Burial Ground is one of those movies that can be described as having a cult following. It's a total B movie, involving poor dubbing, spotty film editing, weird music, pointless nudity, and a plot that makes Star Wars: Episode 2 look like Shakespeare. I'm not complaing though. I wouldn't be much of a horror movie fan if I didn't enjoy B-movies, and Burial Ground definately had some enjoyable moments.

The plot involves a professor unearthing zombies (I'm assuming accidently), who then terroize his house guests. Seriously, that's it. Like City of the Living Dead, I had seen Burial Ground years ago and thought it was a masterpiece, but time once again has proven to be a harsh bitch mistress. Hell, I didn't even remember that there was a professor who caused the zombie outbreak. For the first five minutes of this movie, I was like who is that guy and why don't I remember him? Of course, I remembered the gratuitous nudity (not that I'm complaining) and weird looking zombies. Then there's the little person, or "midget" for those of you who are poltically incorrect, who plays a teenage boy who is in love with his own mother...

Peter Bark plays Michael, who lusts after his mother. It's pretty obvious that Bark is not really a teenager, but I found myself questioning it because I just couldn't accept the fact that the director had casted a little person to play an incestous boy. Bark is legitimately creepy in this role, but sometimes it's just too over the top for me. I was actually left feeling more amused on a comedic level than on any horror level by Bark's portrayal. This isn't a bad thing because the bottom line is that Bark's performance leaves an impression on the viewer that is almost impossible to forget.

Getting back to the plot, my biggest problem is that all the characters are supposedly friends of the professor, but they never seem to be bothered by the fact that he's disappeared from his mansion. The characters just go about their plans, which involves having lots of sex. For some reason this seems to really anger the zombies in this movie. May be they're bitter over the fact that as members if the undead, they are incapable of engaging in anything resembling sexual acvtivity, or may be they're just really uptight about boobies. To be honest, I don't even know how the professor awakens the zombies. He just goes down to a cave and chips away on some stones and then magically zombies are waking up.

Speaking of the zombies, they are are almost like the heroes of this movie. They learn as the movie progesses. They start to use simple tools, disguises, and even an electric power saw. While this is the happening, the humans are just running for their lives, and can you blame them? The music that plays when the zombies are on-screen is weird, if nothing else. I found the music to be a little too sci-fi for my liking. A friend of mine joked about how the music sounded like something you'd expect to hear for aliens, and I have to agree with him.

The gore in Burial Ground is pretty good. It's basically what you would expect from an early 80's Italian horror movie. My favorite scene is when one of the character gets killed by the zombies using a scythe. The zombie effects are sort of hit and miss. There are some scenes where the extras don't even look that zombified. Then there's the really rotten zombies who for some reason still have fresh eyeballs in their skull like heads. However, some of the zombies come out of the ground covered with worms, which is a great visual. All the zombies also wear robes for some reason, which may have more to due with budget concerns than anything plot related.