Porno Holocaust (1981)

A scientific expedition to an island used in nuclear testing results in the discovery of a mutated being with a huge appetite for killing and sex.With packaging promising a 'horny, mutant, cannibalistic zombie' on 'an island exposed to nuclear fallout', the wonderfully titled Porno Holocaust, directed by king of Italian sleaze Joe D'Amato, should be an unmissable exploitation classic; however, with its run-time of nearly two hours, and nary a plot to string the endless scenes of bumping and grinding together, the film couldn't help but be rather tedious and something of a disappointment.As a porn film, I guess the movie does its job well. The sex is hard and frequent and the cast give it their all, performing the standard roster of XXX movie sex acts with sufficient enthusiasm. The three female adventurers (Lucia Ramirez, Dirce Funari and Annj Goren) are hot and willing, whilst heroic Captain O'Day (Mark Shannon) is THE atypical 70s porn star: all 'tache and mirrored sunglasses (and looking more than a bit like Magnum P.I.).Unfortunately, those looking for a bit of horror to go with the humping would be recommended to try elsewhere. Except for a couple of brief, and not overly gory, death scenes, the film is pretty much blood free.Had D'Amato split the action 50/50 between the nookie and the nastiness, I reckon Porno Holocaust would have been an unmissable treat for fans of extreme cinema; as it stands, the film is nothing more than an average hardcore sex-flick that will find few fans outside of the dirty mac brigade.

Joe D'Amato might have made some other notable movies in his very long and very prolific career- prolific, of course, by turns of making VERY cheap Z-grade movies in Italy's big exploitation boom of the late 70s early 70s- but Porno Holocaust isn't one of them, or at least shouldn't be. Granted, I should not expect much from a movie with such a title, but I thought considering the back of the box's description that it might have some fun horror scenes with the "horny, mutant, cannibal zombie". Turns out the zombie doesn't appear until more than halfway into the movie, and at every turn we get instead a tawdry sex scene as hardcore as one can imagine. Which is fine. But it's not very enjoyable, except in the most "what the f*** is this BS" kind of way. There's laughable dialog involving lobsters costing more from mail-order Japan than in Paris, hot, slim women play biologists and zoologists who have particular sexual hang-ups (letting the door be unlocked to be raped, and a bi-polar kind of enjoyment out of getting gang-banged).It all leads up to the island, where the "main attraction" is a guy who early on just spends an absolutely pathetic (forget ludicrous) amount of time just staring at the newcomers to the radioactive wasteland of the shot-on-Caribbean island, and once revealed has a face like one of the guards in Jabba's palace and has a sweet potato for a main genital. But much dumber than anything before it is the "relationship" that develops between the monster and a dark-skinned lady who has an inordinate amount of time to escape, but just sits there, blank-faced, as the monster brings gifts and for what must be a racially-motivated exploitation move on the part of the filmmakers the monster ONLY rapes and kills the white women, and not her. And it ends, of course, with a "happy" ending. I use quotes, of course, out of a kind of shock that this could have any kind of legitimate ending at all.Bottom line, this is NOT what you might expect, as possibly being a bloody horror movie with plenty of tacky but cool looking Italian monster-zombies devouring human flesh. If anything what violence is in the film is done on a shoe-string; a log hit to the face is immediately cut to the bloody aftermath, which is like the aftermath of a tomato hitting someone. So really, the last part of the title is meant more for market sake. Yet even as a porno movie it has little to go on except as a reason for the cast and crew to get a paid vacation to the Caribbean (as an interview with George Eastman suggests, this was just one of a few quickies made while on the island). Its got penny-bought schlocky camera-work and similar actors, filled with genitalia about 3/4 of the whole time and with wretched lip-syncing and music like Nino Rota forced at gun-point to make something snappy in a bordello, and it's STILL a piece of celluloid dung all the same; all of this could be an immense guilty pleasure, but it isn't.

Sleaze-maestro Joe D'Amato serves up another exploit ho-hummer with PORNO HOLOCAUST. Shot with much of the same cast as EROTIC NIGHTS OF THE LIVING DEAD (with the exception of a noticeably missing Laura Gemser), on the same island, with the same type of "zombies" strolling around. My copy is Italian language only, so here's what I got from it.A group of people go to the aforementioned island, bone a lot, and then get attacked by pug-nosed zombies. Said zombies must be horny too, cuz the highlight of the film is a zombie-rape scene. Most of the group of non-zombies is killed off, but two survive, and start boning as soon as their little canoe gets off the island...No real idea what was going on in PORNO HOLOCAUST other than what was mentioned above. There's quite a bit more hardcore sex in this film than in EROTIC NIGHTS OF THE LIVING DEAD, and the films end differently, but other than that (and the exclusion of Gemser...), I doubt I'd be able to tell the two films apart if I hadn't seen either in a while. Worth a look to fans of D'Amato's sleazy romps, but not one of his more notable films either...6/10

There has been a lot of rumour about this one, considered the severe cuts the film has suffered in a variety of VHS versions. The uncut version is a very funny and edwoodesque porno horror flick with the Mark Shannon/Manlio Cersosimo (he looks like Harry Reems). The Santo Domingo locations are beautiful as usual all the character walking almost endlessly up and down the small island gives the film an hypnotical aura. Lucia Ramirez is simply beautiful and Dirce Funari has a great scene (if you like extreme cinema). As usual, don't watch this one if you're easily offended, but if you think you're an exploitation fan don't miss this Joe D'Amato masterpiece.