Paura Nella Citta dei Morti Civenti

The cultural impact of Dawn of the Dead (1978), George Romero's belated follow-up to his landmark, taboo-shattering midnight movie Night of the Living Dead (1968), had global repercussions that resounded nowhere more strongly than in Italy. Rome-based filmmaker Dario Argento had helped finance Romero's sequel, which did big business in Italy under the title Zombi. Eager to cash in on the success of Dawn..., Italian producers pressed journeyman director Lucio Fulci into service for the in-name-only sequel, released in the summer of 1979 as Zombi 2. (The film had its US distribution a year later, with the title Anglicized to Zombie and the film presented as a stand-alone feature.) 1980 was a watershed year for the living dead, who popped up to do harm to the living in Bruno Mattei's Hell of the Living Dead (aka Virus), Joel M. Reed's Night of the Zombies, Umberto Lenzi's City of the Walking Dead (aka Nightmare City), William Lustig's Maniac, Max Kalmanowicz's The Children, Charles McCrann's Bloodeaters, Joseph Ellison's Don't Go in the House and in the re-release of Ken Wiederhorn's Nazi zombie classic Shock Waves (1977). Lucio Fulci followed Zombi 2 with Paura nella città dei morti viventi ("Fear in the City of the Living Dead), distributed stateside in 1983 as The Gates of Hell and more commonly known thirty years later as City of the Living Dead (1980). Zombi 2 established a template for the perceived guarantee of boffo international box office and the same formula was used for City of the Living Dead, which unites American TV actor Christopher George (star of The Rat Patrol and the short-lived Fugitive-like series The Immortal), British leading lady Catriona MacColl and Italian actor Carlo DeMejo as mortal do-gooders racing against the clock to "re-close" the portal to the netherworld, which has sprung open in a small New England town following the suicide of a local priest. While Zombi 2 benefited from opening and closing scenes filmed in New York City (including an iconic final image of zombies shuffling toward Manhattan along the upper tier of the Brooklyn Bridge), City of the Living Dead gets extensive use out of Gothic Savannah, Georgia, which stands in fairly convincingly (kudzu notwithstanding) for the fictional Dunwich (an allusion to the writings of H. P. Lovecraft). The loose-knit script by Fulci and long-time collaborator Dardano Sacchetti was incomplete at the time of principal photography, requiring the cast to improvise and the lack of preparation is evident in many scenes, with no one behind the camera seeming to notice or care that George blows a line in his first scene, using his own scripted name to refer to another character. Despite the occasional raggedness, City of the Living Dead remains a must-see film for horror fans and Euro-cult enthusiasts. Maintaining the most minimal of narratives, the film progresses episodically, leapfrogging from outrage to outrage. Marginalizing the investigation of his protagonists into the horrific phenomena bedeviling Dunwich (which includes, but is not limited to, earth tremors, maggot showers and exploding glass windows whose shards draw blood), Fulci shifts focus to the grisly fates of a string of minor characters. The cinematic equivalent of a close talker, Fulci has director of photography Sergio Salvati invade the personal spaces of the performers, zooming in to seemingly extraneous details as widening eyes and gaping mouths that foam, spray spittle and vomit out everything from bile to worms. While the film had its grindhouse admirers, it gained cult status during the VHS boom as a release from Paragon Video. With the ability to rewind and freeze frame, gore fans could revel in Fulci's roster of gross-out moments: a high school girl regurgitating the contents of her own abdominal cavity, brains yanked from the heads of characters major and minor, the village idiot having his skull bored out on a drill press, and a trio of zombies teaching the regulars of a local watering hole the new meaning of "bar food." Incredibly, City of the Living Dead looks even better now than it did thirty years ago. However indebted to George Romero, Fulci was the rare copycat who took his inspiration in new directions, never fearing to appear ridiculous or desperate, preferring always to go big rather than go home. Blue Underground's remastered, 30th anniversary region 1 DVD follows a trail of previous VHS, laser disc and DVD transfers, the most recent of which was a region-free special edition from the United Kingdom's Arrow Video. The new Blue Underground disc compares favorably to prior releases, with a high bit rate and some incredibly vivid chromatics, particularly in the film's second half as the zombies manifest themselves in all their candied putrescence. Slightly more visible information is discernable at the margins of the frame as compared to Anchor Bay Entertainment's 2000 transfer (the last domestic DVD release until now), with a finer degree of film grain, satisfyingly bottomless black levels and lifelike flesh tones. (The title is also now available as a Blu-ray release.) Extras feel slightly sparse for a commemorative edition, running to a scattering of radio spots and trailers and a 32 minute documentary, The Making of City of the Living Dead, which boasts the reminiscences of Catriona MacColl, Fulci's assistant Michele Soavi (who was pressed into service as an actor and later became a director in his own right), Sergio Salvati and a number of technicians. English, French and Spanish subtitles are optional and the disc comes with an audio choice of the film's original monaural or a Dolby 5.1 digital upgrade. For more information about City of the Living Dead, visit Blue Underground. To order City of the Living Dead, go to TCM Shopping. by Richard Harland Smith