busy ... doing other things. Watch it on DVD, however, like I did, and you'll be in for a real miserable time.
Others have described the plot so I won't comment on that. The script is pure garbage. It makes little sense. I'm convinced the director fused two entirely different movies together, one a bad porn, one an even worse horror film. The fusing together of two different movies, like in "Dr. Butcher, M.D." can be a good thing, but in this case, it just doesn't work. Camera-work, direction, acting all run the gamut of bad to awful. Watch Fulci's "Zombi 2" and any other Laura Gemser movie instead of this dreck. -
Leofwine_draca6 October 2018EROTIC NIGHTS OF THE LIVING DEAD is yet another sleaze-fest from exploitation stalwart Joe D'Amato, shot in the Caribbean and featuring three of his favourite stars: big old George Eastman as a studly hero, porn actor Mark Shannon as a typical sleaze bag, and the alluring Laura Gemser as a native woman. Plot-wise it's nothing special at all, mixing up ORGASMO NERO with ZOMBIE FLESH EATERS into an unsatisfying whole. The film is chock-full of sex scenes, both soft and hardcore, and they're typically repetitive and shot without imagination by the director. The horror content merely rips off the Fulci classic and although it's quite gruesome on occasion, it's simply not enough to sustain a bloated running time.
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EVOL66615 February 2006EROTIC NIGHTS OF THE LIVING DEAD is a sleazy, smut-filled endeavor from trash director, Joe D'Amato - but of course, I live for this garbage, so although this one was pretty silly - I still got a kick out of it. Unfortunately though, don't expect any cool undead-copulation as the title would suggest, you won't get it here. But you will get plenty of living people's tits and ass, so I guess that counts for something...
This one concerns a businessman who buys an island to put up a big resort hotel. Of course, the island has some local lore around it involving zombies that live there. Before embarking on his journey to check the island out, Mr. Business bangs two hookers in his hotel room. Pretty decent hardcore sex action, if you dig big 70's puss-fro's and protracted, semi-erect blow-jobs featuring a guy that looks like Magnum P.I. Then he bones the lady that's staying next door (seems that Magnum is quite a pimp...). The next day Magnum and The-Girl-Next-Door head to the docks to commission a boat and sailor to take them to the island. The boat ride is just another excuse to show some more extended tits and ass scenes, but unfortunately, other than the hooker-sandwich in the beginning, there's no more "hardcore" sex to be had in this film (unless you consider one VERY amusing scene where a stripper graphically uncorks a bottle of champagne without use of her hands "hardcore"...). The adventurous three-some begin exploring the island, and find that it's not completely uninhabited. There's a real old guy with a big lump on his head, and his grand-daughter (played by an anorexically thin but still smokin' hot Laura Gemser...), and a grave yard where a bunch of "epidemic" victims died (the epidemic is never explained, naturally....). Ol' Bump-Head tells the trespassers that they should probably roll-out, but Magnum ain't hearin' it. Bump-Head gives the sailor some kind of little statue that's supposed to protect him against the zombies, and somewhere along the line, we find out that Gemser is some sort of ghost or something (that obviously doesn't like to give head, which is proved in one particularly hilarious penis-chomping scene...), because you don't see her in photographs and she keeps disappearing. Sound hard to follow? Trust me it's not - it's just poorly written. Anyway...of course our adventurers pay no head to Bump-Head and Ghost-Girl, so the epidemic victims decide to be a little more "persuasive"...
Basically, ENOTLD is a film whose main purpose is to cram as much gratuitous nudity and sex as possible into it, while still straining to maintain some sort of "plot" as a horror film. The sleaze is hot-and-heavy, although I wish that there would have been some more XXX scenes, as seeing them in the very beginning and then not at all through the rest of the film was kind of "anti-climactic". As a horror film ENOTLD doesn't really hold up well. Actually, as a porn film, it doesn't really either - but the combination of the two make this one somehow work out to be pretty entertaining. Not nearly as memorable as D'Amato's super-sleazy EMANUELLE IN America or his horror "classic" BUIO OMEGA - but still worth a look to the trash fans out there...or those that dig hot 70's chicks with big 70's bushes...7/10 -
BandSAboutMovies2 October 2021I work in my basement from when I wake up until when I go to bed, writing all sorts of words for people, from health care to highed education, parent-teacher groups and all manner of businesses large and small. There are times when all that writing and the way the world has been acting for the last 18 months which feel like 18 years when it just seems hopeless. Why am I doing this? Who am I doing it for? Why do I feel compelled to keep on writing and then in my spare time write some more about movies?
