Sam Panico Have you ever paused a movie and yelled aloud, "I LOVE THIS MOVIE!" and you're all alone in the room? If you've answered in the affirmative, you understand the pure joy that I felt while watching this movie.Dean Miller, an American reporter, is waiting to interview a nuclear scientist when a military plane lands and mutated men emerge, killing everyone in their path. Even the worst wounds only slow them down as they hack their way through their victims, pausing to drink the blood of those they kill.General Murchison (Mel Ferrer, The Visitor) shuts down any news stories about the attack. Meanwhile, the city is overrun with the killers and their victims, who soon join their ranks. Miller saves his wife at the hospital where she works as the city's power is shut down.It turns out that they're fighting humans who have been contaminated by a leak in the nuclear power plant (that's why the scientist was meeting with Miller in the beginning) and now they have strength, speed and reflexes beyond the range of normal humans. However, because they can't regenerate red blood cells, they must consume blood. There's only one way to kill them, which will be familiar to zombie movie fans: shoot them in the head.No one is safe - the general is looking for his daughter and her husband, but by the time they are discovered, they are infected and must be killed. And Major Holmes warns his artist wife to stay in the house when two infected men break in and kill her friend and almost murder her. By the time he gets to the house to save her she's been infected and he must kill his wife.That's the theme of this movie - everyone gets turned into something horrible, even a priest at the church where Miller and Anna try to hide. Finally, they make a last stand in an amusement park, using submachine guns and grenades to keep the attacking horde at bay. Major Holmes tries to save them, but Anna can't hold the rope and falls to her death. This being an Italian movie, we see every moment of her demise.Miller then wakes up. It was all a dream, except he goes back to the airport and the movie starts all over again!Known as City of the Walking Dead in the U.S., this is a fast-moving, down and dirty gore packed film. Directed by Umberto Lenzi (Eaten Alive!, Cannibal Ferox), this film feels like it's out of control from the first scene. Once that plane opens and the mutated fiends emerge, it's an orgy of heads being opened up, breasts being eaten, gunshots galore and eyes being ripped from their sockets. In short, this is. a true crowd pleaser. How can you not love a movie where a studio full of disco dancers are mauled and murdered by an army of mutated killers?

bournemouthbear Nightmare City (1980)When director Umberto Lenzi was approached to helm Nightmare City he was presented with an original script for a short film about zombies. Lenzi balked at the idea feeling that the material should be longer and, more importantly for him, not about zombies. He considered that George A. Romero had covered zombies fully by then with both his original Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead and there was little more he could add. Instead Lenzi adapted the script using the Seveso incident of July 1976 fine-tuning it into a film that attacks the military and the effects of chemicals on the environment. What he has actually made is a pure exploitation film. There is a plot of sorts but don't dwell on it because no one involved in the writing of this film did. It's frankly absurd. Local television news reporter Dean Miller (Hugo Stiglitz) arrives at an airport with his cameraman. They are there to cover the arrival of famous doctor Professor Hagenbeck. Quite how they know the scientist is arriving there is never made clear as no one else at the airport is aware of the plane arriving and are treating it with the highest level of suspicion. Just as well really as when the plane's doors open out pop a tonne of blood- thirsty creatures who waste no time chowing down on the soldiers.Rather oddly the infected fail to notice Dean and his cameraman - and rather conveniently too as the plot needs Dean to get the word out and warn the public - not that anyone will listen of course. It appears that the plane that Dean saw spill out its deadly formerly-human cargo had been exposed to radiation. It's a form of radiation that doesn't seem to affect the creatures too adversely, they can still run and chase potential victims. That's hardly in keeping with the known effects from radiation exposure. Instead they just get a little crusty in the facial make-up department (it looks awful) and drink blood from the uninfected.Dean has no joy in trying to broadcast an urgent transmission. He is stopped by the military who would rather that the public not be panicked (no, we'll just have them killed by the radiation crazies that we cannot contain instead, makes perfect sense). The military, led by General Murchison (Mel Ferrer) do nothing except take phone calls and ponteficate whereas Dean is more proactive. He is constantly trying to get hold of his wife Dr. Anna Miller (Laura Trotter) but she's having none of his nonsense, silly cow. However once she's onboard and looking to escape from the nameless city she does nothing but scream and expect her wooden hubby to rescue her when all she has to do is move.Lenzi claims that his film heavily influenced director Danny Boyle's later 28 Days Later, with it's running infected, as well as some of Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror. And like Danny Boyle Lenzi refutes that his film is a zombie film and quite rightly too. Lenzi sees his film as anti-military and that his ghouls are infected by radiation sickness and therefore not zombies. His 'infected' have an awful habit of ripping off the clothes from a female victim, to reveal their boobies, rather than simply kill them as they do the men that fall victim to them. I found this distasteful. No really I did. Pure misogyny at it's ugliest!Nightmare City (also known as Incubo Sulla Città Contaminate and City of the Walking Dead) is not a particularly good film but it IS a fun watch, aside from the wanton misogyny. It moves at such a pace that you can easily overlook it's numerous shortcomings. It is what one would call a 'guilty pleasure' - it's trash but you can't help but warm to it. Make- up artist Tom Savini is remaking Nightmare City and supervising the film's special make-up effects too. It is due for release in 2016. Here's hoping it plays better than his misguided Night of the Living Dead remake.Check out more of my reviews at www.mybloodyreviews.com

