City Of The Living Dead

Rating:
Summary: Zombies from Where?
Review: Fulci's movies are, as i have now seen 4 of them, quite terrible. This film follows in the footsteps of "The Beyond" except that it is dragged through overkill by psycho babbling doctors who can't believe that the dead are eating people and stupid children running away from mind numbing zombies. The ending is one of those "they are back" endings that doesn't even make sense. The only reason to watch this if there are no drugs or alcohol in your house so you need a reason to fall asleep. Awful.


Rating:
Summary: Vhs Censored VS Dvd Uncut
Review: Bon j'avais vue Frayeurs en version censuré sur mon vhs avec le son et l'image qui étais plutôt de mauvaise qualité donc j'avais pas super aimer . Je me suis donc décider de le prendre uncut en DVD(Zone1) et wow quelle choc. Bon encore une fois les superbes partition de Fabio Frizzi rend le film magique d'un pure bonheurs. On peut apercevoir le Filmmaker Jak Anders(Le blondinait) tout suite sortie de l'enfert vert dans Cannibal Holocaust qui détient un petit rôle. Et l'héroïne du film qu'ont retrouvera plus tard dans L'Au delà. Dans ce film les Zombies ne sont pas representé comme de vulgaire cadavre inoffensifs mais plus comme de véritable démon . Coté gore excellent encore une fois pour l'année du film, la scène de la perceuse et celle de la fille vomissant tout ces organes sont tout simplement magnifique. L'atmosphère du film , comme a peu près tout les classique de Fulci , est sombre , glauque et pesante . Fulci a un don pour donner un véritable aspect d'horreur a ces film. Malgré que je ne conseil pas ce film a tout le monde , Fulci a un style unique qui ne plait malheureusement pas a tout le monde (Culte à mes yeux) mais moi je reste fan de ce Maitre à jamais.

Rating:
Summary: Regurgitated Guts
Review: I recently wrote a review for Fulci's The Beyond, and I had to make a point of saying that not only was it an entertaining film, but that I thought it was a good movie in most aspects relevant to a horror film. The same cannot be said of City of the Living Dead. Oh it's entertaining, no doubt about that, but silliness and cheesiness tends to overwhelm the genuinely positive aspects to make this primarily campy entertainment. Entertainment is entertainment, however, and if you like horror you definitely want to see this.

This film is most famous for 2 particular gore scenes, and they do not fail to impress. The gut-vomiting scene is the funner of the two. It starts out pretty creepy, as she just bleeds from the eyes, moves to the odd as red-goo encrusted organs protrude out of her mouth, and heads over to the the hilarious as said organs start spewing out of her mouth at a truly spectacular rate. The headdrilling scene, which never sounded all that interesting to me, is quite good too. It's surprisingly realistic by Fulci standards, and puts any other effect in the film to shame in this aspect.(Though this isn't much of a compliment) The most disturbing part, however, is just before the drilling actually starts, as it briefly looks as though the drill is going to enter through his eye.(If that had happened that woulda been pretty senselessly reiterative, but itta still worked.) Sadly, most of the other gore-fx isn't terribly effective or interesting. The zombie-ghosts like to rip the back of people's heads off, which is weird in concept, and pretty frickin weak in execution. He uses lots of other gross out stuff too, with tons of grubs in some scenes.

So, you may ask, what about plot, dialogue, characterization and acting? Simply put, they all suck, even by the standards of low-budget horror. This would barely matter if the film delivered in terms of style and atmosphere, but it only does so occasionally. The foggy, windswept town at the end is pretty creepy, as is the climax down in some catacombs. Also, the scene where MacColl's character is nearly killed as she is freed from her premature grave, is very effective too. It also uses some funeral home locales (perhaps inspired by Phantasm?) to reasonably good effect. Still, it's only occasionally eerie, and more often weird or wacky.

People tend to call this a zombie movie, but I think I have to take issue with that.(This is not inherently a criticism, just an observation) The undead corpses look more or less like zombies, but they almost never behave like them. Typically they don't even walk, just stand around bolt-upright allowing for occasionally creepy closeups of their blank, dead faces, and then teleport via horribly unconvincing editing techniques.(This aspect really ups the cheese/wackiness quotient) Also, they tend to attack via enchantment or the aforementioned skull-ripping, neither of which strike me as terribly zombie-esque techniques. Late in the film there are some fairly conventional zombies, but they only appear fairly briefly.