Because of movies like this.
Make no mistake, Le notti erotiche dei morti viventi is absolutely the sleaziest kind of movie there is, a film that combines all of the oatmealed faced zombies and gore of Italian cinema with the sexual congress of, well, Italian cinema. It's as if someone said, "What if we saw people screw before we kill them horribly?" And that man, friends, was Joe D'Amato.
Now, the man himself said that this was an utter failure, telling Spaghetti Nightmares that the movie was"...a total fiasco. I had endeavored to mingle my two favorite genres, tending more toward the erotic side in this case, but the film was rejected by the public."
Made at the same time as Porno Holocaust - another movie with the same cast, the same plot and the same mix of sex and death - just thinking of the plot of this movie makes me laugh like some kind of maniac.
It stars Mark Shannon, whose main career was working as a travel agency correspondent, but would take breaks to make adult films. He plays John Wilson, who has come to the Dominican Republic to build a hotel on Cat Island, a place with a voodoo curse so dangerous that it causes one of the two prostitutes who've recently serviced him to run in fear. Don't worry. He was smart enough to finish their bedsheet gymnastics first.
As he chases her down the hall, he meets Fiona (Dirce Funari, who was one of the women in the infamous snuff sequence in D'Amato's Emanuelle in America), who has just left an elderly lover at sea. After doing an oral inspection of Georgia O'Keefe's inspiration, they become a couple of sorts for the rest of the film. I think we can all appreciate a meet cute in an Italian pornographic zombie film, right?
Meanwhile, Larry O'Hara (George Eastman, who wrote this) is either a sea captain or in an insane asylum. He starts the film off having wild frolicking sex with a nurse and ends it with the same woman in the same style as the film makes a Jacob's Ladder cycle back to the mental ward, complete with another patient slack jawed and enjoying their coupling with a one-handed ovation.
There's an absolutely mindbending scene where Eastman sits inside a darkened club that makes it appear that he's smoking and drinking and bored and trapped in the infinite regions of space when Liz (Lucía Ramírez, Sex and Black Magic) appears to dance for him. Eastman makes no attempt to engage with her at all, even when she brings a champagne bottle on stage to, well, yeah. You know what happens. What you may not know is that she opens the bottle for him and does not use his hands and man, Joe D'Amato, you know how to rescue a man from abject depression.
Meanwhile, Laura Gemser shows up as a woman who bleeds green blood and can transform into a cat and has a blind grandfather who follows her and then she has sex with Eastman on the beach through his buttoned jeans.
Finally, everyone drinks J&B and we come - pun unintended - back to the start of the film as orderlies drag Eastman to his cell.
My favorite part of this movie was watching the absurd - D'Amato pun not intended - lengths to which some of the bigger star's lovemaking scenes were created in very Cinemax After Dark style, which Shannon just went balls out. Literally.
I'm so pleased that I could begin the 2021 Scarecrow Challenge in such a high class way. It only gets better from here. -
After pushing the envelope and erasing the borders between horror, softcore and hardcore porn flicks in his Black Emanuelle movies, Joe D'Amato went the whole hog here and made a film which could be, at times, classified as all of these things. It ends up being quite a mish-mash, but by the end, as the images of coitus and demise have passed before our eyes in a two hour parade, the film seems most like a kind of motion picture memento mori, reminding us of the inexorable link between the little and big deaths.
