CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD-1980-In
Dunwich, a priest hangs himself in a graveyard while in New York at a
seance a woman named Mary (Catriona MacColl) screams “The city of
the dead!” then dies. A cop believes it all has to with drugs
(“What are you on? Coke? Grass? Where's the stash? Down the
toilet?”). Back in Dunwich, a weirdo named Bob (John Morghen aka
Giovanni Lombardo Radice) starts to fool around with an inflatable
love doll and finds a rotting corpse. Back in NY, Peter Bell
(Christopher George), a news reporter goes to visit the seance place
but is turned away by a cop. Back in Dunwich, some guys at a bar see
the walls crack out and smoke comes out. One of the guys blames the
strangeness on the priest who killed himself. Then Gerry (Carlo de
Mejo), a psychiatrist is interrupted while asking his patient Sandra
(Janet Agren) about her childhood. Back in NY, Jerry saves Mary
(who's alive in her coffin now) from being buried alive (and almost
kills her!). They meet with Theresa (Adelaide Aste), the woman who
ran the seance and she tells Peter about “the book of Enoch”
while Mary mentions Dunwich being the city of the dead and that the
gates of hell are being opened again and if they aren't closed the
dead will walk.
Later Jerry's friend Emily (Antonella Interlenghi)
meets Bob at a gas station and the dead priest shows up and rubs
worms in her face. Then a man and woman making out in a car see the
dead priest hanging around (literally). He makes the woman's eyes
bleed and she upchucks worms and stuff that looks like intestines
before someone rips the top of the guy's head off. Peter and Mary go
to Dunwich while Bob is blamed for the murders. It seems for some
reason that the priest's suicide is opening the gate to hell. At
night a creepy coroner is attacked and Emily's little brother John
John (Luca Paisner) sees a sinister apparition. Meanwhile Bob wanders
around while Jerry and Sandra find the corpse of an old lady in
Sandra's kitchen. Bob for some reason is hanging out in Emily's
father's car and when the father sees them together he kills Bob by
sticking his head into some kind of rotating drill. Peter and Mary
meet Jerry and Sandra in a cemetery and they are attacked by a
tornado of worms and maggots. Then Jerry gets a call from John John
saying that Emily has killed their parents. The quartet hurry to find
a solution before All Saints Day comes. Sandra takes John John home
but is killed by a ghoul faced Emily. Bloody, gory faced zombies
terrorize John John but he's saved by Jerry. It seems some of zombies
are hallucinations.
Zombies attack the local bar and kill and eat the
bartender and his two lone customers. Meantime, now a trio Peter,
Mary and Jerry investigate the priest's tomb and some underground
tunnels where they meet a zombified Sandra who promptly kills Peter.
Rats waste no time in eating his brain. Mary almost goes the
“vomiting maggots” route but Jerry kills Sandra. After further
snooping Mary and Jerry are trapped by the undead and the hanging
priest. Just when Mary starts to bleed from the eyes, Jerry guts the
priest with a wooden cross and he burns up (?). His minions burn too.
Jerry and Mary are reunited with John John. But something is wrong.
Mary screams as the scene breaks up.
Although he had already made the notorious ZOMBIE (and several
other successful projects), Italian director Lucio Fulci really hit
his stride with this episodic baffling gory horror story. Though
incomprehensible and slow going at times, Fulci packs stomach
churning SFX, eerie apparitions and some good suspense scenes so the
viewer only has time to wonder once or twice as to what's going on.
The abrupt cheat ending seems to have evolved from the actually end
scene having been destroyed accidentally while it was being
developed. The producers would not allow Fulci to re-shoot so he kind
of said “screw it”. Co-star Morghen was in several other Italian
horror productions (CANNIBAL APOCALYPSE, CANNIBAL FEROX) where his
character also came to a bad end. Director Fulci appears un-billed as
a doctor. It also features journeyman actor Robert Sampson as the local sheriff and future director Michele Soavi.
I saw this in a theater way back in 1980 under it's US
edited title THE GATES OF HELL.
Thanks for reading!
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