Silly Movie Trailer of the Week - Nights of Terror/Burial Ground/The Zombie Dead/Zombi Horror

Been too good on here recently, we need some silly schlock as we're going into the Halloween season, dammit!  And what better place is there for that than the wild world of Italian zombie cinema?  Today's entry is from one of the several dozen pieces of undead exploitation that were made shortly after Dawn of the Dead (retitled Zombi) and Zombi 2 (Zombie Flesh Eaters) were big hits at the European box office.  In fact, this one tried to pass itself off as Zombi 3 on occasion, something quite a few films tried before they made an official one.  This is 1981's Nights of Terror, aka a whole bunch more alternative titles I'm not going into again, and let's see a UK video dealer's trailer for it!

Well, that was informative.  Let's see if this theatrical trailer can shed a bit more light on the film.

OK, I think I know why the dealer's trailer was so brief; they knew that they wouldn't sell any units if the showed any actual footage. BTW, according to the BBFC website, the version on UK video was cut by about 15 minutes, between the censors and the distributors.  That might be another reason, maybe most of the theatrical trailer isn't in the finished film!  Man, it really sets the tone of your movie when the first shot of the trailer (which is one of the last shots of the film, that little text paragraph is in both) has multiple typos.  "nigths of terror", NIGTHS?  Also, you don't spell "Prophecy" with an f.  I made sure to include that bit about Zombi 2 at the start as this one is a shameless rip-off of it in many ways.  That zombie sitting up at thirty seconds in is an almost identical rising from the grave shot in Lucio Fulci's film, down to the way that the body seems to have been buried very shallow; have they never heard the phrase "six feet under" in Italy?  Also, that bit at about two minutes in with the window is a lot like the famous splinter of wood scene... only rubbish.  Still, it has the occasional original idea, like the one that hurls a nail at one minute fifteen in, as though being dead makes you a master of Ninjitsu.

Now this trailer cuts around one of the film's most infamous aspects; there's a kid in the story, Michael, who is actually played by an adult actor.  This is because the film has a truly bizarre Oedipal/Incestual subplot involving the character, culminating in an utterly tasteless moment in the climax, and if they tried doing this with a child actor, it would be outright illegal, instead of the current case of "OH SWEET JESUS FUCK WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU ANDREA BIANCHI??".  Yeah, I think I can guess what the BBFC got the scissors out for.  Oddly, I doubt it was for much of the gore this time, as it looks very ropey and papier mache like; the zombies themselves look ridiculous, going far too mask like.  Their origin in story is interesting though, as they are specifically said to be Etruscan (an Italian civilisation that fell to Rome around 100 BC), which is a common trope in Italian horror stories; if they want something creepy and gothic in Italy itself, they make it Etruscan, it's like their equivalent of the "Native American Burial Ground" trope.  Interesting footnote, not enough to save this film though.  Yeah, spare a thought for the poor video shop owners who did buy this piece of shit for their rental shelves back in the day...