City of the Living Dead

Viewed – 04 February 2012 Television

In the early eighties, a bunch of horror movies were deemed, at least here in the UK as too shocking for public consumption, and were banned outright. In subsequent years these so called ‘video nasties’ began to slowly emerge, more often than not in a censored form. Thankfully these days many of them can be found uncut, and one of the pioneers of such movies was late Italian director Lucio Fulci. I have only seen a couple of his movies, but can attest they do live up to his moniker of ‘the godfather of gore’.

This 1980 release has a priest hanging himself in a cemetery whilst at the same time a psychic see’s the incident in a vision during a séance. Soon after weird things start to happen, and recently deceased persons start coming back to life. The psychic and a group of other people then journey to Dunwhich, where the priest hung himself to hopefully prevent the end of the world … as you do.

This is typical 80’s horror fair, with questionable acting, a couple of pretty females, and stand out moments of gore. Lucio Fulci was a skilled director that’s for sure, even if his stories were usually wafer thin and incoherent. This movie is no different, as the plot is mostly left unexplained (like what was the priest all about?) and the characterisation non-existent. The movie is very creepy however, with some decent atmosphere and the soundtrack certainly works to crank up the tension. For a Fulci movie the gory moments are a bit hit and miss (the drill sequence is stunning, but the vomit-up-ones-own-guts bit, is just ridiculous) and whatever interesting ideas it has to start with, just degenerates into your average zombie movie towards the end.

This was entertaining though, and I’m glad I have finally managed to see it.

Verdict: 2.5 /5