lemon_magic Let's get the problems out of the way first: the dubbing is clunky and oddly unconvincing; there are huge holes in the logic of events and plot points (for instance, it's entirely unlikely that a woman who dropped dead in the middle of a seance would be "buried alive" once the police were involved - there'd be certificates of death, autopsies, embalming, etc); most of the acting is no better than it needs to be (I'm looking at YOU, Christopher George) ; the director overuses some camera techniques - he zooms in with closeups of eyes so often that you'd think Jesse Franco owed him money; and an unsatisfying ending that seems unjustified by everything that came before it. But even so, Fulci seemed to catch lightning in a bottle with this one. If you just turn your mind off and let the movie roll over you, you will have (I'm not sure the term "enjoy" applies here) quite the experience. What really ties things together for me is the utter conviction on display in every frame, and the way the movie just "goes for it" without holding anything back. And the awesome soundtrack numbs the critical mind with mesmerizing washes of sound. So it's cheese, but it's GREAT cheese. If you like this sort of thing, you should check it out.

dworldeater City Of The Living Dead is a grotesque, surreal journey to hell from the legendary Lucio Fulci. This is my personal favorite of his work. When a priest commits suicide in the town of Dunwich, he then opens the gates to Hell. Taking nods from HP Lovecraft, this is surreal and apocalyptic in tone and style. While the film is a bit disjointed, it more than makes up for with lush visuals, creepy atmosphere and top notch gore/special f/x. City Of The Living Dead is a Gothic splatter masterwork that makes much of the horror movies at the time look tame. The film succeeds at being both creepy and repugnant at the same time. With truly evil undead with powers of teleportation that rip out your brain Catriona McColl and Christopher George are truly at odds to try to stop Hell on Earth from the town that was built from the ancestors of Salem. Over the top and disgusting with internal organs puke and a scene with a flurry of maggots, City Of The Living Dead is hard to top. Fulci's zombies are always the most hideous, disgusting and cool looking and the make up f/x are in top form here. Much of Fulci's work has been an inspiration to many filmmakers across the world, but also to numerous bands in the underground music scene as well. Most notably the song "Regurgitated Guts" by Death from their debut classic, "Scream Bloody Gore". When as a youth hearing that album, I have been since devoted to death metal for life. So, I digress that even outside of film, these movies had an impact and Lucio Fulci was one of the finest horror directors to have ever lived.

conedust I've seen director Lucio Fulci's City of the Living Dead several times over the years. Perhaps strangely, this pecking persistence doesn't reflect any deep affection on my part. Though Gino De Rossi's infamously grisly gore effects carved lasting scars into my teenage cortex, I've always found it a rather dull film, overall. Absent the esteem in which so many veteran genre fans hold City of the Living Dead, I'd probably have written it off long ago.I know, of course, that one shouldn't expect brisk pacing or narrative cohesion of Italian horror films. Even allowing for that, Fulci here pushes turgid incoherence well past the breaking point. Things happen on screen because, well... Just because they do. Because the Maestro apparently thought the shot would look kind of cool that way. Which is fine. There's nothing necessarily wrong with cinematic dream logic (or even nonsense for its own sake), and while Fulci's work is hardly above criticism, only a fool would question his mastery of the atmospheric and grotesque.Basically, I'd come to view City of the Living Dead the lazy, off-day hackwork of an erratic and occasionally brilliant horror auteur. The progress of images, for instance, frequently seems all but literally random, as though the final cut had been assembled in a last-minute panic by a drunken editor with no clue as to the intended storyline. While The Beyond (1981) can be accused of similar faults - it's arbitrary in construction and the action is often risibly absurd - that film somehow sustains a captivating tone of morbid dread throughout, and Sergio Salvati's gorgeous cinematography helps smooth the narrative's more baffling contortions. Even its silliest and most clichéd moments feel of a satisfying piece, and the animating breath of Fulci's artistic inspiration never flags. City, in comparison, is a lurching, disconnected mess. The tone swings erratically from goofy camp (see Christopher George's ineradicable smirk) to knockout shock with stray chunks of meandering dead space wedged awkwardly in between. Worse yet, the images that carry us through are generic as often as they are arresting.*Or so I thought. An enthusiastic Horror Board regular recently convinced me that, despite my reservations, I owed the film one last look. To that end, I picked up Blue Underground's widely-praised 2010 restoration on Blu-Ray, settled in on a long dark night, and tried my level best to keep an open mind. Much to my surprise, I enjoyed it! Though I'll probably never call City of the Living Dead a personal favorite even where Fulci's work is concerned, it's far more engaging, creative and artistically interesting than most of the "so bad it's good" cult oddities treasured by die-hard horror fans. The splattery set-pieces are dazzling and nauseating in equal measure, Fabio Frizzi's score is a seductively psychedelic gem, and a convincingly apocalyptic final act manages to wrap things up on a relatively energetic note. If I'm not careful, I just might wind up watching it again...* While regular Fulci collaborator Sergio Salvati shot both films, The Beyond and the criminally under-appreciated Seven Notes in Black (AKA The Psychic, 1977) provide a far better showcase for his considerable gifts.

Aaron1375 Lucio Fulci made three films that have become dubbed the gates of hell trilogy. The Beyond and House By the Cemetery make up the other two thirds of this set of films. This one and The Beyond fit the theme as both films revolve around the gates of hell opening. I never thought The House By the Cemetery really fit the bill and that the film, Manhattan Baby kind of fit in with this theme better though neither really does. This one probably had the most coherent plot of the trio as something happens that unleashes the gates of hell and something most be done to close them again. In The Beyond, people keep dying here and there and by the time things begin to be figured out it is pretty much too late. While in House By the Cemetery, it kind of teases that there is simply a serial killer before ending in vague fashion, though not nearly as vague as this one does! So you get lots of kills, lots of gore and lots of questions, so in that way all three films do tie in together as they all have their confusing moments, good kills and nasty gore. This one and The Beyond having the best.The story has a priest who kills himself right from the get go and this is the catalyst that sets things in motion as the dead begin to rise from their graves to hunt and kill the living! Meanwhile, a woman apparently dies during a séance only to be found still alive as she is about to be buried in the cemetery. Best not to think about this film too much as it just ruins the fun. She and a reporter go on a quest to find the town the priest hanged himself in as they must put him to rest as he begins terrorizing the town killing the townsfolk and then turning them into the living dead where they have the ability to teleport and kill you unexpectedly! A psychiatrist will join the two as they must track down the priest's grave, but they do take a lot of side trips as it almost seems they are trying to get the last second win!The living dead in this one look rather good, much better than the zombies at the end of The Beyond. The gore though has some weaknesses as at times the blood looks like fruit punch. The best kill in the film belongs to a father and not the zombies as the film also features the most overprotective father in the history of cinema! No nudity in this one, but I do not really recall any in The Beyond either and only very briefly in House By the Cemetery, Fulci was more gore than nudity, though he did have that awesome scene in Zombie featuring the topless scuba diver.So all in all, it is a fun movie to watch if not particularly good. The film does drag a bit in spots as the deaths are not spread out as well as those in The Beyond, but it is better than Cemetery as that one gets kind of goofy. All three films have Catriona MacColl in them and this one and House have Giovanni Lombardo Radice along with other Fulci staples in it. The acting is about as well as can be expected for a film of this type. Overall, I would say that this one has good gore, kills and atmosphere to offer while some of the things within are a bit goofy too. Still, the gates of hell trilogy starts off with a bang and this one is probably the most hellish of the bunch for various reasons!