City of the Living Dead (1980)

aka The Gates of Hell, Paura nella città dei morti viventi

I've always been hesitant to write a review for CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD or as some may know as, THE GATES OF HELL. It is actually my favorite Fulci film (though it hasn't always been) and it's the Fulci film that I have seen the most times and I must say it grows on me more and more, with every viewing. I've been hesitant because I always find it hard to review movies that I have blind love for. Is COTLD the best horror movie ever? No. It's not even Fulci's best (so far I give that award to LIZARD WITH A WOMAN'S SKIN, possibly tied with DON'T TORTURE A DUCKLING), but I really enjoy and love the film, even it's 'what the fuck?' ending.

When I was 12, my parents went through a nasty divorce. It tore my family apart and I became an isolated shell of my former self, left to the powers of my own imagination. I would draw, read comic books, listen to heavy metal music 24/7 and watch lots of horror movies. I'd been watching horror movies since I was 5 years old when my dad first allowed me to watch CREEPSHOW (to this day one of my favorites). I was hooked almost instantly, getting scared was a rush and I became enthralled with how movies (horror specifically) were made. Soon, I watched so many horror movies (usually right under the nose of my oblivious parents) that they really didn't scare me anymore—it had turned more into a fascination with the dark side of humanity and the anatomy of fear, rather than just for the rush of getting scared. Then of course, I went through puberty and it was all about seeing as much T & A as possible and horror movies had plenty of that.

I became a video store junkie, spending my entire allowance on video rentals. I remember leaving Hollywood Video (they had a 'cult movie' section, they rocked—they suck now) with a stack of 5 or 6 movies—old releases were $1.50. I literally must have seen every horror movie that they carried. One movie, always caught my eye, but I was always hesitant to rent it. It was called THE GATES OF HELL, and it was in one of those large VHS boxes with an ominous looking zombie skull and a large warning on the front that warned of the film's graphic content and that you must be 17 or older to watch. So you'd think I would have snatched it up, right? Nope, it took forever for me to rent it, but I finally did after reading about it in a library book about cult horror films. By this age, I was already jaded and no movie scared me, but something about this video box, scared the shit out of me.

One evening, in the fall of '91 or '92 (not quite sure), I would have been around 13, I rented it. I had never seen anything like it. It disturbed me and it haunted me and to be honest…I didn't like it. I didn't even watch the whole movie. I returned it and didn't watch it again for many years. Then sometime around my early 20's, my taste in movies changed. I was sick of movies like SCREAM and I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER and all the slickly produced Hollywood crap that was hitting theaters. Every movie that came out that looked like an MTV video and just made me want to puke and I was about ready to give up horror movies forever, then I discovered Italian horror.

I had watched Italian horror movies before as a kid, but didn't realize there was any difference between a Wes Craven horror movie and a Dario Argento horror film—they were all in the horror section, not the foriegn section anyways. I soon learned that other countries had their own style and takes on horror--if that sounds ignorant, remember, I was 13. SUSPIRIA was the movie that truly introduced me to the world of Italian horror and is still one of my favorite horror films of all time. I would explore other films, which of course, led me right back to THE GATES OF HELL. I didn't even know who Lucio Fulci was the first time I had saw it and I wouldn't have cared if I did. After finally watching the whole film, I had to see more of the man's work and from then until even today, I've sought out every movie the man has made. I have a deep connection with the man's films and I almost can't explain why. It's not like every movie he's made is a work of genius (far from it) or he's the best director ever (he is damn good though)—but he puts something in his films that overwhelms my senses and makes me (at risk of sounding like a pussy), feel. Feel disgust, pain, anger, discomfort, confusion, ill, happy, sad and I love a movie that brings out emotions, good or bad.

CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD, like other Fulci movies, feels like a nightmare. A nightmare that gets worse and worse as it goes on. The story is a basic one. A priest in the town of Dunwich (built on the ruins of Salem—wait, Salem is still standing…whatever), a town notorious for witch burnings in the 1700's, hangs himself and opens one of the 7 gates of hell. A psychic sees this happen in a vision-she dies and come back to life after she's already in her coffin. She is discovered just in time by a nosy newspaper reporter and they end up traveling together to Dunwich to find answers. Meanwhile, hell is literally breaking loose in Dunwich and people keep dying in mysterious ways and then coming back to life. The psychic and the reporter end up getting some help from some locals (a psychiatrist and one of his patients). Then they race to find the corpse of the priest and destroy it before All Saints Day or all hell will break loose, wait didn't it already break loose?

See? It's far from a perfect plot, but it's executed quite nicely by Fulci. The cast is stellar and do a great job, even with lousy dubbed voices. Fulci regular, Catriona MacColl plays the lead female and probably gives her best performance. Giovanni Lombardo Radice (or John Morghen as he goes by now) and Daniela Doria show up and get the best death scenes of any Fulci movie. Radice with the infamous head drill scene and Doria with the even more notorious gut vomit scene—even now, one of the sickest scenes ever, even the sound effects are stomach churning. Radice is great as the town idiot/pervert. I found the scene where he enters the abandoned house and his plans to fuck a blow-up doll is cut short when he finds a rotting corpse of a child, very disturbing. Pure Fulci sleaze at it's best.

**POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD**

Then there's that head scratcher of an ending. I stumbled across some info on it online. There is a book entitled, Beyond Terror: The Films of Lucio Fulci, where it basically explains, there was an error in the editing room, which caused Fulci to have to change the ending last minute. Originally it was supposed to have a happy ending, instead we get one that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but leaves people to come to their own conclusions on what happened. It's too bad really, because it's truly one of the films only flaws. There are a lot of people who claim that the plot is confusing, I'm sure it's mostly due to the ending—but nightmares usually don't end, do they? You wake up with a scream or a jolt before the ultimate climax (so to speak) and that's just how CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD ends.

**END OF SPOILERS**

Like other movies of Fulci's horror era, the score is terrific. Again provided by Fabio Frizzi and yet again, adds another layer to the film. Frizzi has provided some of, if not all of Fulci's greatest scores and CITY is no exception. His score for ZOMBI 2 may be my favorite and that theme reprises here (with some minor changes, but it's pretty much the same theme) when the zombies come full force at the end of the movie.

The real star of the film is the cinematography of Sergio Salvati. Salvati did cinematography on ZOMBI 2 and would also do other Fulci classic like, THE BLACK CAT, THE BEYOND and HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY—some of Fulci's best 'looking' movies. I'm sure he had a hand creating the 'nightmare' look that I always talk about with Fulci films. The outdoors scenes in Dunwich, with the dust blowing and howling winds are fucking amazing. The whole film has a creepy-factor of 10, from the realistic zombies (I like how the zombies lurk in the dark, as opposed to shambling around aimlessly) to the dark and grimy sets, CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD is a true horror classic.

CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD trailer