The film begins in a madhouse, with D'Amato regular George Eastman (who, intriguingly, wrote this film) staring back out of the screen at us through a wired fence. We then follow a pretty young inmate as she searches out Eastman in the bowels of the institution, finding him and engaging in passionate, unbridled (softcore) sex. A shambolic, drooling maniac has also followed them, and he keeps at a distance, touching himself and lolling his tongue as he peaks at their pleasures. We could almost take this as a meta-cinematic representation of D'Amato's cinema – we the audience are the drooling lunatic voyeurs watching our own fellow madmen portrayed in flagrante on D'Amato's cinematic canvas.
The plot itself now begins, as Eastman is revealed as the island-hopping skipper on a small schooner somewhere in the Caribbean, operating a sea-bound taxi service for wealthy visitors. He humours the rich men whilst lusting after their booty-prize women. Meanwhile, we follow Mark Shannon's property developer Wilson as he sources information on a local island, hoping to build a luxury resort there, and in the meantime ogle and frolic with the local whores. His frolicking set the hardcore action of the film in motion, as the whores explicitly fellate him in the shower and he enacts cunnilingus with them on his hotel bed. After cutting between Eastman and Shannon for a while, the two come together when the skipper agrees to take the developer (and a gold-digger he has picked up) to the island ripe for developing. But we've heard sinister things about this place, the so-called Cat Island: it is home to a hoard of zombies headed by a cat (!), the locals are terrified of it and some of them keep jujus to ward the evil off. We've also glimpsed some zombies bringing instant death to those they encounter with a swift chomp to the throat Before leaving, skipper goes to a local bar where a girl he is involved with strips and does an act which involves masturbating with a champagne bottle and then popping it with her vagina. This is a long, slow, melancholy scene – scored with wistful music – in which the skipper, alone in the bar, watches the act with interest, amusement, impressed but still with a nagging feeling of loneliness. In D'Amato's universe, the viewer is alone, shown exotic and erotic sights but removed, alienated, atomised and ultimately sad.
The skipper and his two passengers sail to Cat Island and there encounter an old black man with an egg-shaped disfigurement on his forehead and his luscious granddaughter, played with an exquisite lack of affect by Laura Gemser. They warn the visitors against messing with things but Wilson insults them, offers them money and generally causes offence. Gradually, the dead rise and interrupt the various erotic scenes which ensure, killing Wilson and aggressively establishing their ownership of the island. Gemser is a kind of succubus, making love to the visitors whilst the dead rise in the background. The old man gives the skipper a juju which has some effectiveness in warding off the dead but which is lost in the final melee, leaving the skipper vulnerable. He does escape with the gold-digger but they have both been driven mad by the experience, ending up making manic love which puts them right where we first saw them, in the lunatic asylum. Their lovemaking and the drooling idiot's view of this is interrupted by the guards. Skipper and girl are dragged back to their cells (they are convicted of Wilson's death and cannibalisation) and the loon is told that he should stop playing with himself and grow up. The audience are thus instructed to put their own private parts away and the film ends.
Erotic (or Sexy, as the credits have it) Nights of the Living Dead doesn't altogether work – it is over-long, languorous and under-developed in terms of plot. Yet its mix of hardcore porn, extreme gore and softcore frolicking make it a compelling example of D'Amato's refusal to stay put in any one genre. In throwing - almost willy-nilly - meat shots, coy fondling, bloody death and monsters at us whilst constantly reminding us of his male characters' ultimately sad position as voyeurs, sometimes conscious and lonely, sometimes drooling and out-of-control, and by suggesting that sex in the face of colonial exploitation and strident displays of wealth, he does go someway to offering a compelling vision of late 20th century Western man on the rocks of alienated enjoyment, whose erotic nights are indeed those of the living dead. -
kosmasp1 June 2020There are apparently two versions of this. One is just the story (more or less) and one is with added "love scenes". I did not time them but the latter version is supposed to be half an hour longer than the other one. Now the longer version (no pun intended) has quite some explicit scenes in them. Are they really necessary to further the story? Not really, they are there to shock and put this into pornographic territory.
