The City of the Living Dead (1980)

September 13, 2018

Directed by: Lucio Fulci

Written by: Lucio Fulci, Dardando Sacchetti

Starring: Christopher George, Catriona MacColl, Carlo De Majo

Quote: "Mr. Bell, if those gates are left open, it could mean the end of humanity. We've got to get them shut again. At midnight on Monday, we go into All Saint's Day. The night of the dead begins. If the portholes of hell aren't shut before, no dead body will ever rest in peace. The dead will rise up all over the world and take over the Earth! You must get to Dunwich, Mr. Bell. You must reclose those gates!"

Trivia: The scene where the window opens wide and lots of maggots fly in was filmed with the help of two wind machines and 22 pounds (10 kg) of actual maggots.

This is the first in Lucio Fulci's Gates of Hell Trilogy (followed by The Beyond and The House by the Cemetery). I hadn't seen any of them but was lucky that Amazon Prime has this one and Shudder has the rest (I'm sure I'll watch the other two over the next week or two). Holy crap this is a disgusting movie, in the best possible way. It is your classic zombie movie plot but the filmmakers took care to make it as disgusting as possible. Yes, there is the zombie gore the genre is famous for, but Fulci takes it to extremes and adds in worms, maggots, and other details to up the revulsion ante. Also, the film continues the Italian obsession with American horror and Americana. Although it is an Italian film with Italian actors, it is dubbed in English, takes place in America, and many scenes were even shot in America (New York and Georgia). The original title was actually Twilight of the Dead with a movie poster that looked a lot like Dawn of the Dead until a "cease and desist" order was sent out. I absolutely love George Romero's films and American horror and general, it's just odd how taken Italy also was. Neither Spain, Germany, or any other country can boast so many great American-influenced horror gems. Too much jabbering, let's get on with the movie...

There are a surprising lot of plot ins and outs in this film but here's the basic gist: A priest commits suicide by hanging himself in a Massachusetts graveyard which opens up the gates to hell allowing the undead to walk the earth. Meanwhile, a New York psychic had a vision of the suicide and understands that the gate to hell will open up on All Saints Day so she teams up with a reporter to stop it. Finally, a psychiatrist and his patient escape various ghouls and what-have-yous, meet up with the psychic and report and form a team to stop the priest and the gate from opening. It's more-or-less a race against the clock to save the world scenario.

Now here's the good stuff. While the four characters are converging on the graveyard as the clock ticks towards All Saints Day, a bunch of horrible stuff happens to them and others in the town near the graveyard. There are the various decaying bodies that are discovered in unexpected places (the use of hamburger meat and actual worms makes the sights extra sickening). A couple making out is killed by the priest. The girl vomits out all her organs in one of the most disgusting scenes in horror (the trivia said they had her put a plateful of raw tripe in her mouth and spit it out and then used a fake head where they could feed actual organs through it... sheep organs). Her boyfriend has the back of his head smashed in and his brains smashed.

Some other poor sucker gets a drill straight through his entire head to where it comes out the other side still spinning with brain matter stuck to it. There is a double scalping where the backs of heads are ripped off exposing the brain. This double scalping brings forth a dozen rats who begin devouring the brains. Damn disgusting! And of course, the maggot storm. A giant wind blows thousands of maggots over the four actors with hundreds of them sticking to their faces and clothes. This is absolutely revolting and according to the trivia, this is exactly what the filmmakers did... took high powered fans and used them to blow thousands of maggots on the actors.

The movie is not just a gross out fest... which it is... but it is also a really well shot and well done movie. The camera work is great. There is this really cool edit where they have the priest hanging image superimposed on a closeup of the psychic's eye. There are also some great reaction zoom-ins, a hallmark of '80s horror cinema. The score by Fabio Frizzi is wonderful. It has that familiar Italian synth heavy music with the repeating refrain that carries on throughout the movie and helps to build suspense. It reminds me of Claudio Simonetti's Goblin. The movie also has some great dialogue with a couple unintentionally hilarious lines: "Lady, you're either on grass or you're pulling my leg" and "you're nursing a neurosis like seventy percent of the female population." Haha, aint no sexism like 1980s Italian cinema sexism. :)

One last note on Italian and American cinema. George Romero and the other horror directors of the 1970s and 80s should feel flattered because they inspired some truly amazing Italian films (the films of Dario Argento, Lamberto Bava, and of course Lucio Fulci among others). Every artist is inspired and borrows from others and I cannot stress enough that these directors and films did not steal or ripoff American movies. Instead they created their own very unique niche in movie history, similar to how Sergio Leone with his "Spaghetti Westerns." I just wanted to make this clear in case anyone should think that I am disparaging these filmmakers or movies in any way.

That being said... there are some cultural things that are unique to specific countries. In the film the focus on All Saints Day is interesting because 80% of Americans have no idea when or what that is. That is a holiday unique to the Latin/Catholic countries. Meanwhile the majority of the movie takes place during October 31st but no one wears a costume, says the world Halloween, or are there any decorations seen at the various locations since Halloween is a uniquely American holiday. It is neither here nor there, just a observation I found funny.

I'd love to hear your thoughts....