City of the Living Dead (1983)

Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

Fantastic!

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

***SPOILERS****This horror started when Father Thomas,Fabrizio Jovine, for reasons only known to himself decided to call it quits by stringing himself up at the local Dunwich Cemetery after visiting hours. Thus making it possible for the dead to rise out of their graves by opening up the very gates of hell itself. It's back in NYC during a boring seance that the medium of the seance Theresa, Mary Woodhouse, sees what's to come an world wide army of walking dead Zombies and suddenly went into convulsions and dropped dead, at the tender young age of 25, of a massive heart attack! Things get even better or worse when at Theresa's burial in Long Island reporter Peter Bell, Christopher George, hears noise coming from her partly buried coffin, the gravedigger took off on their coffee brake before finishing the job, and found her to be alive!From then on it's both touch and go to what's happening in the movie with a time limit set for "All Saints Day"-November 1-when the dead are to rise again and take over the entire earth. Were also entertained with a number of grossed out episodes with flesh eating worms and maggots and brains being ripped by member of the living dead just to show those still living that they mean business. This all boils down to the late Father Thomas who's actions of killing himself is the reason all this to be happening!. And it's up to Peter Bell and those still living to right that what was wrong by Father Thomas, by exorcising his evil spirit, to prevent any more damage.****SPOILERS**** Lots of blood and gore as well as brain matter keep you watching this mindless as well as brainless movie that to add to its already mass confusion has a number of sub-plots that have to do with a group of hard drinking members of the community of Dunwiich who are among the first victims of the Zombie invasion,. That together with Dunwich resident and village idiot the over sexed Bob,Giovanni Lombardo Radice, who in trying to hide from the rampaging Zombies takes refuse in the Ross' garage. And it's there where Bob ends up getting his skull drilled through and through by Mr. Ross who thought that he was molesting his teenage daughter who In fact invited him in! Were left up in the air in what exactly happened at the end of the movie by being given the impression that the gates of hell that were shut are to open very soon with the movie disintegrating cracking up or going fade to black before we ever get to see the ending credits!

Yet another Fulci zombie film, CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD has a number of differences from Fulci's other zombie flicks in order to make it enjoyable even for those who are familiar with his work. THE BEYOND was a dream-like fantasy, ZOMBIE FLESH EATERS was an old-fashioned adventure romp, while CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD is a detective story mixed in with typical zombie mayhem. Even those who are fans of Fulci's other films tend to criticise this one for its shoddy production values. In this case I am forced to disagree. I found this to be an atmospheric, intriguing film with characters I cared about (they're more fleshed out here than in other similar slices of celluloid) and at times I would even call the film scary. Firstly though, the criticisms.There were a number of elements which were uncomfortably similar to the same director's ZOMBIE FLESH EATERS, especially when the music began a slow beat and a zombie came out of the ground, which was almost exactly like the previous year's effort. The film was also rather dark which was in some cases annoying, but it wasn't too bad. The special effects weren't as pronounced as in Fulci's other films, in particular the zombies looked like they were covered in makeup instead of the fantastic, undead Spanish Conquistadors from ZFE. There was also a noticeable lack of gore (for Fulci that is - to a mainstream viewer, this would appear as sick as hell), apart from the two infamous "vomit" and "drill" scenes, and all around the special effects aren't used as well here as in Fulci's other 'masterpieces'.What we do have in the film's favour is an excellent second half, with the disappearing zombies playing tricks on our minds. These scenes are truly unnerving, especially the dead zombie in the kitchen. A very chilling scene. The acting is also good all round for a change. Catriona MacColl plays much the same type of character - a woman caught up in evil around her - as she did in THE BEYOND, but it's impossible to deny that she is a very warm and likable actress. Christopher George, star of countless cheap horror and exploitation films (THE EXTERMINATOR for example), is excellent as the typical American detective, I loved his performance. Carlo de Mejo (THE OTHER HELL) is bearded and sometimes unintentionally hilarious as the psychiatrist, and John Morghen (described once, by John Martin I believe, as the "whipping boy" of Italian horror) is creepy as the town weirdo. Michele Soavi, the guy in the mask from DEMONS, has a small role too.I don't know why this film gets so much criticism, really. It may be clichéd with all the shock scenes but they are very effective and enjoyable. I was also actually scared by some moments, which is rare for me in a horror film. To the film's credit, there are a couple of times Fulci tries something a little different from his usual formula. The death of Emily's parents is made more horrific as Fulci only suggests it by having blood dripping through the ceiling. He could easily have set up some rubber corpses but it's made all the more worse as he leaves the deaths to our imagination. Another scene - the maggot storm - appears to have been borrowed from Argento's SUSPIRIA, but it's much more over the top and effective here.There's a heavy, claustrophobic atmosphere, helped once again by Fabio Frizzi's excellent score, which is a little reminiscent of his work for ZOMBIE FLESH EATERS but otherwise stirring. The film suggests the decay - both moral and physical - of small town life very well, and has a scary, unpleasant atmosphere where nobody is safe from the zombies. Well worth seeing, this gets a thumbs up from me.

