money and had to improvise and rewrite the previous script. The production had this footage from the beginning of shooting the film and had rebuilt some of the locations from the stock footage in Spain, where the film was shot. Fragasso commented on the use of stock footage in the film as producers wanted to reuse footage they had, which led to Mattei adding footage of a documentary New Guinea, Island of Cannibals into the film. Parts of the film were improvised on set, such as when a character enters a room imitating Gene Kelly in his film Singing in the Rain. The score is credited to the band Goblin, but is mostly taken from other film scores Goblin performed, such as Dawn of the Dead and Contamination. Mattei was a fan of their music and secured rights to it for the film through Carlo Bizio. Fragasso stated that the music was from other films and from their album Roller as Goblin were too expensive at the time to get for an original score. Release Hell of the Living Dead was released in Spain in November 1980 and in Italy in August 1981 and released in the United States in 1983. It was described as "moderately profitable" in Glenn Kay's book Zombie Movies: The Ultimate Guide. It has been released under several titles, including Virus, Night of the Zombies and Zombie Creeping Flesh. Critical reception In a contemporary review, Steve Jenkins (The Monthly Film Bulletin) noted that the possibility of a subversive subtext involving Third World victims corrupted by scientific research was "truly buried here in an orgy of flesh chewing and vomiting, as well as dialogue that beggars belief." The review commented positively that the film had unexpected pleasures, such as "the ludicrous attempts to dub speech on to stock footage (featuring humans) and a story, low-budget UN meeting consisting of a handful of delegates hurling pieces of paper at each other." From retrospective reviews, Glenn Kay (Zombie Movies: The Ultimate Guide) also noted the poor dialogue, as well as bad shot composition—with scenes changing from day to night between cuts, slow pacing and overacting. AllMovie described the film as "cluelessly bad" with a script of "dreadful characterizations and dialogue," noting that it would be enjoyed by fans of cult and trash cinema. John Kenneth Muir (Horror Films of the 1980s) stated the film was not enjoyable to watch