In rural Dunwich Father Thomas has made a decision, walking slowly through his graveyard he stops to ponder his thoughts. Then without further thought he throws a rope over the branch of a tree and hangs himself. No sooner has he hung himself than the ground begins to move near his feet.
In New York a séance is going terribly wrong, and for one of the guests it’s a very final gathering. At the crucial point of the séance Mary dies. Reporter Peter Ball is soon on the case and following up on his enquiries he heads to the burial site of Mary, where he rather surprisingly finds her very much alive and lying in a shallow grave.
The death of Father Thomas has opened the gates of Hell, now its down to Mary and Peter to close them.
I first saw City Of The Living Dead at the start of the 1990’s, a decade after it had been banned in the UK. The film, a movie made by Lucio Fulci was one of five of the director’s movies to be banned in the UK in that time period. In the 1990’s after a period of unavailability in the UK suddenly this and three other Fulci movies became available albeit in an edited format. Of all the movies this was the least edited, and at the time to be fair I believed it to be the weakest of the four available movies. The first of Fulci’s movies I had seen was The House By The Cemetery, the next was Zombie Flesh Eaters (Zombi 2), the third The Beyond; these movies all had something about them, a scene that was so shocking it forced you to pay attention. By the time I had got round to watching City Of The Living Dead all those shocks had sunk in, and there was nothing new here except that is for a rather unpleasant vomiting scene. Having glanced on a number of sites on the Internet I have noted that a lot of viewers often saw this movie later on, the more talked about features being more a priority. Why am I telling you this? The reason I feel is an important one, this while still being a powerful movie is one of the films of the pivotal point of Fulci’s career that seems to get the worst press or reviews, I cannot help but think order of play is an important factor. Watching the film for about the sixth time, and with a fresh vision (and a slightly vague memory), I can’t help but think in reflection that this is one of the better movies of that time period.
I do need to backtrack slightly and say that while I believe this to be one of the better movies of that period, I do not understand some aspects of the movie. The acting has certainly moved down a notch, some of the actions seem a little unexplained, and the movies ending that can be interpreted a number of ways I guess, has had people questioning it for years, and despite the claims of some, I do not believe we will ever truly know the answer.
Moving on to the good stuff, one of the key reasons I like City Of The Living Dead is due to the zombies themselves, you get a zombie film and it’s a typical bloodbath some zombies move fast others slow, but generally there are lots of them. Here you have a collection of lone zombies all attacking victims on a solo basis, you only see a congregation of zombies in the final minutes. The zombies here have no reason to be either fast or slow moving, as it seems they literally teleport from destination to destination, you may think that’s silly, but how much more silly is it than the prospect of brain eating zombies in the first place? Fulci’s zombies have generally been on some sort of journey, we have had decayed zombies, the recently dead zombies, here the zombies are a lot of the time looking a little burned, with the odd one that is not too different to how they looked before death, but this condition varies from zombie to zombie.
The story itself is a little shaky granted, however it manages to link together a variety of locations and thanks to a great music score, the suspense builds from the moment the earth starts moving beneath Father Thomas’s feet. The characters are narrowed down fairly quickly and you realise you have your final four, who are dispatched in an unexpected order which keeps that aspect of the story nice and fresh. The inclusion of Bob (Giovanni Lombardo Radice) is pretty much there just to add to the body count, and certainly gets the drill rather nicely.
On a gore factor, well this is pretty good; lots of decomposing bodies scattered around, a new Fulci favourite occurs in brain scrunching, as nearly all of the characters that die and up with a zombie grabbing a characters head from the rear and squeezing so tight that a clump of skull and brain come away in their hand, this is a quite heavily used means of death in the movie.
The performances are variable Catriona MacColl performs well as ever, a good solid leading lady, the late Christopher George seems a little out of his depth at times. Carlo De Mejo almost steps into the leading male role as George struggles to keep the light on his performance. Janet Agren and future director Michele Soavi both have reasonable supporting roles.
City Of The Living Dead has some issues, it also has some really big plus points too, it’s a weaker entry in the Fulci series only if you watch them out of date order, if you’re a first time viewer however watch Fulci’s Zombie series in the correct order (Zombie Flesh Eaters, City Of The Living Dead, The Beyond, The House By The Cemetery) and you’ll find this is part of the journey that leads to the pinnacle of Fulci’s career The Beyond.
There are dozens of releases around the world of the movie on DVD and Blu-Ray, the recent release from Arrow as part of their cult movie collection is one of the best. As well as a crisp and clean print the disc is absolutely loaded to the hilt with special features. Catriona MacColl, Giovanni Lombardo Radice, Carlo De Majo, Antonella Fulci, Dardano Sacchetti all feature in exclusive interviews, there are a couple of commentary tracks one of which features MacColl (always great value), as well as trailers. The case has some great artwork, and there is a highly informative booklet too.
