City of the Living Dead (1980)

I picked up City of the Living Dead (aka The Gates of Hell) on my last jaunt to my favorite store, Second Spin. I was convinced I already owned a copy or had at least watched this Fulci flick, but I was delighted to find I had NOT seen it.

City of the Living Dead has pretty much been slammed by critics, much to my chagrin. Why this sweet little supernatural/zombie flick packed to the teeth with gory goodness has been so lambasted is simply beyond me, for I thoroughly enjoyed it.

In the town of Dunwich a priest (Fabrizio Jovine) commits suicide in a cemetery and opens up the gates to hell. Meanwhile, a psychic (Catriona MacColl) has a vision of this priest and the hell on earth that will ensue after his suicide. This psychic seems to die from fright during the séance, but awakens after she’s been buried alive. A newspaper reporter (Christopher George) poking around her grave for a story rescues her. She then convinces him the world will end in 48 hours unless they find this mysterious town of Dunwich and stop the undead priest from unleashing hell on earth. Back in Dunwich, the undead priest is hard at work and zombies are rising from graves and killing people. When the psychic and reporter finally find Dunwich, they team up with a few others, including a psychologist (Carlo De Mejo) and a young child (Luca Venantini), to fight off the impending zombie apocalypse. Can they stop it before it’s too late?

I am really surprised more people didn’t dig this movie, because I thought it was abso-fucking-lutely fantastic! When you go into a Fulci flick, you have to realize that you won’t get a very well-developed story or even one that makes sense. What you will get, however, is a highly atmospheric and stylized, gore-filled treat! City of the Living Dead is no different, packed with eerie shots of a fog-filled cemetery, a creepy, undead priest and some cringeworthy gore!

The visuals are outstanding, with Fulci creating some seriously nightmarish images. Characters keep seeing the creepy priest appear and disappear, zombies begin stumbling around the nearly-deserted streets and the city of Dunwich begins to take on a very apocalyptic feel. Fabio Frizzi’s dark score helps to heighten the atmosphere and kept me on the edge of my seat!

Besides the sinister visuals, Fulci gives us a heaping plateful of his trademark ooey gooey gore. Once the priest puts the impending apocalypse into motion, people start behaving a little…oddly. In one very memorable scene, a father catches his daughter hanging out in the garage with a guy and suspects the worse. He punishes the man (who in earlier scenes we see is a disturbing sexual deviant, played by none other than Italian horror icon Giovanni Lombardo Radice) by drilling right through his skull in a fantastically shot scene! In another legendary scene, the priest appears and makes a girl cry blood tears and slowly regurgitate her own intestines. Truly a sick, sick sight, but oh so worth it!

Now, no matter how much I enjoyed this flick it still has some very serious flaws. The most glaringly obvious is the poor storyline. The story itself is pretty nonsensical and there are plenty of plot holes to jar your enjoyment of the film. Believability MUST be suspended quite a bit to believe the sequence of events portrayed in the film. Example – without any explanation, the zombies in this film, including the undead priest, can teleport. Pretty handy for freaking people the fuck out! Also, the psychic coming back to life after nearly being buried alive is pretty implausible…didn’t they stuff corpses with embalming fluid and whatnot back then?

The dialogue is pretty horrendous as well, with the characters endlessly babbling about Dunwich being built upon the remains of Salem, going back and forth on how they must stop the priest and on and on. The film gets a lot better towards the end when there is more screaming than talking. Yet, I found myself being able to overlook the bad dialogue and just enjoy the action happening on-screen.

While City of the Living Dead certainly has its flaws and isn’t the best Fulci flick around, it still has a certain charm that made me love it. For those that haven’t experienced Fulci’s unique style of filmmaking (shame on you!) I would NOT recommend this film. It’s a little too all over the place for a starting point. Instead, I’d suggest first checking out Zombi or The Beyond. Still, those that haven’t yet peeped this gorelicious treat are truly missing out on an atmospheric and grue-filled flick!

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The Black Cat (1981)

I was excited to learn that Lucio Fulci had directed The Black Cat, based on the Edgar Allen Poe story of the same name. I figured it would be another Fulci film that just might stand proudly among the greats Don’t Torture A Duckling, Zombi and The Beyond. Unfortunately, I was sadly disappointed by the boring Black Cat.

The Black Cat tells the tale of Professor Miles (Patrick Magee), a man obsessed with communicating and talking with the dead. He sneaks into the cemetery at night like a common graverobber, seeking to record the voices of the deceased. He also has a black cat, whom he has some kind of psychic link to. Meanwhile, Jill (Mimsy Farmer) is a visiting photographer in the small town who is intrigued by Professor Miles’ experiments. When deaths that appear to be accidents start occurring, Jill believes Professor Miles’ black cat is to blame.

