Review of Doctor Butcher M.D. (1980) by Justin L — 19 Sep 2007

When I get my PhD, I'm going to change my name to "Butcher, MD.".

You might feel ripped off that the 'zombies' are actually not zombies at all, but voodoo-crazy cannibals. But, wait, is this film not in fact just uncovering the correct genealogical origin of the term 'zombie?' Is it not, in fact, that our notion of zombies is a reactive inversion of the masterful plenitude of its original meaning, first recorded in West Africa in 1871 as a term employed to describe sacred trance states in primitive religious practices? See how Zombie Holocaust has undone the very idea of 'zombie' from within, and turned the logic of our attacks upon it inside out. Such ironic undoing of our supposedly rational categories of thought are playfully embodied in Dr. Butcher himself, in which a paragon of professional respectability is portrayed as an uncivilised maniac. Dr. Butcher is thus clearly intended by the scriptwriters as an ironic 'second coming' of Friedrich Nietzsche's Zarathustra. Truly, our god of modern rational, civilisation is dead. Zombie Holocaust hath slain him.

And yet we lie philistines beneath the rubble. In fact, stunned by its devastating critique of our received values, are we not justified in saying that this film is therefore to modern cinema what 'The Birth of Tragedy' is to the tradition of European philosophy?

Probably not, no. But still.

Also, the trailer shows you everything worth seeing in the film, but in two minutes. Bargain.