THE MURDER CLINIC (1967)
aka La Lama nel corpo, Revenge of the Living Dead
Article 2392 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 10-14-2007
Posting Date: 2-29-2008
Directed by Elio Scardamaglia
Featuring William Berger, Francoise Prevost, Mary Young

A hooded killer is loose in a clinic, murdering young women with a razor. Is it the doctor? His wife? The deformed woman in the attic? Or one of the disturbed patients? A young nurse named Mary is determined to find out before she becomes the next victim…

For the most part, this is a fairly ordinary horror thriller, with a little too much lurking in dark hallways to substitute for plot. Still, I rather like the mystery element of this one; at least three really good suspects are present, and any one of them could be the murderer; overall, I was pleased with this aspect of the movie. Still, what I most remember hearing about this movie was its being part of a set of horror films that were released as a triple feature and renamed with titles with the words “Living Dead” in them to imply they were flesh-eating zombie movies in the mold of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD . This was the first one, retitled REVENGE OF THE LIVING DEAD. The others were CURSE OF THE LIVING DEAD (actually, Mario Bava’s KILL BABY KILL , easily the best of the lot) and FANGS OF THE LIVING DEAD (actually MALENKA). At least these latter two do feature living dead of some sort (ghosts and vampires); this first one doesn’t feature living dead of any variety, much less flesh-eating zombies. Overall, this one was fairly ordinary.