Having said that, if you are easily offended get the other version and you won't have to deal with that. But the story overall about the "undead" and the island that is ... I guess you could say cursed, is quite neatly told. So while the pacing may be at fault at times, there is an interesting story here. Madness - I know -
csharples21 April 2010I'd wanted to see this film for a very long time. Joe D'Amato is my favourite director and as the film stars his regulars Laura Gemser and George Eastman it really was a must. Unfortunately I was extremely disappointed. Firstly, there are a couple of long hardcore scenes in the film, which make the film about 20 minutes longer than it should be. The acting is very amateurish so any scary atmosphere of the film is covered up by cheesiness. There is little, if any plot, and the gore scenes are few and far between. The gore scenes could be really graphic and disturbing, but no, papier mache would have been more convincing. As for the ending- I think it was obvious from the very beginning. I'm happy I've seen the film as it is a rarity but now I know why the film is almost a forgotten one. Joe D'Amato should have chosen to make an adult OR a zombie film, as with this odd cross-genre, he has failed miserably. Recommended only if you are an extreme D'Amato fan like myself. 3 out of 10.
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sangue18 August 2000i think a lot of people where let down by this flick, as most catalogs and genre books describe it as a gore soaked zombie porno. honestly, this film isn't that graphic. the sex is what i would call "hard soft-core" and there isn't much gore (though what gore there is is pretty cool.)
anywho, the story, from what i can tell concerns some kind of scientist/archetect/developer who travels to a strange island to do something or other, most likely something bad. once there, he angers the natives and a voodoo priest raises the dead which leads to a really creepy zombie attack-no really, it's right up there with fulci's zombie. as i said, there isn't much gore, but there is a neat scene where a doctor is examining a cadaver that was found floating in the bay, it sits up and takes a big bite out of the guys throat. then at the end there's a few bullet hits, some zombie carnage and star marks shannon gets his johnson bit of by laura gemser. the sex is fairly tame but there's a hilariously sleazy scene of a woman un-corking a champange bottle with her naughty bits. this film also has a great atmosphere and some excellent photography (also by Joe D'Amato) look out for some cool trick shots like when mark shannon throws a voddo idle on the ground and it changes instantly into a black cat that jumps up and attacks him. i had to watch that one again in slow motion i was so impressed! i would highly recommend this film for fans of bizarre cinema, and despite the lack of english, i think most will enjoy. -
Porn! I love porn with every fibre of my being. Pornography has undoubtedly been one of the greatest influences in my life. Zombies! Zombies are just cool. Terrifying yet they command your empathy. A slow relentless scourge that forces man to look in the mirror and face his demons. Or because they eat brains. Whatever. So naturally you combine these two extremely cool genres you're bound to have something worth watching, right? Nearly. This film is a mess. Two guys and a girl go to the forbidden Cat Island (oooooo, spooky name) as the superbly mustachioed property developer (who earlier gets nasty with two ho's) wants to erect (pun intended) a hotel there. Of course there is a mysterious girl and old man on the island, and zombies. What are they doing there? Who knows? Who cares? Sex scenes scattered throughout the whole movie. Plenty of nudity for the perverts. I was disappointed there is only one porn scene, would've been great to see Laura Gemser get in on the action!!!!
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sartre-226 February 1999This movie was a disappointment. It's supposed to be a porno-splatter flick, but neither the porn nor the gore is really impressing. Laura Gemser gets top-billing but you don't get to see very much. Besides, the plot is very confusing, especially when the copy I have is in Italian with no subtitles. However, there is a certain trash-value, and D'amatos flicks are almost always fun in a brain-dead kind of way. Mostly because of their incompetence.
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ecom-bkl29 September 2020Watching a Joe d'Amato film usually is a special experience. But with that trash movie he made himself unforgettable. I just watched it - 112 min of pure 1980 italo horror sexploitation. What can I say? George Eastman ist getting mad in the end - so does every D'Amato fan.
First 80 Minutes of this gem is just soft- and hardcore sex scenes with a little story around. Time moves slowly, the film drags on and on with a bit more than no action. But at least you see some hairy cunts, some licking and blow jobs - why not.... Last 30 minutes is filled with very slowly walking zombies attacking Captain Eastman and his 2 horny passengers - well they TRY to attack, but in fact they are too slow to be a threat to anyone. Well except ever horny John, his fault.