gavin6942 An airplane exposed to radiation lands, and blood drinking zombies emerge armed with knives, guns and teeth! They go on a rampage slicing, dicing, and biting their way across the Italian countryside.Director Umberto Lenzi felt the film was not as much as zombie film but a "radiation sickness movie" with hints of an anti-nuclear and anti-military message. Quentin Tarantino has even said he was criticized by Lenzi for calling it a "zombie" film rather than an "infected people" film. (Tarantino further points out, perhaps correctly, this is the first zombie or infection film where the bad guys run instead of walk.) John Kenneth Muir referred to the film as a "cobbled together disaster", but went on to say it was not the worst zombie film of the 1980s -- that honor goes to Bruno Mattei's "Hell of the Living Dead". Danny Shipka described the film as "absolutely terrible in every way" as well as referring to poor make-up effects, poor acting and a plot that "makes no sense". Are you guys missing the point?

Scott LeBrun A fun horror movie from director Umberto Lenzi ("Eaten Alive!", "Cannibal Ferox"), "Nightmare City", a.k.a. "City of the Walking Dead", doesn't have a lot of story, it just has a lot of lively, gory mayhem for those Italian horror fans looking for some undemanding thrills.The set up is simple enough: sadistic fiends, contaminated due to atomic radiation, run amok in a city, brutally slaughtering some victims and contaminating others. Even if not technically zombies, they do exhibit a certain tenacity (and CAN be killed by shots or blows to the head) and also are vampire like in that they enjoy drinking the blood of victims. They don't just use their bare hands, either, still being able to employ various lethal weapons. The army is content not to let too many details get out, while the body count rises, and a reporter (Hugo Stiglitz) and his doctor wife (Laura Trotter) try to make a trek to safety.A nice amount of cheese (for one thing, one major set piece has the fiends cause havoc during the taping of a TV dance show) adds to the entertainment value, as does the music score by Stelvio Cipriani and the kind of gore we as fans come to expect from this sort of thing, and pleasurable doses of female skin.Now, some viewers can take issue with the way the movie ends, but personally I don't feel it really hurts the movie at all, even if it has the air of familiarity. Lenzi keeps the action flowing for much of the running time, only slowing down somewhat for an interlude with our two main characters as they attempt to take a breather at a remote location.The acting may not be exactly Oscar calibre stuff, but it gets the job done, with Mexican star Stiglitz definitely creating a real take-charge kind of guy, and entertaining performances by Francisco Rabal and special guest star Mel Ferrer as two of the Army guys. Other cast members include Eduardo Fajardo ("Django", "Lisa and the Devil") and Stefania D'Amario ("Zombi 2"). The ladies here sure provide fine eye candy.Mostly, this movie is enjoyable for seeing our antagonists on the attack, no matter what they're doing, and "Nightmare City" amounts to 92 solid minutes of action, gore and sexiness that's never ever boring. It's highly recommended to lovers of Italian genre cinema.Seven out of 10.