Originally Posted by Frankie Teardrop  MONSTER DOG – Well, it's a Claudio Fragasso movie, so make of that what you will. In some ways, 'Monster Dog' is a thing of real bizarreness – it centres on Alice Cooper (who for a good half of the runtime looks like someone's dad), a familial werewolf curse, and a town full of runaway dogs which kill people now and then. Alice is back on his home turf to re-shoot a rock video with some pals who all suffer from an extreme case of Euro-woodenness (I'm talking about the acting). His enthusiasm takes a dive when he finds out that he might be the son of a wolf-man, but, being a seasoned pro, he does the video thing and changes into his stage gear, which at least gives him an excuse to run around looking like a middle aged Alice Cooper impersonator for the rest of the film. A posse of dudes who look like they might be in a sort-of Spag Western turn up and do some shooting until the tragic end. 'Monster Dog' has all the ingredients necessary for essential late Italian trash badness, but it doesn't quite ripen into the classic bilge it might've been. There's a little too much lag in places, and the exploitative aspects aren't mined fully. Nevertheless, being a Fragasso film, it wears its lameness on its sleeve and delivers plenty of threadbare charm.
ZOMBIE CREEPING FLESH – Been a long time since I last touched base with this Bruno Mattei baddie – I was worried I might be bored, as I'd pegged ZCF as a bit of a yawner. I really liked it, actually. Whereas Fulci furnished his rip-offs with an atmosphere that was his and only his, ZCF has no real style or vibe, apart from that belonging to late seventies / early eighties cut throat Italian exploitation. Actually, being a Bruno Mattei film, it has an additional layer of nonsensicality, which as always borders on the unintentionally surreal. It's a movie of set pieces and moments – between these, downtime, made up of jungle trecking, bickering conversation and stock footage of wildlife (hardly necessary to pad out a film over ninety minutes long). Some of the 'pivotal' sequences are eerily effective – the bit in the native village has a strange air about it, reaching into Mondo territory with its shots of tribal gatherings and people picking maggots out of corpses to eat. Really lurid, leering stuff, and all the more brazen when you consider the film's wraparound narrative about third world exploitation. But ZCF has no coherent ideology, it's pure pulp, pretty much summed up by the scene where one of the SWAT team guys goes into the basement of a house riddled with zombies and does what anyone would do, puts on a tutu and starts dancing around.
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