So be prepared to watch people fuck, talk, fuck, talk, doin strange things like gettin on a zombie island at night, and a bit of zombie apocalypse in the Dominican Republic. Poor me, I enjoyed this Joe D'Amato master work. ;-) At least, you'll hear a fantastic atmospheric electronic score (like in many other italian flics of that genre), and you'll watch some nice gore special effects - it's not the Fulci league, it's cheaper cheapest D'Amato, but that's what to expect! And it's nicely done.
Okay, the story could be told in 45 minutes whatsoever. But here, you get the full italo trash packet. In the end, Eastman - our master of disaster, man-eater hero - wakes up on the beach with his female passenger - nobody knows how and why they got there, another plot hole. Don't care! Glad to have survived, a normal film would show them running luckily away. Here, Joe D'Amato forces them into a kind of displacement activity - they just fuck, madly laughing. Maybe, this is one of the craziest scenes I've ever had the honour to watch - and I watched a lot....
Give this movie a try, if you are into italian 70s 80s horror and you have a lot of humour, and you are not afraid to see a cheap sex movie which turns into a cheap zombie movie ;) D'Amato rules! -
Good female butt shot in opening minutes, leads to story about zombies waiting for a trio on an island, scouting out possible locations for a new hotel. (Oh, who are they kidding? It was just an excuse to get laid on a tropical island!) They encounter a strange, seven foot tall old man and his adult daughter, and a black cat. The black cat being first shown in cemetery was an amusing touch. Good effect, also, of a small amulet being picked up from a candle lit altar, being thrown to the ground, and turning into the black cat, which immediately jumps back at the guy throwing it and attacks him.
Oooh, a machete! That should up the gore. One zombie gets their googley eyes gouged out, ala The Three Stooges, then decapitated with the aforementioned machete, and their head then kicked like a soccer ball.
Attempted escape from the island (where the zombies are buried under what appears to be no more than an inch of sand) in a raft proves futile, no surprise there. Later holding the cat amulet hostage saves their lives, briefly at least.
The brutally violent zombie gore clashes with the variably good porn/ sex scenes; did this film start out as a horror movie which had hardcore sex scenes added, or a sex flick with gory horror scenes added? Good island locations, decent sex and nudity, and the added twist of most of the action taking place in broad daylight is unique, but the film overlong and painfully slow, and it is marred by a really awful ending, in which everything is explained away as being imagined by a mental patient, as he is banging the nude nurse in opening minutes of the film, before he is carted away, back to his padded cell. -
morrison-dylan-fan13 January 2021Despite having heard about him for years,I've not seen one of the near 200 titles directed by Joe D'Amato. Gathering up titles from 1980 to view,I found a D'Amato film I picked up ages ago was from the year,leading to me getting set to witness some erotic nights.
View on the film:
Risking breaking his back by carrying the whole film on his shoulders,Marcello Giombini brings the dead to life with a terrific score, whose dark synch Prog Rock groove brings a creepy atmosphere to the lumbering zombie walks,and even makes the old fashion "cat meow" jump-scare charm.
Working on a super low budget, cinematographer/ director D'Amato surprisingly treats the lads and lasses in the audience equally, by offering a eyeful of sleazy skin from Laura Gemser & George Eastman (with Eastman also writing the script.)
Although the gore has a sloppy appearance of red paint being dabbed onto the necks of the cast, D'Amato goes back to the early days of zombie flicks, by chewing the slow-moving hungry types with the Voodoo West Indies origins over a erotic night of the living dead. -
poolandrews19 August 2005Le Notti Erotiche dei Morti Viventi, or Erotic Nights of the Living Dead & Sexy Nights of the Living Dead as it's more widely known among English speaking audiences, introduces us to John Wilson (Mark Shannon) who works for a company that are going to buy a tropical paradise called Cat Island & build a holiday resort on it. John hires local sailor Larry O'Hara (George Eastman) to take him & his wife Fiona (Dirce Funari) to Cat Island so he can give it the once over, despite Cat Islands bad reputation with the superstitious locals Larry agrees to take them. Once there they encounter a mysterious young woman (Laura Gemser) & her Grandfather who act strangely & warn them to leave. John isn't having any of it & since the boats motor has broken down their stuck there anyway. Things take a turn for the worse when it becomes apparent that Cat Island is also infested with rotting flesh-eating zombies whom appear very hungry...
