City of the Living Dead - Lisa's Review

*** SPOILERS ***

So after a couple of Argento weeks, I was relatively pleased to have a Fulci offering this week.  I didn't know a great deal about Fulci before starting 'The Nasties' and was pleasantly surprised with what I have watched so far.  So what about 'City of the living dead'?

This movie rang bells with me and I wasn't sure why... then I remembered.  This was a movie my husband (a BIG zombie fan) had watched many years ago and the memory got lost in the recesses of time.  In more recent years, he was reading an online review which listed it as one of the greatest zombie movies of all time. Of course he had to go out and buy a copy.  That was where my memory came from.  He watched it and was mightilly disappointed with the outcome.  This is from a man who has probably seen most zombie movies out there.

Our very basic premis starts with a pirest committing suicide and in the process opening the gates to hell where dead residents of a town called Dunwich reanimate and set about killing everyone in sight.  We have a medium called Mary, who supposedly 'dies' at the start of the movie out of sheer fright when we see's the situation surrounding our priest.  She is buried alive and when she comes to, she is rescued by a reported called Peter.  They set off to Dunwich to attempt to save the world from the ensuing madness....

Sooo what did I think?  Well there was a 'feeling' to the movie that I liked, which Fulci always manages to create.  I liked the special effects (although you have to allow for its time).  We have vomitting entrails, bleeding eyeballs (I particularly like this one), crusty zombies and a horrific drill death.  The zombies in this one are very different to the normal shuffling, moronic ones.  These ones are smart and can even teleport!  You think they're far away and KABOOM, there they are, right in front of you.  Jumpy!!!  They also look different, more like burns victims I thought.  It's nice to sometimes see different interpretations of the living dead.