Before his "best worst movie" TROLL 2, Claudio Fragasso took on Italian zombies in the Philippines with ZOMBIE 4: AFTER DEATH, on Blu-ray from Severin Films.

When the cancer-stricken daughter of a voodoo chieftain (James Sampson, STAGE FRIGHT) dies, he curses the team of scientists that have set up a medical colony on his island with a zombie plague from which the only escapee is the lead scientist's young daughter Jenny. Since "no one can escape his destiny," years later Jenny (Candice Daly, HELL HUNTERS) finds herself in the vicinity of the island when she and her friend Louise (Adrianne Joseph) hook up with Mad (Jim Moss, RAW TARGET), Rod (Nick Nicholson, AMERICAN NINJA), Dan (Jim Gaines, BLACK FIRE), and Tommy (Don Wilson, who is not Don "The Dragon" Wilson despite IMDb's listing), a quartet of soldiers of fortune who take them on a boat trip. Although they are disturbed by noises from the shore that Jenny tells them are the cries of damned souls, they are forced to land when the boat's motor dies. While exploring the island for tools to repair the boat, Tommy chases a lurker he mistakes for a leper who then bites him. The group seeks medical attention for him at the colony's abandoned medical center, but they are not the only ones on the island. Having found in a boat that washed ashore a diary describing the work of the scientists, the zombie plague, and its causes, a trio of adventurers David (Massimo Vanni, ZOMBIE 3), Chuck (porn star Jeff Stryker, billed under his real name Chuck Payton), and Valerie are exploring the island's volcano and stumble upon an ancient temple where David foolishly reads from "The Book of the Dead" with dire results. Fleeing the zombie attack, Chuck comes upon the other group who are also fending off the living dead without realizing that more than one of their own is already infected.

Conceived on a considerably smaller scale than ZOMBIE 3 by husband/wife screenwriting team Claudio Fragasso (BEYOND DARKNESS) and Rossella Drudi (WOMEN'S PRISON MASSACRE) as a directing vehicle for Fragasso, ZOMBIE 4:AFTER DEATH was shot at night with the same camera equipment as Bruno Mattei's concurrent STRIKE COMMANDO 2 (which Mattei claimed to have been directing at the time Fulci was shooting the former film). AFTER DEATH (christened ZOMBIE 4 for tape and DVD release) manages to entertain even though the plot is illogical even by the standards of Italian horror with the reading of the "Book of the Dead" seeming pointless since the zombies seem to have already been active long before they arrived and never dormant. While the few zombie who could talk were laughable when deployed towards horrific ends in ZOMBIE 3, here their taunting the living and playing on their guilt over allowing their friends to be taken actually proves novel as the bulk of the film become a siege pic set in the least-barricaded location. The zombies of Franco di Girolamo (SHOCKING DARK) are more interesting-looking than the ones of the Fulci film, from the masked lepers to the transformed friends of the survivors, but Fragasso saves the goriest effects for last during the nonsensical conclusion. The photography of Luigi Ciccarese (DEMONIA) is atmospheric and the nonstop score of Al Festa (FATAL FRAMES) keeps up the momentum, starting with his theme song "Living After Death" performed by Maurizio Cerantola who would also write songs for Mattei's ROBOWAR. Festa would rework the theme song with new lyrics for his own directorial debut GIPSY ANGEL as a vehicle for singer Sammy Luck.

Unreleased in the United States, AFTER DEATH was only available for English-speaking audiences as a Japanese cassette until Shriek Show's 2002 DVD. That disc sported an anamorphic 1.66:1 widescreen transfer of the uncut version – it played cut short of gore in Italy theatrically and on video, including the later CineKult PAL DVD – that looked sharp and colorful at the time but looks quite pale and soft on HD monitors. Severin's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC widescreen transfer is framed at 1.85:1 and the 2K scan milks the original elements for all their worth. The image generally looks sharper than either SHOCKING DARK or ZOMBI 3 – partially due to the photography of Luigi Ciccarese which uses little to no diffusion – while the newer scan also reveals more of the film's rough edges like the jitter during the some of the close-ups in the boat scenes suggesting that they were shot the same position as those of the actors closer to the front with a telephoto lens that makes the shaking more apparent – but overall less glossy than how it looked on DVD apart from the opening sequence which was shot in Rome in the studio on existing sets the production could not have hoped to build themselves. The sole audio option is a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track which gets the job done in terms of the post-synchronized dialogue (with many familiar voices on the track) and the soundscape in which music often replaces atmospheric effects apart from gunshots and explosions. Sync is off by a few milliseconds for roughly a minute during the "Book of the Dead" sequence compared to the DVD where even then it was evident that the dubbing varied from the on-set dialogue. There are no SDH subtitles options sadly, thus no amusing attempt to transcribe the song lyrics as seen on the ZOMBIE 3 disc.