Retro Review: City of the Living Dead (1980)

Allow me to make something perfectly clear: I have a soft spot in my heart a mile wide for the work of Lucio Fulci. Especially Zombi 2 and his unofficial "Gates of Hell trilogy". So when Stacie Ponder of Final Girl announced that the next edition of her ever-popular Final Girl Film Club would be setting its sights on Fulci's City of the Living Dead, there was no way I wasn't going to be a part of it. Hell, I'll take any excuse to immerse myself in the bizarre, bleak, gauche and gore-drenched ouvre of Fulci.

This particular one, I have a long history with. Well, this one and Zombi 2, actually. See folks, I'm a child of the video store era, and I came to love horror movies thanks to browsing the racks at the local mom-and-pop rental store. For years, Fulci was the forbidden fruit for me. There were certain horror movies I was allowed to rent, and his most certainly were not among them.

But there were those massive VHS boxes, beckoning to me. The Zombi 2 box with the infamous tagline "We Are Going to Eat You!" and that worm-filled, buck-toothed face of the conquistador zombie. And then, of course there was City of the Living Dead--or as I knew it back then, The Gates of Hell. I will never forget the ghastly image of that green, one-eyed zombie face hovering above that city skyline. Add to that the ostentatious warning on the front about the film's extreme content, and the sordid plot synopsis on the back about suicidal priests and roving undead, and it was pretty much a total package that a 12-year-old video store browser is not likely to forget.

It would be years before I finally had the opportunity to actually get my hands on the thing and watch it. City of the Living Dead would be the last of the pseudo-trilogy that I would get to see, having already seen The Beyond and House by the Cemetery, both of which actually came out after CLD. And even though House by the Cemetery is my favorite, CLD is one hell of a horrific experience as well, and was worth those years of waiting to come of age.

The Lovecraftian plot is a bit pedestrian, maybe even hackneyed: A priest commits suicide, opening the doorway to Hell in the process and unleashing an undead uprising in the New England town of Dunwich (yes, Dunwich). A newspaper reporter (Christopher George) and a woman somehow psychically linked to the events (Catriona MacColl) must find a way to close the opening to Hell before the living dead take over the earth. As flimsy as the plot may be, I give credit to Fulci and his collaborator Dardano Sacchetti for diving into Lovecraft with such relish. Who knew Italian filmmakers would take such passionate interest in the works of everyone's favorite morbid Rhode Islander?

It's always tough to judge the acting in Fulci's films due to the Italian practice of dubbing everyone's lines in later--some actors are speaking English, others Italian, and some are even dubbed with other voices. MacColl is terrific as always, bringing an air of classic horror class to the seedy proceedings. The rest of the gang is spotty at best--although I have to give props to the one and only Giovanni Radice as the town scapegoat. The dude has presence, although unlike in House by the Edge of the Park, in which he shows off his dancing skills, here he mainly shows off his ability to take a drill to the brain, in what still may be the most disturbingly explicit and realistic murder ever staged for film.

As for the rest of the cast, we can't really blame them with the lines they're given to recite. I've only seen it dubbed in English, but I can't imagine the original Italian is much better. I particularly can't help but chuckle at the adorable attempt to reproduce "tough New Yorker dialect"--when's the last time you heard an NYC cop ask, "What the dickens is this??"

Nevertheless, Fulci's films work for me for other reasons, and City of the Living Dead is a shining example of what I'm talking about. I'm far from the first to say it, but Fulci at his best draws us into a surreal world that's best described as a fever dream--linear plot and character development are far less important than atmosphere and tension. If you don't ask too many logical questions--and really, why the hell would you?--then you'll better be able to appreciate the film for the visceral nightmare that it is.

Sergio Salvati's gritty cinematography is the veritable distillation of all that I love about 1970s grindhouse horror, with its murky lighting, prodigious use of fog and gratuitous zoom shots. The master of funky Italian horror synth scores, Fabio Frizzi does the honors here with a typically off-beat and unsettling score that complements Fulci's work even better than it does in The Beyond, though not quite as well as in Zombi 2. I'm always amazed by how Frizzi's material works despite the fact that on the surface, the style of music would seem to incongruous with the subject matter. Yet somehow, the score melds inextricably with the rest of the film, to the point that the Fulci style and the Frizzi sound are virtually inseparable in the minds of so many horror fans.

Of course, it wouldn't be a Fulci flick without copious amounts of nasty, grim, depression-inducing grue, now would it? In addition to the aforementioned Radice braining, we get maggot-ridden corpses, skulls crushed by hand, and in what may be the most notorious Fulci moment of them all, poor Daniela Doria literally vomiting her guts out. This was the scene that everybody always talked about, and was a main selling point in getting people interested to see it (we horror fans are an unusual lot, aren't we?) And the way it's played out is classic Fulci, and a prime example of the nightmarish quality of this film. Everything about it feels very much like some kind of awful, terrifying dream.

So ignore the minutiae of the story, and for God's sake, don't try to make too much sense of it. Don't ask why, in the late 20th century, a woman would be buried without being embalmed. Don't ask why there would appear to be bodies buried for decades under about three inches of dead leaves in the Dunwich cemetery. And most of all, don't ever dare ask what the hell the ending means--I'm not even sure Fulci would've been able to say. This film is all about setting a mood, and what a bleak one it is!

