one of my absolute favorites!

just watch it!

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

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

After pulling off a supermarket job (stealing... candy bars???) and busting through a police barricade, five teens - hunky Robin (Gregory Lech Thaddeus), pretty Mikki (Beatrice Ring), her brother David (Karl Zinny), brainy Tina (Lea Martino) and their getaway driver Johnny (Gianmarco Tognazzi) end up passing through a thick blanket of fog and from then on out find themselves lost in the middle of nowhere. After getting their van stuck trying to drive over a creek, they grab their camping gear and decide to hike to the nearest town by foot. As night falls, they stumble upon a huge crumbling church where they decide to spend the night and also discover a spooky tavern located on the other side, go in and find it populated by a bunch of strange, ghoulish people with red glowing eyes. The deformed tavern keeper (Lino Salemme) promises them a treasure if they're able to survive the night in an underground catacomb of crypts located beneath the church, and like all moronic horror movie teenagers, the five take up the challenge. Yeah, like allowing yourselves to be locked up in a dark, spooky place by creepy and, from all indications, inhuman strangers is ever going to have a good outcome...So after cracking a lame "American Werewolf in London," joke, down below they go, finding themselves even more lost than they were before in an Escher-style maze of staircases, ladders and various tombs and crypts. Other than encountering the expected cobwebs, gravestones, coffins, spiders and rats, there are also zombies, an animated eyeball, some kind of large wolf creature and a skull-faced Grim Reaper complete with a scythe he never uses. Unfortunately, the zombies never come off in a threatening way and are used mostly for pathetically unfunny and completely out-of-place comic scenes (such as when a male zombie grabs a female zombies boob and she slaps him) and the werewolf itself is never once shown. Boo! In fact, this entire movie, which I believe was made for Italian TV, is virtually gore free.On the plus side, the art direction and sets are (surprisingly) quite good, and mix that with the cinematography, score and liberal use of a fog machine, and the film manages to be fairly atmospheric at times. I found myself really enjoying the first half, but soon after the teens enter the crypt, the film becomes annoying, repetitive and even more illogical than it already was. After encountering various creatures, I seriously doubt you'd be giggling, cracking jokes or even lying down to take a nap if you only have to survive until dawn. The characters are extremely annoying and do consistently stupid things, the dialogue and English-dubbing are both terrible and the tone uneasily fluctuates between being jokey to wanting to be taken seriously. A senseless twist ending drives the final nail in the coffin, relegating this potentially good film to failed opportunity status.

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.

Really, this movie is big dissapointment - plot is weak (what plot?), there is no euro-horror style, everything is so lame (especially ending) ... pretty dull, boring, silly ... Bava's weakest job! Only good thing here is FX makeup which is pretty decent and really very gory for one TV film.All in all, sad product of Lamberto Bava.2/10