This Italian production was directed by Joe D'Amato who also saw to the cinematography under his real name Aristide Massaccesi & there really aren't many films like Le Notti Erotiche dei Morti Viventi around, this has been released in basically two different versions an explicit one with hardcore sex & a softer one without although I think both versions contain all the gore. The script by star George Eastman mixes hardcore pornography & Italian exploitation horror. I'm not sure that the mixing of these two genres work particularly well as both the horror & sex elements are kept well apart in terms of the story & one has no notable significance in regards to the other which at times can make you feel that Le Notti Erotiche dei Morti Viventi is two different films pasted together. The hardcore footage consists of one scene where two prostitutes have sex with John, masturbation (at this point while giving John a hand-job one of the women says "they could arrest you for carrying a concealed weapon!"), oral sex & full penetration are present but that's where the hardcore ends really, there is a scene when Fiona masturbates & an infamous bit when a women opens a bottle by inserting it into her vagina. The horror doesn't really kick in until the last 20 or so minutes when the zombies rise. The pacing is a real killer as far as the overall film goes, it becomes quite boring towards the end & at almost 2 hours long in it's uncut state I found my interest waining well before the end. There are very few characters in Le Notti Erotiche dei Morti Viventi & those present aren't that well fleshed out, a lot of scenes & ideas seem unrelated & go unexplained like the Doctor who gets one scene, the black cat that keeps turning up, the zombie in the port that Larry kills, the man at the beginning killed by a zombie & why the hell are there zombies on Cat Island anyway? Some sort of explanation would have been nice while the opening & closing segments are completely unnecessary & feel out of place. On a positive note director D'Amato amazingly manages to create some good sequences, the blue lit zombie scenes at the end look fantastic & add a visual elegance. I wouldn't give D'Amato too much credit though as these scenes were shot during the day & a blue sepia tone was probably added in post production with the alternate sunny daytime shots as they were filmed presented on the DVD as an extra. The real life Santa Domingo locations in the Dominican Republic look beautiful, the beaches, the clear blue sea & the palm trees make me wish I was there zombies or not! The gore is not that graphic, a couple of zombies have their heads chopped off, a few are shot in the head, there is one brief gut-munching scene, a Doctor is attacked by a maggot ridden zombie & that's about it. There is lots of nudity, in fact everyone take all their clothes off for the slightest reason except Eastman who never strips below the waist in any part. The acting & dubbing are up to the usual low standards set by Euro exploitation films. Le Notti Erotiche dei Morti Viventi is an odd film, I liked it's exploitation elements but found it very choppy, poorly paced & despite the odd explicit sex scene & brief horror I didn't find it particularly enjoyable or entertaining as a whole, just in parts which is where my score comes from. Still it's definitely worth a watch for Euro exploitation fans like myself who should be able to find a few redeeming features in it. However, if you get hold of the uncut version make sure you don't watch it in front of your family... -
Oh yea this is a exploitation/zombie/euro trash classic I was wanting this on DVD for years alas I got it yesterday at the amazing Rasputin records in Berkley,CA anyway lots and lots of sex and sleaze I'm talking hardcore sex I have the rated x DVD lets say there is a scene that must be seen a chick has sex with a champaign bottle and uncorks it!Now lets talk about the zombies real quick their cool oldfashiond slow zombi 2 like zombies there is a good amount of zombi action.Also its dubbed so bad that you will be chuckling a lot so I am done talking about it now its time for you to find this and see it you wont forget it!!
