Greta (Laura D'Anieri) misses her deceased husband Philip (Chris Cline)
so much that she calls in a medium, Stella Buio (Linnea Quigley), to bring
him back. Her two sons (Shawn McBee, Lance Flint) are ok with this, but
her daughter Julie (Melanie Robel) utterly objects it and shows her
disdain. However, her skepticism is soon proven unfounded ... but
unfortunately, in a bad way, because daddy does come back - as a
flesh-eating zombie, who starts his zombiedom by eating his loved ones. Why? Because
Stella Buio was daddy's ex, and she now uses zombie Philip to eliminate
her competition for his attention. Unfortunately, there is an old saying:
"(S)he who plays with zombies, gets bitten by them." (well,
granted, there is no such saying, I've just made it up - but if the shoe
fits ...) Especially for Eurohorror fans, Stella Buio is
great fun: It's a loving hommage to trashy Italian zombie movies from the
late 1970's and early 80's that manages to treat its "source
material" with the necessary ironic distance, but without just
dumbing things down or going for the obvious cheap jokes. Instead it
successfully manages to duplicate the atmosphere from the movies of old,
coupled with crude and over-the-top yet wildly effective gore effects and
an intentionally retro but very fitting musical score, and it manages to
tell its story, which might not be the most original, in an interesting
and well-paced way, up to the final punchline - that's probably all the
funnier because it comes totally expected. As I said before, great fun!
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