City of the Living Dead

[Lord Nepenthean]

Lucio Fulci

If you don't know that name already, learn it quickly.  Remember it, and fear or revere it.  The man made some of the sickest, goriest movies of all time.  Besides Ruggero Deodato, I've never seen a director even compare when it comes to the gross-out factor.

Yesterday I saw Fulci's City of the Living Dead.  As you might guess, it is a zombie movie.  It's actually pretty good.  Just be warned.  There are some pretty gross things in the movie.  For example:

A girl starts bleeding out of her eyes, and foaming at the mouth.  She then proceeds to vomit up all of her intestines and even her stomach.  Sound like it would probably look super fake in a 1980-released movie?  It would had anyone but Fulci done it.  For the scene, the actress swallowed still-warm sheep intestines and then regurgitated them on camera.  The effect was (pun intended) nauseating.

At any rate, if you can handle things like that, check this movie out.  It's very obvious that it was made in the early 80's, which in my opinion was when zombie movies were at their prime.  The cheesy electronic music is great in this movie.  Good characters, too.

My only gripe was the ending was slightly confusing, and that the movie lacked a certain sense of widespread dread - the doom seemed almost confined to one place rather than the whole world.