ThiefHott
Too much of everything
ShangLuda
Admirable film.
TrueHello
Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.
Foreverisacastironmess
So were those crazy kids dead or what??! This film seems to have been largely swept under the rug and is an easy one to miss because of its various titles and probably how there are many similarly plotted flicks to it dotted throughout the 80s, including better ones made by Lamberto Bava. Even the story sounds fairly generic just to describe it, being about a group of young people on a road trip who, following a petty theft from a convenience store, find themselves in a rustic tavern where the highly suspicious owner makes a tempting wager that one of them can't spend a night in the underlying ancient catacombs which legend says are a portal to hell...sort of. It sure doesn't sound like anything special but I really took to it right away and I was very impressed and entertained by the strong atmosphere and set designs of the catacombs, which were unbelievably well done for the budget and were so enchantingly creepy and absorbing to look at that it made me wonder why the movie isn't a little more well known and regarded. It doesn't deserve the harsh reception it's got from most of the reviewers on here, the worst thing it's guilty of is a little horrendous acting, but I for one was quite entertained by all that hyper and over-the-top dubbed acting, and I never found this to be dull and boring, the main thing I took from it was that it was just a lot of macabre 80s kooky Italian dubbed fun, I thought it was a lot of totally harmless tongue in cheek cheese, and it had a good balance between being campy but also pretty eerie too. People have taken it so seriously without seeming to notice or care that the movie has a definite playfulness to itself that almost makes it feel like a Scooby Doo adventure at points, you do get that the characters are in danger, but it never feels like they're in that much danger! The scene that to me best demonstrates how much fun the director was having with it is the rather extravagantly grotesque sequence where a group on undead monster debutants are enjoying what by the looks of it is to them some fine dining, but scatter back into their coffins in terror when two wandering humans invade their sumptuous banquet of the damned! I've seen a lot of horror movies but wow! I really couldn't believe it when that spectacular scene popped up! Everyone bandies around the old "It's a TV movie" excuse like it automatically makes a movie so much worse. Horsepucky! To me the acting and visuals of this were about as effective as the next 80s Bava horror picture! I had myself a blast with it and I wasn't interested in putting it down for its production values or the quality of the acting, I found it to be a lot more enjoyable and entertaining than the majority of the newer horror flicks I've been watching lately. Again I wasn't sure if it was an actual location or not but I loved the ancient labyrinth of crypts that were the catacombs, they were magnificently gothic and the movie was rich in atmosphere because of them, they were the perfect creepy setting. All but one of the characters kept me very amused all the way through and I enjoyed the ride, it was like a tour through one of the best spookhouses in history!! I like it a lot but I would've loved it if it wasn't for the completely unnecessary confusion of the ending, which for me harmed the overall effect of the whole thing. The movie feels like it's building up to a very obvious twist which is heavily hinted at multiple times, but just never happens. They manage to escape from the catacombs and the obviously evil tavern guy pulls off his face and declares himself the Grim Reaper and advances on them, but is killed by a simple stabbing? And them it shows that the police have found their van crashed on the side of the road and not in a stream, but their dead bodies aren't in it, then as they emerge from the freaky pub with their hard-earned booty they're arrested...so they must be alive! Then why did the movie try so hard to make me think otherwise? I don't know if something was lost in translation to the English dub or what, but from where I'm looking that was just some seriously sloppy filmmaking and didn't make any damn sense! Bava should have just gone with the "they were dead the whole time" angle anyway! Some like the ending but for me that was just too big a plot-hole to ignore. Overall though I liked this movie, I think it's an excellent watch around Halloween, and for all its faults, this movie is a fine exercise in atmosphere and tension and is well worth watching for some chills as well as laughs. If you enjoy it as much as I did, then you'll find that it's a film that when you've seen it, you'll be wondering where it's been hiding and why you didn't watch it sooner. X
Michael_Elliott
Graveyard Disturbance (1987) * 1/2 (out of 4) A rather bizarre, made-for-TV Italian film has five teenage punks shoplifting from a small store and then running off from the police. They end up staying the night in the woods when they discover a small club with a lavish treasure. In order to get the treasure they must "enter the gates" into a strange world of zombie/vampire creatures. If you're expecting gore and violence like in Bava's DEMONS then you're going to be disappointed because there's really not too much of anything here. We really don't get to any horror elements until the 45-minute mark and even then the stuff is very small, really boring and in the end really doesn't go anywhere. There is a decent twist towards the end of the movie but at the same time the ending is so bad that you really just have to sit there a few minutes after it's over with and wonder why they even bothered. The screenplay is really all over the place as its never quite sure what it wants to do and the more supernatural elements never really work because there's really no backbone to what's going on. Even the twist comes way too late and it really goes against everything that came before it and then we get cheated even more because what happens after wards goes against the twist. The performances range from bad to poor but Bava's direction does add a few nice touches. The first appearance of the zombie and how it comes to "move" is quite effective and handled very well. There are a few scenes with some atmosphere but just not enough to warrant the 96-minute running time. The zombie/vampire make up effects are decent for such a low budget film but they can't save the movie and in the end there's no real reason to watch this unless you have to see every horror film released in Italy.
Coventry
Made for cable-TV, a cheesy synopsis and director Bava who had just delivered his very weak "Demons 2" sequel...There were more than enough omens to warn me that this "Graveyard Disturbance" would be a waste of time and not worth purchasing. Yet, I'm a fan of most of the man's work and even a mediocre Italian horror film is still better than an over-hyped American one, so I gave it a look anyway. Since this is a TV-production, you can't really compare it with Lamberto Bava's more serious horror films and that also explains the lack of gore and controversy (aspects that are normally well-present in Bava-films). The story is light-headed, simple and cliché, introducing five rebel-teenagers who strand at a ghostly cemetery after a fleeing from their daily shoplifting routines. They meet a spooky looking bartender who offers them a bet they can't refuse. They're promised a pricey reward when they manage to spend the night in the eerie catacombs underneath the cemetery. The script (partly written by Lamberto Bava himself) is really weak and the dialogues are pitiful. The film is only made endurable by a few ingenious sequences (like the freak-family's dinner party inside the crypt), some atmospheric set pieces and professional make-up effects. The zombies look good and the giant eyeball scene is the only slightly suspenseful moment in the entire film. Bava also obviously attempted to insert humor and parody in his screenplay but this was far from effective (I didn't laugh, at least). I'm not even going to waste words on the acting performances as they are truly amateurish. Most cast-members are nonetheless Bava regulars who acted remarkably better in "Foto di Goia" and "Demons". Overall, Graveyard Disturbance is worth a peek in case you've already seen every other Italian horror film or when you're really bored.
agrajag-4
this is one of those typical movies in which a bunch of teens, driving around in their hippie van which they call a jeep, drive (quite logically) into a stream, astonishingly get stuck when they're driving against the current in 3-4 foot deep water, and go camp out in the nearby ruins of an old castle. the acting is pretty awful, and mixed with the actual dialog and plot, i just wanted every one of these adolescent abominations to die (it being a horror movie, after all). i won't put in any spoilers, but...let's just say i was disappointed to the fullest degree on that note. in fact, i'll add that i was disappointed by the zombies, or vampire-zombies, or whatever, as they didn't attack ANYTHING. one of them fondled another one's breast and got slapped for it, and one popped out of the shadows and just kind of gave up pursuit, but that was it. i was hoping for something of the gorier, more eurohorror-ish kind a la Zombie or The Beyond. instead, i got Mystery Science Theater 3000 material... but without the robots.
