User Reviews

A priest commits suicide in order to open a gateway to hell. This leads to a series of grim events, including several supernatural zombies.

City of the Living Dead is the second of Italian director Lucio Fulci's four celebrated zombie films from 1979-81. Each and every one of them was primarily famed for its graphic violence. In the case of City of the Living Dead it is most probably two gruesome set-pieces in particular that have established its infamous reputation - a nasty scene where a man is killed by a power drill through his head and a sequence where a woman vomits up all of her innards. Both are memorably grotesque. Add to this a maggot storm and several moments where zombies pull the brains out of their victim's craniums. Like other Fulci pictures of this period, this is an inventively grotesque film. But also like those other movies there is also a sustained creepy atmosphere. The fog encased town of Dunwich is quite an effective setting, while the Goblin inspired score from Fabio Frizzi adds a gloomy ambiance of dread to proceedings. There is also a notable macabre scene that doesn't involve any blood and guts, where a woman who has been buried alive is freed by a man hacking her coffin open with a pick axe, which just misses her head several times.

Lead actor Christopher George will be familiar to a few fans of early 80's splatter flicks from his lead role in the bonkers Spanish slasher Pieces. He's pretty decent here again. But, ultimately City of the Living Dead is a film most notable for its no-holds-barred gory violence and horror atmosphere. Although it is not among Fulci's best films, it's certainly a key entry in the Italian zombie film cycle of that time.

Some films have articles, essays, even books dedicated to explaining how great they are. As a teenager it only took one simple sentence to put City of the Living Dead on my list of films I needed to see..."A woman pukes up her own intestines".

Sadly, at the time the UK censors didn't see the funny side of this, and the other delights contained in this film or it's companion The Beyond, so I didn't get to see them until much later. In some ways I can say COTLD does live up to it's reputation (it IS pretty disgusting) but in others, well, if The Beyond is pleasingly, nightmarishly surreal (and to me it is) COTLD is one of the most bafflingly illogical films I've ever seen.

The story involves a psychic and a journalist rushing to close a portal to hell that's been opened by the suicide of a priest (how? why? how should I know, I only watched the film and that didn't help! The priest comes back as an undead overlord, but was this his intention?). I say rushing but in fact their journey is rather leisurely. Apparently saving the world isn't as important as stopping off for lunch on the way, which is rather odd as they're against the clock on this one - the portal must be closed by All Saints day.

You may think that's a small thing to notice in the film except - and I'm about to give away the ending - they get there TOO LATE to close the portal! Before entering a graveyard for the final showdown with the undead priest they note that it's already All Saints day, they've blown it, yet the film continues into it's climax and a good vs evil face off from which our "heroes" think they're emerging victorious? You idiots! You already knew you blew it, what on earth is going on here?? Then there's the infamous final scene. Supposedly the films disjointed, inexplicable ending is the result of the last bit of footage being damaged and lost for ever, and what you do get is something you really have to see for yourself to (dis)believe. They certainly don't make 'em like that anymore.

If it's gore you want you certainly won't be let down by the drillings, gouged heads, zombie attacks and of course A WOMAN PUKING UP HER OWN INTESTINES, but overall this film is slow moving, and with that ending (for gods sake, that ENDING!) more than a little frustrating.

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'm not a critic and this is my first post so bear with me. I am a huge horror fan and have wanted to see this film for years, so when I finally picked it up I was more than a little excited. More fool me, because I don't think I have ever been so disappointed and bored with a film in my whole life.

To start with the acting is absolutely atrocious even by horror standards, and the fact that its dubbed is no excuse. I've seen trees with a wider range.

The first half of the film is so boring I almost fell asleep. I tried drinking heavily to see if it would make it better, but sadly it was to no avail. When the action finally started it was roughshod and handled badly, and the plot was ridiculous.

The one good scene was where the creatively named "Bob" met his demise, but it came about because Bob, for reasons known only to himself, had hidden in the garage of the father of a girl he had kidnapped, raped, and tried to kill. Way to go Bob.

The last part of the film involved our heroes traveling underground to face the villain of the piece, and it was so underwhelming I actually thought there was more of the film to come.

This is one of the best of Lucio Fulci's Italian gross out horror films during the exploitation era. Going under the U.S.A. title, 'The Gates Of Hell', a priest hangs himself and subsequently opens up a doorway to all sorts of unexplained evil happenings in the town of Dunwich (a purely Lovecraftian city built during the Salem witch trials). Christopher George is a reporter investigating the phenomena who has two days to find Dunwich and close the portal before the dead will rise to overrun mankind on All Saints Day. This is the classic Fulci barf-o-rama with some really putrid and well-directed scenes that stand out including, but not limited to; A woman mistaken for dead and buried alive awakens just before George desperately hacks away at the coffin with a pickax, A girl bleeds through the eyes and vomits up intestines, a boy gets a drill through the head in a graphically brutal scene, thousands of maggots come pouring in through a blown out window, and plenty of brain-ripping define this sick gorefest. There is a very well constructed underground catacomb where the climax takes place, and the gloomy musical score does it justice. Fans of Fulci's 'Zombie' and 'The Beyond' will consider this a gem, anyone else will probably look the other way.