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Groverdox9 October 2020Here is a title I have never forgotten: "Erotic Nights of the Living Dead". Think about that choice of words for a moment. So it's the living dead who are having erotic nights? Zombie lovemaking? Who would find the idea of two decomposing, flesh-eating corpses having sex to be erotic?
Of course, the fact that no real zombie sex actually takes place in the movie only makes the title more ridiculous. It's like they thought the word "erotic" and the words "living dead" were all that mattered. Who cares what order the words appear in, or how such an order might be misconstrued?
I watched this movie after D'Amato's similarly foolishly titled "Porno Holocaust", which he made with this one back-to-back in Santo Domingo. The movies even have the same cast - Mister Lumpy-Bollocks himself, Mark Shannon, the old D'Amato standby, colossal George Eastman, and the beautiful Dominican adult actress Lucia Ramirez. This one also has another of D'Amato's favourite performers: Emanuelle (not Emmanuelle!) herself, Laura Gemser. I wonder why she wasn't in "Porno Holocaust"?
I liked "Erotic Nights" more than "Porno". It's more entertaining, and has a few unbelievable moments, such as a scene where Ramirez ends a strip tease by using her vagina to uncork a champagne bottle - I'm not lying - and another scene in which Gemser goes to give Shannon a blow-job, and instead chomps off his sausage.
With such sharp teeth, she could have removed his genital warts instead. -
Michael_Elliott12 March 2008Erotic Nights of the Living Dead (1980)
** (out of 4)
XXX version
Infamous Joe D'Amato film that mixes Italian gore with Italian sex. Three people head for a deserted island to have a lot of sex and to see if a hotel could be built on the island. They should have listened to all the rumors because zombies are there waiting. This is an extremely weird and bizarre film because the producer's wanted two films made. One a porno and another a horror film so the director just combined the two elements. Running at nearly two hours this thing goes on for way too long, which is why I wish the hardcore sex scenes would have been removed. There's a "soft" version out there that I keep meaning to see because I'm sure I'd like the film better minus the sex scenes. The zombie footage on the other hand is wonderfully done with a lot of great atmosphere and gore. D'Amato was a master behind the camera and the cinematography here is terrific as is the music score. Laura Gemser, George Eastman and Mark "Wart Nuts" Shannon star. This here is a lot better than the director's first horror/sex film Porno Holocaust, which was filmed at the same time with the same cast of this one.
Sexy Nights of the Living Dead (1980)
** (out of 4)
The version under this title is the pure horror version, which is missing all of the XXX scenes. For years I had been wanting to check this version out because I felt that the hardcore scenes in the uncut version were all rather ugly and did nothing erotic and instead they just dragged the film down. It was interesting watching the film without the porn scenes because you realize that the Joe D'Amato film has more problems than just the porn stuff. For starters, even without the hardcore sex there's way too many softcore scenes that are also not erotic. I was really surprised to see how silly the majority of the scenes are because it's clear that the main intent was just to show sex. Another major problem with the picture is that it just takes them way too long to finally get to the island where the zombie stuff happens. The zombies, as great as they are, are pretty much wasted because outside a couple scenes early on, the majority of their screen time happens at the very end of the movie. It's really a shame that they weren't given more screen time because I felt the horror elements were quite strong and they keep the movie interesting. Even though he was unable to make anything erotic, D'Amato did do a good job building up a rather bizarre atmosphere. This version clocks in at 100-minutes, which means it is missing twelve minutes worth of hardcore scenes. So, is this version better? I would say that it is simply because it's shorter and as I said, the hardcore scenes were rather ugly and added nothing to the picture. -
alienlegend4 August 2023Be warned this has hardcore sex in it by the actual actors (pretty rare for a horror film) so if you're offended by such things, stay far away although with a title like Erotic Nights of the Living Dead, that shouldn't be a big surprise. I'm not going to lie. I really enjoyed this and I like how far it went. It does slow down a bit near the end and it could've used some more extreme gore but it makes up for that with all the sex. The girls are very beautiful though and again it's full of nudity. It basically starts with a threesome or at least that's what my brain remembers from the first part (sorry my brain lives in the gutter).