I would tell you more, but I was too busy fast forwarding through the oodles of extreme close-ups fixed upon people’s startled eyeballs.

I think the most disappointing thing about The Black Cat was that it was only loosely based on Poe’s tale and hardly resembles it at all (except for the end). Instead, we get a killer cat that stalks people and appears and reappears at will. Sure, it causes an impalement, a couple to die from gas poisoning, a woman to burn alive and lots of scratches, but the film plods along and is unusually subdued for Fulci. It even seems devoid of his usual panache and relies way too heavily on the close-ups of eyes to signal tension between characters.

This subdued approach let me down big time…it seemed to lack the shocking images of The Beyond and Zombi as well as lacking a tense storyline like Don’t Torture a Duckling (probably my favorite Fulci film). The story meandered, went nowhere and doubled back, losing me along its uneventful journey.

The acting and the characterization were also off as well. The acting is nothing special with the exception of some performances that were so outlandish it felt like they were falling into parody. Example: when a woman’s house went up in flames, she ran directly to a room engulfed in fire and tried to beat at it with a pillow. Her stupidity is rewarded as she goes up bigger and brighter than a Roman candle. This unbelievable action is only one of several instances where the characters’ kooky actions just don’t make sense. Many a time I was left rolling my eyes and reaching for the fast forward button.

I think had I been in a lazier mood, The Black Cat could have been a little better, but as it stands I still think it is a film that falls very short of the standard Fulci set with some of his other films. The Black Cat may be worth checking out if you are a Fulci completest, but anyone else is recommended to check out other, better Fulci films.

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The Beyond (1981)

The Beyond is a movie by Lucio Fulci, the man behind Zombi and other gory Italian flicks.

It begins in the 1920's, with many men surrounding a house in the Louisiana bayou. Inside, a man is painting and a woman is reading a very old book about the Seven Gateways of Hell. The men outside burst in with torches and seize the painter, saying he has brought evil to the area. The painter in turn says that he is the only one that can protect them, for the house was built on one of the Seven Gateways to Hell. The other men ignore him, dragging him to the basement where they crucify him to a wall and throw acid on him.

The movie then jumps to present day, where Liza has inherited the same house from a relative. She is turning it into a bed and breakfast, but lots of work needs to be done. She hires painters, handymen, plumbers and so on to spruce up the decrepit old house. While the painters are painting the outside of the house, one of them sees a woman with milky white cataract eyes through a window. He is so frightened that he falls several stories to his death.

Liza is befriended by the local doctor, John McCabe, who tries to help the painter after his nasty fall. Meanwhile, the plumber arrives to take a look at the flooded basement. When left to his own devices he opens up a wall to get to the reason for the flooding and finds the gateway to hell!

Liza meets blind woman Emily and her faithful German Shepard on her way into New Orleans. Emily has the same milky white eyes that the painter saw through the window! After Emily has Liza over to her house, Emily warns her to leave the house, leave and never return!

Soon, more people in the house, including the servants, go missing in the house. There are many strange supernatural occurrences and Liza begins seeing things. The doctor is there for her as he tries to help her (while he probably thinks she is just crazy or under too much stress). Things escalate when John and Liza escape the house only to find the streets of New Orleans empty. They go to John's hospital and find that the dead walk!

When this movie came out, it was lambasted by critics (and still is) but soon garnered a cult following. I am used to how these Italian films are presented (usually with a lack of cohesive plot), but those that have never seen an Argento, Fulci, etc. may be a little thrown for a loop. These films focus more on the mood they want to invoke rather than the plot. If one can realize and accept this (and are fans of gore!) I believe more people would enjoy these movies.

The gore in this film is truly nasty (which is a compliment!) and Fulci definitely delivers. Fulci does not shy from showing anything, including a couple of scenes involving acid and someone's face! I was delighted (and grossed out at the same time) that this film featured Fulci's signature eyeball gouging. We also get to see a dog rip someone throat out, among many other gory scenes.

The acting is pretty decent, but the plot does have some pretty big holes in it. Still it is an enjoyable film if you love gore a la Italian masters.

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The New York Ripper (1982)

A killer is loose in New York, sexually mutilating beautiful women. The killer talks like Donald Duck, both to his victims and when taunting the police over the telephone. An older detective tries to solve the case before another woman is cut to ribbons.

This film was directed by Lucio Fulci, who also directed the films Don't Torture a Duckling and Zombie. While I enjoyed those films, I could not get into The New York Ripper. The violence was just too misogynistic for me. Plus, Fulci seemed to come up with the killing scenes first before applying the convoluted back story. There were many suspects, all of them seedy and mysterious characters. The psychologist who was helping the detective seemed like he could have done it, as could have the gigolo, the rich but lonely and kinky wife or the lone survivor of an attack by the Ripper. To quote Randy in Scream, "Everyone's a suspect!"