There's a purity to Fulci's brand of horror that I find irresistible. It's all about delivering a harrowing emotional experience, weaving a tapestry of relentless dread and foreboding, and overwhelming the senses with truly shocking imagery. It would be hard to call City of the Living Dead a great film in the conventional sense. But a great horror movie? Hell yes.

I'm glad I discovered City of the Living Dead on the video shelf all those years ago, and that it stuck with me long enough for me to seek it out when I got old enough to see it. And I'm glad it was selected for the Final Girl Film Club--always a pleasure to share the love of a movie with others. Keep an eye on the blogosphere in the weeks to come for other participating blog posts on Lucio Fulci's gory gem...

Retro Review: Zombi 2

For my first installment of Retro Review, I've selected a movie that is now one of my absolute favorites, but which I put off watching for years: Lucio Fulci's exploitation epic, Zombi 2 (a.k.a. Zombie).

Let me explain a bit. I had been hooked on zombie flicks ever since age 15, when I watched Dawn of the Dead in my best friend's girlfriend's house while said best friend was busy georging said girlfriend's romero in the other room. You could probably go back a couple years earlier, when The Return of the Living Dead first tore through my pre-teen psyche. But the one movie I kept avoiding was Zombi 2.

I think it was that horrifying box cover I had seen glaring at me for years in the video store. Or all the heinous things I had heard about it, how it made Day of the Dead look like Fried Green Tomatoes and such. Back in those days, I really did have the benefit of a much more visceral reaction to horror movies than my more cynical, world-weary self can muster up these days. And zombie movies in particular drew me in with all the power of a five-car pileup on I-95 that you can't help but stare at, despite the fact that it would really mess you up. In short, I absolutely loved them at the same time that they filled me with legit dread.

I knew Zombi 2 would be the ultimate adventure. And when I finally crossed paths with it, I turned out to be right.

It happened about ten years ago, when this cheesy, third-string pay-per-view provider I used to have presented a Halloween double-bill of Zombi 2 and I Spit on Your Grave (trick or treat, kids!!). Having the movie all but dropped in my lap, I knew I simply had to tape it. The time had finally come to confront Fulci.

I don't think I can understate the sense of raw terror that filled my gut as I sat there watching it for the first time, completely alone in my newlywed apartment. From the second that astounding Fabio Frizzi score kicks in, I was off to the races. Easily one of the most powerful horror scores of its era.

Yes, it was filled with all the cheesiness we've come to expect from exploitation flicks of this ilk. A plot that often bordered on the irrelevant. A pace that might pose a challenge to the more attention-span-deprived viewer. But, truth be told, I was drawn in by the "fever dream" quality of Fulci's work, the effortless way that the man created atmosphere, zealously throwing all his efforts into grabbing hold of your emotions in that very Italian way--logic and continuity be damned!

Richard Johnson delivered pure, bleak desperation in his performance as Dr. Maynard--and this was years before I would come to love him as another doctor authority figure in The Haunting. And Tisa Farrow--boy did it screw with my mind trying to process the fact that the sister of Woody Allen's leading lady was the girl fleeing from cannibal corpses in a Euro-trash grindhouse flick!

There are so many aspects that have been discussed ad nauseum, but which were all new to me. The breathtaking zombie vs. shark scene, which to this day impresses me for the sheer ballsiness of it. The nearly impossible-to-watch eye impalement scene, a prime example of Fulci's innate ability to locate the core of what revolts the average viewer and poke at it relentlessly with all the ardor of a little boy pouring salt on a slug.

And then there was that moment I had seen bits and pieces of, and dreaded most of all--the conquistador graveyard scene, in which one of our heroines has her voicebox torn out in lovingly graphic detail by a worm-eyed zombie who--despite his extreme groadiness--had actually held up quite well for being dead and buried for 400 years. Maybe I'm just a big detail person, but I can never get over the way that Fulci's makeup genius Giannetto de Rossi went to the trouble of simulating mucus spewing forth from Auretta Gay's severed trachea. Blood is one thing, but that, my friends, is what you call going the extra mile.

God bless the Italians and their twisted Roman Catholic fixation on the perverse horrors of the undead. Because the gore is really what it's all about when you sit down to watch a Lucio Fulci picture, isn't it? And Zombi 2 delivered beyond my wildest dreams. Stripped of all the pesky social commentary and humor that Romero peppered throughout his films, Zombi 2 is instead a veritable orgy of mercilessly graphic and unspeakable violence. I always hear about the small budget they had to work with, and the corners they cut, but I'll be damned if this still isn't some of the most terrifyingly realistic looking stuff I've ever seen in a horror movie, period.

Fulci is definitely an acquired taste, and he isn't for everybody, no question about that. But I'm here today to declare whole-heartedly that he is for me--and it all goes back to my discovery of this 1979 classic. Now, there are those who will point to his later "trilogy" of City of the Living Dead, The House by the Cemetery and The Beyond as being all superior, but I disagree. While I enjoy those films very much, particularly House by the Cemetery, Zombi 2 will always be my favorite Fulci. It could very well be, plain and simple, the purest zombie film ever made.