In an opening prologue set in Chartres, a professor uses a teenage girl with mediumistic powers to locate the source of hauntings and gruesome murders on the estate of a country house. They uncover the skeleton of a man named Paolo Zeder buried in the basement (his skeletal fingers clutching the slipper of the injured girl despite being buried). Thirty years later, struggling novelist Stefano (Gabriele Lavia, DEEP RED) is given a used electric typewriter as an anniversary present by his wife Alessandra (Anne Canovas). When the ribbon breaks, Stefano unravels it and transcribes the contents: a letter and a report that mention K-Zones. Seeing this as inspiration for a novel, Stefano takes them to his old professor who tells him that K-Zones were places in antiquity where contact with the beyond took place. The spots were believed to exist in their own time and that anyone buried there could theoretically come back from the dead. Searching for the priest that wrote the letter takes Stefano and his reluctant wife to Chartres where they discover that the priest has died. Further clues lead them to an abandoned summer camp (closed down because of mysterious happenings on the grounds not unlike those of the prologue) where Stefano discovers that a group of scientists (including the professor and the now-grown medium from the prologue) have buried the priest on the grounds and mean to prove the theory with deadly results.

The prolific Avati's second horror film after the creepy HOUSE WITH THE WINDOWS THAT LAUGH, ZEDER is a low key horror film in which the clues unravel like the typewriter ribbon to reveal a vast conspiracy. The ending was ripped off by the film adaptation of Stephen King's PET CEMETERY (1989) to lesser effect. Riz Ortolani's orchestral/electronic score is bombastic but the creepiest scenes are either subtly scored or unfold without music. Released in the US as REVENGE OF THE DEAD with a grossly misleading poster of a flesh-eating zombie, Avati's zombies require no prosthetic make-up; just a disconcerting stare and a creepy laugh.

Eric Cotenas