I wholeheartedly agree with Killing in Style's review of the film. It does appear that Fulci used the story as padding for the killing scenes. The highly violent, erotically charged and misogynistic killings definitely come first in the film, while the plot comes second and sort of fades into the background. Killing in Style points out:

...it could be compared with porn as it uses a similar parasitic approach: diverting a rather classic and well-coded cinema style to use it to its own advantage. When porn leverages any stereotypical scenaristic frame as a pretext to fit in as many porn scenes as possible, Fulci hijacks the early 80s American cop film codes and structure to stuff it with ultra-violent (and sometimes almost pornographic) sequences.

The "almost pornographic" death scenes make this a very uncomfortable film to watch. The camera caresses every angle of each character about to die, and continues to caress them as they are killed by the Ripper.

For everything I want to say about this movie, go to Killing in Style's excellent review of the film - he basically covers it all!

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Zombi 2 (1979)

The notoriously gory Zombi 2 was directed by Lucio Fulci, but is very different from his film Don't Torture a Duckling. Despite the many differences in tone, I enjoy both films. This one is a just bit more gory, fun and fatalistic than I expected! The plot centers on journalist Peter Wells and Anne Bowles as they try to track down Anne's missing father, whose boat drifted into the New York harbor with only a flesh eating ghoul aboard. Anne and Peter travel to the Caribbean, where they acquire passage via boat from two fellow Americans, Brian and Susan, to a remote island. When they get close to what the locals call the cursed island, Susan decides to go for a naked scuba diving session. She is almost attacked by a shark, and is then attacked by a zombie underwater!! She manages to escape while the shark and the zombie duke it out (yes, shark vs. zombie - for reals, yo!).

When the four Americans arrive at the island, they meet Dr. Menard, who tells them that Anne's father died of a disease which is overrunning the island. The dead are coming back to life! The Doctor blames it on voodoo, even though he doesn't really believe in the stuff.

The Americans are sent to Dr. Menard's house, where they are to meet his wife, while he goes back to work in the makeshift hospital. When the four arrive at the grand house, they find the wife's body being eaten alive by zombies! A few scenes ago, the zombies invaded the Missus' house and slowly drive her eyeball through a splintery spike of wood (oh, the ocular horror!). The zombie feast the four find is the bloody aftermath of a verrrrry excruciating death.

The four skedaddle outta there pretty darn fast, hopping in the Doctor's Jeep and peeling out of the driveway. Unfortunately, they hit a zombie on the road and end up crashing their getaway vehicle. Peter breaks his ankle, so the group moseys on through the jungle at a slow pace, but they still manage to keep ahead of the zombies. They stop to rest, only to realize they are lounging around an old Spanish conquistador graveyard. Soon, zombies are popping up, not so fresh, from their graves. Susan gets a chunk bitten out of her, while Anne and Peter are attacked. Anne, Peter and Brian escape and head to the Doctor's hospital, which is housed inside of an old church. The doctor, his nurse and his assistant are still alive, but not for long! Soon the zombies attack and all heck breaks loose. Molotov cocktails go flying, the dead from the hospital start attacking the survivors, and it ends with Anne, Peter and Brian escaping to their boat. Brian has been bitten, though, and has to be put down. Susan and Peter try to raise someone on the radio, but all they hear are reports of zombie attacks. In the end, we see the zombies descending on New York City and it seems there is no hope for humankind.

This film was not what I was expecting at all, which isn't a bad thing. I envisioned a massacre, with zombies running all over New York City as the main plot. Fortunately, the story had more substance than that (not much, but substance nonetheless). The gore was all good, and I even had to cover my eyes for the scene with the shish-kabobed eyeball. Since the cast was half Italian and half English, of course there was dubbing, which annoyed me a bit, but it wasn't so bad that it took away from the action. My main complaint was that it took so long to get to the actual zombies. Half the film was getting to the island, and it even took a while for the action to get started once the four Americans got there. The ending was wonderful, though. When Anne and Peter thought the worst was over, it was only just beginning!

Since Romero's Dawn of the Dead was called Zombie/Zombi in Italy and it played so well, Fulci decided to call this film Zombie 2 (though it is also known as Zombie, as in the version I saw). It is supposed to be a sequel of sorts to Dawn of the Dead, though the two films are completely different. The last shot where the zombies have overrun New York City is supposed to link to Dawn of the Dead.

I enjoyed this movie, though it takes a while to build. The stunning shark vs. zombie scene as well as the eyeball scene are well worth the rental alone.

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