At a hospital morgue in New York City the hand of a corpse is removed and stolen. It is the second time in a month that someone’s body has been desecrated. Doctor’s assistant and amateur anthropologist, Lori Ridgeway (Alexandra Delli Colli), wants to call the police, but the teaching professor, Dr. Draylock (Walter Patriarca), is worried about bad publicity. Then another corpse has its heart ripped out. Eventually the perpetrator is caught and proves to be a cannibal orderly named Toran (Turam Quibo). Toran jumps out a window committing suicide. Before he dies the orderly mumbles a couple words, “Kito orders”. Lori recognizes the word Kito as that of a Southeast Asian dialect that means “Divine Island”.
Dr. Peter Chandler (Ian McCulloch), from the Department of Health discusses the situation with Lori and Dr. Dryer. Peter tells Lori that there have been other instances of cannibalism in other places. Between the two of them they figure out that the cannibals came from an area in the Moluccas Archipelago. Lori is familiar with the area having grown up there.
Peter leads an expedition with his assistant, George Harper (Peter O’Neal), Lori, and a reporter, Susan Kelley (Sherry Buchanan) to find out what is going on. When they arrive in the Moluccas they contact the local doctor, Dr. Obrero (Donald O’Brien). He sends them off with his trusted aide, Molotto (Dakar) to Kito Island. On the way the boat develops engine trouble. They decide to stop at the closest island.
It turns out that Molotto was trying to keep everyone away from Kito, but they ended up there anyway. On Kito the group runs smack into cannibals. The cannibals are chased away by zombies but not before many of the party are eaten alive. They manage to contact Dr. Obrero, but when he arrives the remaining explorers find out that Obrero is actually a mad scientist who is responsible for creating the zombies. Dr. Obrero decides that the remaining members of the expedition must never leave the island alive.
“Zombi Holocaust” AKA “Dr. Butcher MD” was released in 1980 and was directed by Marino Girolami. It is an Italian horror film. Although not a true video nasty, the film was banned in several European countries and subject to seizure in places. I’ve heard that, at some point, the film was also called “Zombie 3”, “Island of the Last Zombies” and “Queen of the Cannibals”.
Zombie movies aren’t usually the best plot wise. What they are good at is blood, guts and gore. The same with cannibal movies. Here we get both. It starts with cannibals, and then it adds zombies and finally cannibal zombies. In addition, the movie adds a mad scientist and a jungle setting. It’s not a great movie, not even a great zombie movie. The focus is on the cannibal aspect of the story. There’s lots of cannibal gore but rather weak zombie splatter. Still, there’s enough here to gross you out.
For the U.S. version of the film changes were made. The film was reedited, and new music was added. Enough was removed that the American distributors had a scene added where Lori falls into a pit and has to be rescued by Peter. According to Ian McCulloch, that scene was shot in the fall somewhere in Italy so the trees in that scene are leafless.
Zombi Holocaust
Dr. Butcher, MD