Moronic gory exercise about a priest who hangs himself in a Dunwich graveyard resulting in the opening of gateway(s)to Hell. How this comes to happen is anyone's guess. I'm guessing it's the significance in the location. In folklore, Dunwich was built over the ruins of Salem..the witch's playground. Now, how hanging yourself in a graveyard in a town once housing witches is one thing, but how a priest's suicide unlocks the gates of hell is another. If Fulci would just take the time to explain the reasons why a priest's suicide could do such a thing, I might be a little closer to accepting this poor excuse to throw up gore scenes and supernatural hocus pocus. The zombies are incredibly photographed, but understanding how they come to be and why the priest brings them back to life confuses me. Okay, this priest hangs himself, comes back as some sort of ghoul who finds victims, scaring them to death. Once they are dead, the victims come back as zombies pulling brains out of poor people's skulls while their backs are turned. Some actually come from thin air, I'm guessing because they represent some sort of fear, but trying to come up with answers to all this foolishness was tiresome. Some perv named Bob gets a drill all the way through his skull thanks to a vengeful father whose daughter was almost molested by him. The film has a woman psychic who actually dies during a séance where she sees the priest kill himself..how she awakens and why are a mystery. Anyhow, she gets a reporter to take her to Dunwich to find the remains of the priest before "ALL SAINTS DAY" because if he arises, the dead will walk amongst the world to feed on flesh..they do already, but that is beside the point. You know, thanks to a psychiatrist who lost his girlfriend to the priest's fear(..and comes back as a zombie), the three find the burial tomb of the priest, but it is too late since ALL SAINTS DAY had begun. Oh well, Fulic just abandons that whole line letting the priest die anyway when he gets a cross thrust through his stomach as his torso burns to ash(..and so are his relatives who rise momentarily to moan a bit). The film is so incomprehensible and badly conceived, one should simply watch for all the bloody effects like one of the priest's victims who vomits up her intestines. Have a nice day.

I consider "Zombie", "The Beyond" and "City of the living Dead" (aka "Gates of Hell" aka "Twilight of the Dead") Fucli's masterpieces; and although "The House By The Cemetery" is more thematically similar to the last two, it is weak in comparison.

"Gates" is simply a great gorefest with atmosphere to burn. The Fabio Frizzi score is catchy, as always, and frilled with dread and a certain awe. The film, which is set in the town of Dunwich, has a strong Lovecraftian flavour, and is beautifully shot and lit by Sergio Salvati.

A scene in which a young woman vomits up her own intestines is pure Fulci, as is the scene where Bob (Giovanni Lombardo Radice) has his head drilled until his brains spew out. The violence is ultra-graphic and entirely convincing in its fantasy context. The director's fetish for rotting flesh, creepy crawlies and open wounds rancid with disease is gloriously showcased in this fine poem to death, decay and the restless dead.

There are not too many amateurish dialog exchanges, either (a fault with many Fulci films), and the plot is so simple it never becomes convoluted.

Fulci had a single-minded attitude towards on-screen mayhem that lifted his films into the realm of high crimson art. This is a great starting point for the Fulci-curious and a must-have for the serious fan of explicit, atmospheric horror.

Is it really possibly to 'spoil' a film that almost completely abandons conventional cinematic logic to tell a 'story' that owes more to a devilish grasp of nightmarism than scripted words on a page?

(Seriously, now--if it be plot ye seek in "City of the Living Dead," ye best abandon ship damn quick...)

This Italian splatterama from the prolific Lucio Fulci was my initiation into the world of Euro-horror--go figure that, after roughly 18 years of watching American-made horror on TV and video, the transition was not the greatest. I viewed "City" on an inferior VHS copy under its U.S. title, "The Gates of Hell," and was struck dumb by how lacking in logic the film was (much of it seems patched together out of disparate elements, even now), how blind the screenwriters were to the incoherence of their narrative, and how pointless a lot of the elements seemed (the drill scene is a great setpiece, sure, but what does it MEAN?). Of course, I had much to learn about the Italian school, and while "City" left a bad taste in my mouth, I couldn't deny my fascination with it all the same--something about the 1980 film felt very new and fresh, despite its age. Over the years I kept revisiting it, building more and more fanfare as time went on; today, I consider this one of Fulci's best films, and a standout among the Italian Horror School.

While I do not doubt that Fulci's films were saddled with good plots attached to scripts that were often subpar (don't) see "Demonia"), I have a feeling he may have realized this while filming (even "The Beyond" is riddled with the same sort of narrative inconsistency found here), and decided to 'redeem' the writing by making each film drift along with the free-form logic found in nightmares. I have spoken to people who have dreams that flow with a logical progression that borders on the mundane; for me, dreams and nightmares alike have always been scattered, disjointed montages of swishpans, POV shots, and abrupt cuts from one event to the next. Such is the case with "City of the Living Dead"--there are plot details that are flat-out nonsensical, but Fulci swings us from scene to scene with such unsettling purpose that it's hard to bothered by them. Like a 'good nightmare,' "City" is all about imagery and feelings of unease and terror; in that regard, Fulci is immensely successful.

The plot really doesn't matter, but here it is: in the small town of Dunwich, a Priest (Luciano Rossi) hangs himself, throwing open the gates of hell, and it is up to young psychic Mary Woodhouse (Fulci regular Katriona MacColl) and NYC newspaper reporter Peter Bell (veteran tough-guy Christopher George) to re-close them before 'All Saints Day,' chronicled in the book of Enoch as the dead returning from the grave for world domination.

Don't think too much about it, and you'll be fine.