Perhaps the most striking aspect of the film is how dated it looks and feels. In plot and atmosphere, it is virtually indistinguishable from an early-80s Bruno Mattei splatter epic, to the extent that we had to keep reminding ourselves it was made in the last decade. The plot, such as it is, is almost identical to the lamentable Zombie Flesheaters 2 – as well as about a million other spaghetti horrors – concerning a virus outbreak from a military lab that turns people into flesh-hungry monsters. There’s an attempt made to address modern gender roles by making both the lead zombie and the central protagonist ass-kicking women, but like many of the film’s lame ‘character moments’ it feels contrived (at best) and patronising (at worst).

But then this is a zombie flick, a genre hardly noted for being cerebral. Generally, the worst crime a film like this can commit is to be boring, and unfortunately Junk fails on this count too; the limitations of the budget (encapsulated by the duller-than-dull warehouse setting) mean that the set-piece showdowns are considerably less exciting than they should be. Like every second-rate action film of the era, Junk aims for Matrix-style kinetic thrills, and fails dismally; no amount of clever editing and propulsive drum machines on the soundtrack can disguise the fact that Muroga shoots everything in a medium-close, 3/4 frame shot in order to disguise the pitiful location and lack of extras. Even the zombies – probably the cheapest screen monsters to realise – are rubbish, with the decay of living death represented by a handful of mud slapped on the face.

In fact, probably the most entertaining thing about the film is Yuki Kashimoto’s rather unfortunate performance as the doctor at the centre of the story. Forced to deliver half his lines in English by a ham-fisted script that uses token American characters to make the film seem more international, his slurred mangling of the language is unintentionally hilarious and suggests that Muroga wasn’t too bothered bm the international market. I can return the favour and suggest that the international market shouldn’t be too bothered by Junk. There are better zombie films out there, and there are definitely better Japanese films out there. Unless you have a yearning nostalgia for Italian zombie films, you’re best to give this one a miss. Junk by name, and unfortunately, Junk by nature.

Which brings us to Zombie Flesh Eaters 2. Despite receiving sole director’s credit, Fulci apparently directed a mere 10 minutes of this film, before quitting in disgust; he subsequently disowned the film. It’s not hard to see why – this is one of the most ineptly made, painfully written and downright boring films I’ve had the misfortune of sitting through in some considerable time. It’s also completely unrelated to the original, so fans can be forgiven for feeling short-changed. Some of the film’s location work was directed by Bruno Mattei, the man behind other turkeys such as Zombie Creeping Flesh, but the bulk of the film was handled by writer Claudio Fragasso, whose direction is as shoddy as his screenplay. ZFE2 is astonishingly derivative; the science-vs-military theme is photocopied straight from Day of the Dead, and avian attack is lifted from The Birds and the movie’s final moments manage to remix the endings of the both Dawn and Night of the Living Dead. Suffice it to say, the characters are paper-thin, ranging from the utterly forgettable to the irritatingly moronic, including one soldier who attempts (with some success) to seduce the survivor of a zombie attack moments after rescuing her. The madness is all overseen by a jive-talking DJ, whose rambling patter drives home the film’s half-baked ecological message with all the subtlety of a lobotomy with an electric drill. He too succumbs to the zombie plague, and the film ends with him dedicating a record to “all the undead around the world”. No really.

The DJ’s not the only zombie to talk – these undead are not only hungry but willing to spout the most inane dialogue as well, my favourite being the guy who, have recently been zombie-fied, attacks his girlfriend with the line “I’m fine now, just a little thirsty – for your blood!!!“. This is one of several jaw-dropping moments in the film which demonstrates the complete lack of quality control on offer. Others include: the disembodied zombie head which floats out of a fridge to bite someone, the zombie birds returning to life, and the birth of a zombie baby. In all fairness, the latter reappeared in the 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake, which kind of shows the level Zac Snyder was working at.

These set-piece scenes aside, however, there’s isn’t really enough to push Zombie Flesh Eaters 2 into the ‘so bad it’s good’ category. Even the gore, usually a reliable staple of Italian cinema, looks cheap and lacks Fulci’s inventive squish. The music is quite appalling as well, a migraine-inducing electro-funk workout that often threatens to break into Van Halen’s Jump. I’m not above enjoying really bad movies, but this is an utterly charmless film that feels too cynical for me to indulge its ineptness. It’s a mess, it looks really drab and it’s ultimately a waste of time. Zombie Flesh Eaters may have got away with cashing in, but its ‘sequel’ really doesn’t make the grade.

First up, the acting in Revolt has to be some of the worst I’ve ever encountered on film. After ten minutes it becomes apparent that we can expect nothing from the leads – Dean Jagger and Dorothy Stone – and the only character with even the faintest hint of intrigue about him is (with Roy D’Arcy shining in the role) criminally underused. The script is truly awful, feeling as though it has been tacked together by rummaging around at the bottom of a shredder and gluing together the remnants of better movies. The Halperins clearly didn’t really care about the story as such, and contented themselves with devising a plausible scenario on which to ground a White Zombie follow-up. There are some moments of promise here, with the Cambodian mythology scenes offering the briefest moment of hope to those looking for a continuation of the excellent work the Halperins did in establishing the terror of black magic in White Zombie. This is quickly trodden underfoot though, and the heavy-handed love tryst that provides the sedentary core of the story resurfaces. What’s worse is that it’s obvious that the Halperins are trying to emulate the success of their earlier classic by transplanting sections of it directly into Revolt (most obviously in the superimposing of Lugosi’s eyes during the trance scenes); the jilted lover act premise is at the heart of this, but unlike White Zombie there isn’t enough of an internal narrative in Revolt to sustain the leaps of faith necessary for audience engagement.

