City of The Living Dead Aka The Gates of Hell (1980)

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.

House By The Cemetery (Arrow DVD)

There are few movies that have been affected quite as badly as a result of the UK’s video nasty furore than The House By The Cemetery. In 1984 when certification kicked in and movies started to become banned when our government was trying to yurn us into a nanny state House By The Cemetery was one of the first to go. Ironically in 1993 after nearly ten years in the wilderness it was one of the first of the former video nasties to get a release, then by the now defunct S. Gold & Sons sub label Vipco (S. Gold & Sons are also now defunct but were former pioneers in the home entertainment industry). While it secured its release there was a considerable amount of time edited from the movie. As DVD took off and Vipco planned a DVD release of the movie they then presented it before the BBFC (British Board Of Film Classification) again where it was agreed that they could release a slightly lengthened version. But it has taken till 2009, twenty five years since the movie was banned, for the movie to at last be seen in an uncut form in the United Kingdom.

House By The Cemetery is a movie from the infamously titled Godfather Of Gore Lucio Fulci, made during his heyday of 1979-1981 where his “Zombie” horror movies changed the way western culture looked at Zombies. I always feel referring to House By The Cemetery as a zombie movie does it an injustice because the movies killer is not strictly dead, a pretty rudimentary part of being a zombie in my book. None the less this is a movie that has great affection in my eyes, because although I had briefly skated round the genre of the Italian horror/thriller movie, it was after seeing this film that I became a fan of Italian horror forever.

Beginning in New York a young family are on the verge of making a move to Boston where Norman (Paolo Malco) is planning to continue the work of a colleague who seemingly turned insane and killed himself and his family. Wife Lucy (Katherine (or Catriona) MacColl) and son Bob (Giovanni Frezza) in toe, they arrive at Oak Mansion a remote house by a now disused graveyard. While Norman gets straight to work its Lucy’s responsibility to turn this old wreck of a house into a home. While Norman turns up very little Lucy is thrown straight into making discoveries, whilst cleaning the living area she discovers a tombstone with the name Jacob Tess Freudstein on it, a name that’s an essential part of Norman’s investigations. With creepy vocal noises half roaring half child crying, a disturbing looking babysitter, the impression that Norman knows a lot more than he’s letting on, and a bizarre but striking young girl by the name of May; The House By The Cemetery has all the essential factors to make a completely chilling horror movie.

I won’t tell you any lies the acting is not the best, director Fulci believing that the storytelling is more essential than the actors roles, this is in no means helped by the dubbing of all the characters into English; especially when either the dubbing artist or the Italian to English translator cannot identify the difference between a doctor or a baker “You really should be taking those tablets your baker prescribed” states Malco at a moment of high tension. But put aside these two facts and you have potentially the framework of one of the most cleverly crafted horror movies of the 1980’s. Fulci spends a great amount of the movies 85-85 minute running time building the tension, leaking out little snippets of information, or showing you just enough to keep you enthralled. Rather beautifully the movies killer although fairly obvious from the movies offset is not shown to the audience until the final moments of the film, and pretty is not a word you would use to describe it.

The Hostel movies got a lot of acclaim for their rather bloody and in your face gruesomeness; well House By The Cemetery does a similar job, the big difference being that Fulci’s classic was twenty five years earlier in back 1981. As you enter the killer’s lair properly for the first time, you’re treated to the remains of a variety of cannibalised victims, not cannibalised for food however, but for their organs and other essentials that a 200 year old killer might require. YUK!

Many of Lucio Fulci’s movies even through his better times are slightly disjointed leaving you with a “what just went on there?” style thought, City Of The Living Dead (another Fulci movie from the same era) being a classic example, but House By The Cemetery avoids these trappings, your fully aware of what’s just taken place but the burning question as the credits begin to roll is what happens next? If you allow your mind to think about it, there is a good sequel there because all the doors are left open, leaving the viewer with a deep feeling of helplessness. It was exactly this sort of after thought that drew me towards the Italian horror genre.

If you’re not a particularly strong stomached horror movie viewer this is one you might want to slowly wean yourself into. There are some pretty jumpy moments mixed in with the grotesque gore. And while the movies first death might leave you chuckling the combination of gore and tension as it begins to build up can be too much for some to bear.

As well as being presented uncut, this is by far the cleanest print I have seen of the movie. There are some beautiful grainy scenes that give the movie a real texture. Something else that stood out to me from the movies offset was that title font is different from all the other DVD releases that have been seen in the UK, and now bare a pinkish tinge instead of the usual white titles. This combined with the addition of a deleted scene leads me to believe that these titles are the originally intended ones, while this is fairly small fry to the average viewer this is news I’m sure would appeal to the movies hardcore fans. Other special features include a 17 minute documentary that discusses both the movie and the impact Fulci had to the horror movie genre and more interestingly how oblivious he was to the fact that he had fans across the world, and not just in his native Italian homeland. Other features include trailers, tv spots, and a image gallery. The case inlay offers a double sided cover so you can vary your choices slightly.

The House By The Cemetery is due for release on June the 29^th of Arrows Masters Of Giallo label.