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City of the Living Dead has been dubbed a classic by some horror fans and a complete piece of shit by others. Your average “everything from Europe is cool” horror fan will probably get a giant boner for this flick. Your average “Jason is cool” horror fan will think this is a complete dumpster baby. A discriminating horror fan like myself will tell you that the truth lies somewhere in between.

City of the Living Dead is a film from 1980, which is directed by Lucio Fulci. Fulci himself has a controversial career. Most people either seem to love his films or hate them. Regardless of which side you are on, there is no denying that Fulci has some strengths and some weaknesses. Fulci had a discerning eye for what would look good, and many of the scenes in City show exactly that. Even as I write the review, maniacal images of gore and disturbia flutter through my mind. The biggest flaw of Fulci? Comprehensiveness and storytelling. City certainly lacks in this area.

The plot of City of the Living Dead, in case you’ve never heard of this movie, goes a little like this: a priest hangs himself and opens the gates to Hell… and it’s up to a psychic medium, a reporter, and a psychologist to seal the gates before the living dead take over the world on All Saints Day. The biggest problem I have with the story is this: If all it took was for a priest to commit suicide to open the Gates if Hell, then wouldn’t there be hundreds of open gates to hell laying around the world? Priests aren’t the most stable people in the world after all… just ask an altar boy.

The other lame thing about this movie is the special effects make-up on the dead. No matter how long a person has been dead, a couple of hours or a couple of months, that person’s face is covered in green goo, pus, and blood. I would have expected something more interesting from the man that gave us the ultra-cool zombies in Zombi 2. Instead, the zombies in this movie just look like a bunch of dudes that dipped their heads in the dumpster of a Chinese restaurant.

The rest of the special effects are awesome. The quality of the deaths in this movie rivals, if not betters, what most studios can do with special effects these days. This is the type of gore that I wish Hollywood, low-budget studios, and, basically, anyone making a movie would go back to. If you’re a special effects freak, you’ve either already seen this or you should.

The crappiest thing about this movie is the editing. I was annoyed by all the jump editing. One minute I’m looking at a tree, and the next second some priest is hanging from it. I think there are better more dynamic ways of incorporating the imagery and attaining a better effect than just splicing images into your movie.

The acting and sound are completely 80’s Euro-quality. Everything sounds canned and terrible. I believe some of the sounds I heard were stock sounds from Leone’s Spaghetti Westerns. The voices of the actors sounded like they were recorded in a basement. The only pleasurable sounds to be had are the banging tunes of the score, which oddly enough, sounds eerily familiar to some of the score from Romero’s Dawn of the Dead… it shouldn’t be a surprise though since Fulci is famous for trying to steal some of Romero’s thunder.

Final Synopsis: It’s not complete trash, but it’s not a masterpiece. I probably could have gone my whole life without watching it. If this movie had a well-told story, in addition, to the great special effects, then I would recommend it to every one. Unfortunately, it doesn’t. Euro-trash cinema slurpers will love it. Special effects fans will love it. People concerned with a good story will hate it. Oh yeah, if you hate worms and maggots… don’t watch this movie.

Points Lost: -1 for bad storytelling, -1 for terrible actors, -1 for terrible sound effects, -1 for lame looking living dead, -1 for an obvious ripoff of the score for Dawn of the Dead

Burning Question: Is Fulci a hack or a master? I’m leaning a little towards hamster.

City of the Living Dead
5/10

Tags: 1980, christopher george, european horror, foreign, foreign horror, foreign movie, horror, horror movie, horror movie review, italian, latest movie reviews, lucio fulci, michele soavi, recent, zombie, zombies