Lasting only 64 minutes, Revolt of the Zombie feels like an interminable ordeal. The acting is so bad that it transcends ineffectual and becomes genuinely off-putting. Once this happens the threadbare script provides no safety net, and the pointlessness of the plot becomes inescapable. I can’t blame the Halerpins for wanting to cash in on their White Zombie success, but it’s such a shame that they didn’t use the opportunity to develop on the themes that made the original so captivating. Definitely one to avoid.

The result of this hurried frenzy of film making was The Terror, a bizarre tale of a young soldier returning from the French Revolutionary Wars who gets caught up in a paranormal trial of strength between the reclusive Baron von Leffe (what is it with the aristocracy? Perhaps Tony Blair was right about the House of Lords…) and a weird hag who has managed to harness the spirit of his dead wife. The soldier in question is Jack Nicholson (who was also still bound by his Raven contract) and as far as bad casting goes this has to rank alongside John Wayne playing Genghis Kahn in The Conqueror. Ordinarily you’d forgive Corman for this-especially as this a rush job even by his standards-but as the threadbare plot is dependant on a higher level of atmospherics than his usual offerings it is difficult to overlook. Boris Karloff puts in a typical Boris Karloff performance and is the lynchpin of a film which somehow manages to be both erratically disjointed AND mind numbingly monotonous at the same time. There are some moments that’ll wake you up along the way, one being a surprisingly shocking and effective attack on one of the characters (they seem to pop in and out of the story without ever having their presence or identity explained) by the hag’s pet raven (also presumably still under contract).

The Terror is a very poor film, though that shouldn’t be surprising when the circumstances of its production are considered. For that alone it’s probably worth watching once, just to appreciate what it is possible to do in two days of frantic film making. As The Raven itself is a qualitative world apart at least Corman can escape the post-exam lecture on using his time productively.

The transparent man in question is one Joey Faust (played creditably by Douglas Kennedy), an infamous bank robber who’s broken out of jail on the orders of the mysterious Major Paul Krenner (James Griffith). Krenner has also enlisted the help of the world’s foremost nuclear physicist-Dr Ulof-and has plans to create an invisible army to take over the world. Ulof is the sole figure of interest as we discover that he is an unwilling accomplice of the evil Krenner and is building the invisibility ray only because his daughter is being held hostage by him.

This relationship between the reluctant scientist and his bullying and murderous ex-military paymaster is obviously set up as a warning to the audience of the potential for innocent knowledge to be harnessed for the most malicious of purposes, in this case by nefarious military types. Ulof revealing that he was also forced to work for the Nazis is a particularly interesting development in light of the contemporary political developments at the time of the film’s release (the use of German scientists like Werner von Braun for American post-war needs was still a sensitive subject in 1960′s) and his repentance in the closing minutes of the film is intended as a cautionary tale to keep scientific advances under close scrutiny. I also think that the lead character being named Faust was no coincidence, and his realisation that his greed to aquire the power of invisibility has had the gravest consequences, and the act of redemption this brings, are utterly wasted.

None of this is ever developed though, which again is a real shame as it could have turned a very bad b-movie into a half-way interesting one. When I first started watching this I thought it would be a bad variation on Universal’s classic ‘The Invisible Man’. It’s to Edgar Ulmer’s credit that he tried something different with it, but unfortunately ‘The Amazing Transparent Man’ comes nowhere near to making any mark on the genre.

The premise is a promising one; from her slab in the morgue a dead woman tells the tale of how she got there. We are told to expect a ‘maze of murder involving a hypnotist, a midget and a mysterious figure in a blue mask’. However, with such promising material to play with Cabanne gives us a turgid and confused tale which never fulfils its potential and leaves the viewer dazed, confused and thoroughly disappointed. Any suspense or drama is flagged up way in advance by a sloppy (though commendably pioneering I suppose) use of narration from the dead girl. Carl Hoefle’s insipid and relentless score does nothing to help and quickly becomes irritating and distracting, especially whenever the ‘mask’ appears at the window.

Also, what might have been promising characters are never fully developed and integrated with the plot. There are usually far too many people on screen at any one time which, because of the plodding script, has the effect of making you feel as though you’re stuck in a crowded airport terminal waiting for a flight that’s already 30 hours late; cranky, wondering why you decided to bother in the first place and looking for any possibility of escape.

Lugosi is completely wasted as the sinister hypnotist Leonide, which is a real shame as the character is much more interesting than many of the ‘red herring’ roles he was given during this period. Bringing a real sense of menace to the part, he deftly plays off the ‘comical’ character and acts as the only thread in the film. It’s also only one of two appearances in colour that he made, and even in 1941 (the film was released several years after production) the consequences of his troubled lifestyle choices are clearly visible.

This is one of the rare movies that I found so bad that I had to turn it off before the end and thus, alas, I do not even have the ability to tell you how our girl died for my troubles. I can’t see how it would be worth hanging on to see what happens as I can promise that you won’t care.

One last note; don’t let this put you off buying the ’3 Classic Bela Lugosi Films of the Silver Screen’ as it’s the only dud on there.