Tags
Language
Tags
March 2024
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
25 26 27 28 29 1 2
3 4 5 6 7 8 9
10 11 12 13 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21 22 23
24 25 26 27 28 29 30
31 1 2 3 4 5 6

City of the Living Dead (1980) [Special Edition]

Posted By: Someonelse
City of the Living Dead (1980) [Special Edition]

City of the Living Dead (1980) [Special Edition]
A Film by Lucio Fulci
DVD9 | ISO | NTSC 16:9 (720x480) | 01:32:42 |
Audio: English DTS 6.1 @ 768 Kbps and AC3 5.1/1.0 @ 448/192 Kbps | Subs: English SDH, French, Spanish
Genre: Horror | Italy

In the town of Arkham, built over the original site of Salem, a priest commits suicide in a graveyard and opens a portal to hell. This happens just as a seance commences in New York, and the psychic shock waves from the suicide put Mary Woodhouse (Catriona McColl) into a coma. She 'meets cute' with impulsive reporter Peter Bell (Christopher George, perhaps his best performance) when he hears her cries in the graveyard and saves her from being buried alive at the last possible moment. Once they realize that Arkham on All Saint's Day is going to be neck-deep in demons from Hell, they rush there just in time to become part of the fun. Phantoms are turning up everywhere and ordinary people commit atrocious murders. Unexplainable things happen, such as a girl vomiting up her insides while sitting in a car. And finally the zombies themselves come, accompanied by the ghost of the dead priest himself.

IMDB
amazon.com

City of the Living Dead (1980) [Special Edition]

A minor classic of Italian horror, this mix of rotting dead, demonic invasion and Southern gothic with a giallo flair is one of the more memorable films from gore-meister Lucio Fulci. It doesn't make any sense, but the entertainingly weird festival of gore is full of memorable moments and it looks forward to his masterpiece, "The Beyond." Newly remastered from the original negative, it includes retrospective featurette about the film and the director, and new interviews with cast and crew members among the supplements.
City of the Living Dead (1980) [Special Edition]

How should I write about Lucio Fulci's gore classic, City Of The Living Dead? Approach it from today's seen, heard about and done everything standpoint? Or from that of the young teen discovering this movie for the first time on VHS in the mid-'80s? Well, no matter how you slice it, (or drill it, or rip its brains out) this delirious stream-of-consciousness horror is still an unnervingly fun must see for fans of international sleaze cinema.

City of the Living Dead (1980) [Special Edition]

Back then, City Of The Living Dead (aka Gates Of Hell) stood proudly with other bits of transgressive cinema like Maniac and I Spit On Your Grave, as something almost whispered about in its gory power. It was the movie where That Girl literally pukes her guts out, and to be hunted down for a soda-fueled viewing with friends. Yes, and Giovanni Lombardo Radice also gets his brain drilled, meaning this was, and is, truly a gore film for the ages, logic be damned.

City of the Living Dead (1980) [Special Edition]

However, illogic is director Fulci's strong point, as the best of his horror movies maintain a nightmarish insanity that subverts narrative formatting and chronological order with gleeful abandon. To wit, weird shit is going down in a Lovecraftian New England town, and Christopher George (Pieces) and Catriona MacColl (The Beyond) are on the case. Priests are hanging themselves in cemeteries, folks are bleeding from the eyeballs, and the living dead beset deserted dive-bars. As should be readily apparent, the town is built over one of the gates of hell, and there's only three days to permanently lock that gate. I think. Indeed, there may be logic afoot, but if there is it's buried beneath foggy, apocalyptic style, arbitrary time-shifts, and gory horror scenes that still have the power to revolt today.

City of the Living Dead (1980) [Special Edition]

City ranks among the top of Fulci Fan Favorites due to its aggressively disorienting, unrelievedly evil atmosphere, not to mention those gore set-pieces. Fulci's town of Dunwich (in case you didn't catch the Lovecraft connection) seems to be the loneliest place on earth, seemingly shrouded in perpetual dark and choked by acrid fog. The camera glides along abandoned streets for uncomfortable lengths of time, before making a shocking jump cut to a disgusting ghoul or a shower of maggots. Residents seem at best mentally checked-out, at worst crass and evil, creating an air of downbeat hopelessness that fits Fulci's aggrieved take on life. And all this comes in the service of truly detached performances. (That is, excepting when gore is concerned; the director had a penchant for pushing his performers to get genuine reactions. See the rain-of-maggots sequence, for example.) What results is a horror movie with a few effective jump-scares bolstered by extreme gore, sickly tension and a bleak, doomed world-view to truly ruin an afternoon. Counter-intuitively, these are all positive attributes where the City Of The Living Dead is concerned.

City of the Living Dead (1980) [Special Edition]

Blue Underground is trying to do right by Fulci's most nihilistic and nasty effort, the glum-'n'-gory City Of The Living Dead. It just seems they're taking their time. Perhaps the next go-round we'll get a commentary track of some sort! Yet if you don't already own this movie, this would be the place to start; with a good (but short) documentary and fantastic AV quality, Fulci's cruel, hyper-gory festival of hell-bound despair is better than ever. Those not willing to double-dip should absolutely rent this, while newbies will find it (at least) Recommended.
Kurt Dahlke, DVDtalk
City of the Living Dead (1980) [Special Edition]

DVD Features:
- The Making of CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD - Interviews with Star Catriona MacColl, Co-Star Michele Soavi, Production Designer Massimo Antonello Geleng, Assistant Makeup Effects Artist Rosario Prestopino, Special Effects Artist Gino De Rossi, Cinematographer Sergio Salvati, and Camera Operator Roberto Forges Davanzati (32:00)
- English trailer
- Italian trailer
- Radio spots
- Still gallery
City of the Living Dead (1980) [Special Edition]

Download:





Interchangable links.

No More Mirrors.