PiraBit if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Bessie Smyth Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Michelle Ridley The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

Celia A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

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

Bezenby Starring Beatrice Ring (of Fulci's great bad good awful brilliant Zombie Flesh Eaters 2 (Mattei remix) and Lino Salmonne of Fulci's just plain awful Sweet House of Horrors, Graveyard Distrubance is an Italian TV horror movie by Lamberto Bava, who is not exactly Mr Quality Control himself either.Just like Fulci's TV horror movie House of Clocks, a bunch of annoying teenage thieves high tail it out of town and find themselves somewhere far more sinister. This time it's a cemetery with it's own pub (run by an eternally laughing Lino, complete with flashing eyeball).Lino bets our annoying eighties teenagers, with their custom painted van (including an Inferno reference!), walkmans etc that they won't be able to stay the night in the crypt. They're all up for that, and so it's down the crypt they go so they can run around scared and lost for the remainder of the film.Made at the same time as Dinner with a Vampire (and similar, too), Lamberto forgoes gore and gives us weirdness instead, what with the surreal zombies, bizarre dinner party, other zombies, and various haunted house things we're used to as the masses of people who love watching late eighties Italian films.If you set your sights really really low (where they should probably be anyway), this one is not too bad. It's now classic either though, but it's much better that The Ogre, which Bava also made around this time.

morrison-dylan-fan Nearing the end of the October Challenge on IMDb's Horror board,I decided that it was time to watch an easy-going flick by Lamberto Bava. Looking round for info on his titles,I stumbled on a Bava Horror that has recently been put online,which led to me deciding to disturb the graveyard.The plot:Stealing sweets from a shop,a gang jump in their van and drive off. Traveling to the outskirts of town,the gang find a tavern.Entering the tavern, the group meet the inn keeper and notice a pot of priceless valuables. Interested in getting their hands on the loot,the gang accept a bet where they have to spend a night in the catacomb and graveyard under the tavern.Expecting a quiet night,the gang start to notice disturbances in the yard. View on the film:Screened on TV during the final wave of Italian Horror,co- writer/(along with Dardano Sacchetti) director Lamberto Bava (who has a pretty funny cameo) & cinematographer Gianlorenzo Battaglia use the low budget to their advantage,as waves from Simon Boswell's Shoegaze score brew a dreamy atmosphere of fog drenched blue surrounding the group. Signally the direction he would soon go in,Bava pulls the Horror outline away for a "Family" Fantasy flick,featuring no serious threat,and all the ghostly creeps they faced being de-fanged.Despite reuniting with cute actress Lea Martino,the screenplay by Bava and Sacchetti leaves the gang running in inane circles,with the writers giving up on making the characters anything but flat,or giving them any real challenges,as the graveyard is left undisturbed.

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.