I had wanted to see this movie for years, ever since I was about ten years old. I had heard that it was one of the best hlzombie movies, had seen it on numerous "best of" lists, and had heard that it was chock full of gore. Being a gorehound,I, of course, was intrigued. I searched all over for this movie over the years, but was never able to find it. Until I came across it a few months ago on Amazon. I ordered it and eagerly awaited it. Boy, was I disappointed. This movie can be summed up in one word. Boring. The first part of the movie seemed to just drag on, with the characters doing A LOT of talking, and long shots of things that didn't have anything to do with what was going on. And i don't know if its just my copy of the blu ray or what, but the dubbing is terrible And when the zombies finally come? Its a let down. The make up for them is terrible. And the gore scenes? Their just eh. The best one by far in the entire movie is when a dead priest makes a woman's eyes bleed and then proceeds, in an extended scene, to make her puke out all her insides. All in all, I waited by years to see this movie, just to be let down.

Lucio Fulci was one of the major players in the Italian horror/exploitation scene in the 1970's and 1980's (though he worked in other decades as well, it's then that he made his mark in the world of low-budget gore and schlock), and sometimes he could make some really terrific, even awe-inspiring genre work (The Beyond hits the spot for me), and other times very much not so (Zombie 3 and Sodoma's Ghost are rather pitiful). City of the Living Dead marks some of the high qualities of Fulci's style that's loaded for bear with dreadful imagery (I mean that word as a compliment, up to a point), but there was barely any work on the script or characters.I want to give the movie more of a break for how Fulci and his crew make this town of 'Dunwich' eerie and fogy and genuinely spooky for much of the 2nd half (which seems to be an obvious allusion to the Dunwich Horror, but may also be connected to 'witches' or the supernatural). It's a 'living dead' movie but not connected in any way to the Romero films; this is a zombie movie but not one that involves the eating of flesh. The living do die and come back as the un-dead, and their primary task is to tear into people's skulls (usually when they're not looking) and take out some brains. Why don't they eat them and then just go on their shuffling, make-up-face covered ways? Uh, ask the writers I guess.There are supposedly characters here - I know Christopher George is one of them - and like a lot of horror films from Italy and of the super-cheap variety (several from Fulci of course), New York city is used because it's... New York city, though only briefly. There's a priest who seems to be hung at the start of the movie, and his corpse sort of sets off this or that and then there's gates of hell (this is the "first part" of an unconnected Gates of Hell trilogy by Fulci by the way), which is supposed to be why the dead are returning to life and making things difficult for those in the town.Things with characters just happen, and why bother with rhyme or reason when there's still some space for Fabio Frizzi's score (which at times is the one thing shamelessly ripped from the Goblin's score for Dawn of the Dead, listen for it and it's plain in sight). Aside from one notable scene where a father shows the young man screwing around with his daughter in a car (he isn't but he thinks he is and that's enough) by using a powerful table saw to grisly effect, the violence in the movie is done via the undead. And boy there is a damn lot of it: heads crushed, torsos and abdomens punched through, a head is drilled, limbs get cut or sawn in to, and among all of these the opening with the hung priest is perhaps the most unsettling of all.I wish I could comment on the characters but they're so thin that it's not worth commenting, and I don't think there could have been a solution via a longer cut; this is all about setting up some basic situation, throw in a psychologist or a psychic and a detective who can read people's minds, not to mention a s***load of close-ups of people's eyes looking at each other even when nothing is exactly happening (sometimes there is the psychic angle, others not), and you got yourself a baseline for a whole lot of gore effects, make-up jobs, and people shuffling while usually appearing out of jump cuts. In other words, when it comes to humans talking it's not too satisfying, but when Fulci keeps it to being just a hardcore, brutal horror movie, it's like going into a haunted house and getting the works: cool cinematography, obvious music score, and gruesome kills.