City of the Living Dead aka The Gates of Hell Italy 1980 Directed by Lucio Fulci. Starring: John Morghen, Katherine MacColl, Christopher George, Janet Agren.

A crazy priest hangs himself in a little place called Dunwich, and after that is nothing as before. By his suicide has he opened a gate to Hell. The priest is haunting the place and take peoples life by looking at them. However are they come back again later, to take revenge on the living (I don´t know why). Mary see through a seance when the priest is get hanged, and understand that he has opened a gateway to Hell. She dies unfortunately by the shock. When she lies in the coffin half buried, is she suddenly wake up to life and start screaming. It´s only a journalist who hear her, and he takes a pickaxe and chop down the coffin (I don´t understand why he always persist in hacking near her head). Now they must find Dunwich and stop the priest before All Saints´Day, or else shall all dead rise from their graves.

"City of the Living Dead" is the second film in Fulci´s zombie quartet, and is without a doubt the worst. After his magnificent "Zombie Flesh Eaters", have I an impression that he is ticking over here. Fulci appears to apply all his energy on gruesome and spooky atmospheres, that he actually managed to do very well. But the plot which is far too thin, and the lousy actors, draws down the whole films rating. It has furthermore a completely incomprehensibly ending that doesn´t make sense to me.

In "City of the Living Dead" goes Fulci another step further in his hunt on being worst. Here shows he up filthy effects which sometimes is absolutely tasteless. I first of all think of the drawn out scene then a chick is manage to throw up her own intestines when the priest looks at her, and the famous scene when poor John Morghen get his skull pierced with a long drill in a turning-lathe. It is presumably its special effects which makes it to a classic after all.

Kent Palmgren

Thrilling Movie Review