Fulci's quirks tend not to bother me as much as some people, but there's some rather unfortunate stuff here. The jagged editing is more prominent than in The Beyond or Zombie, and, more significantly, he uses countless thousands of shots of people's eyes, occasionally in such rapid and repeated succession that it has an unintenionally comic effect. The music, however, is another highpoint. In the Italian horror films I've seen I'm typically treated to either a Goblin soundtrack, or a Goblin-esque soundtrack. We have the latter here, and it is quietly intense, much of it somewhat reminiscent of the more atmospheric stuff from Dawn of the Dead, alongside some more uptempo or at least less minimalistic work that is wildly derivative of the Deep Red soundtrack. Derivative or not, it works.

Definitely worth a look, but don't be expecting too much.

P.S. For all the truly pertinent information, I suggest you look up Stanley Runk's review. It'll tell you pretty much all you need to know to know if you really wanna see this or not

Rating:
Summary: LUCIO = MAESTRO
Review: the negative reviews are missing the point as usual because this is one of Fulci's Golden Greats. of course there's some plot holes and cheesy moments but they are few and far between, and the majority of movie is all guts and gory. all good Fulci movies establish hellish creeping dread that is punctuated by beautiful women, a few laugh out loud moments (some intentional, some not) and many gorious glorious death setpieces natch

although it's not a patch on The Beyond, I love this movie from start to finish, conceding that yes the last 15 minutes of this film is somewhat sketchily presented. howver the end scenes are in keeping with the logic of the narrative to that point, and really, if you've paid attention to a relatively (for Fulci) unconvoluted plot then the last 15 seconds shouldn't leave you "scratching your head". City of the Living Dead is masterful with several classic scenes, and there's few horror directors that have such a deft and entertaining touch when it comes to conveying a sense of encroaching godless doom

Rating:
Summary: city of the sleeping dead
Review: For starters, here's a little disclaimer. I am an avid supporter of horror films. I'm not talking Wrong Turn or House of 1000 Corpses. I'm talking good stock. Unfortunately, This sleeper by Fulci wasn't exactly, dare I say, up to snuff.

One, it was very...very...slow. Typical Fulci in a way; all his movies kind of shamble along, kind of like a zombie I guess. And as I'm sure most Fulci fans know, that like Argento, he's not a very strong storyteller. The idea of City was a bit thin (in a nutshell a gate to hell is opened and if it's not shut, the dead will walk). Most of the action in a Fulci film happens in the last minutes of the movie, but the story up to the climax is often...dull.

And, with a title such as City of the Living Dead, one might expect, well, lots of zombies and lots of zombie carnage. Well, that's not really the case. We the viewers don't really see a zombie till the end portion of the movie, and there are only three to start out with. So basically, there are few zombies, which leads to little zombie mayhem.

And the ending will have you scratching your head or throwing your DVD player/VCR onto the street.

The perks were the girl who vomits her innards, the windstorm of maggots, and the power drill throught the nugget sequence. Not bad.

If you're a fan of fast-paced zombie movies or fast-moving horror movies in general, you might want to avoid this one. However, if the story were enough to pull you in, I would recommend giving it a fair shot.

All in all, I guess this was your typical Fulci outing, which isn't really that bad, but when you've seen one you almost know what to expect from the others.

Rating:
Summary: Good build up but falls apart
Review: I thought of giving this movie three stars. I have watched it several times and enjoyed most of it; however it seriously falls apart within the last twenty minutes. 'City of the Living Dead' begins with a suicide scene which takes place simultaneously with a seance. There is a connection between both events; one sets off a malefic chain of events; the other, a premonition of these events through a state of consciousness known as death. The latter leads the way for the premature burial scene which is so well done (who knew a pickaxe was standard equipment for rescuing someone from a coffin). The mood and atmosphere are pumped into scene after scene. You know things are going to get nasty when John Morghen makes an appearance on screen (and I must personally protest naming the town freak Bob). Christopher George is Christopher George which is what makes his character so likeable. Catriona MacColl is as always beautiful. MacColl and George are a good pairing for this movie. This is part of what tears me up about this movie that there are so many good aspects of it, yet, in the last 20 minutes it falls apart (some may argue it fell apart before that). One thing that appears to have happened; although I have never read any articles that verify this; is that this movie appears to have had two directors (this would not be the first time Fulci had to leave a project early for other commitments or feuding). In the last 20 minutes of the film the pacing changes and so does the quality of the make-up (apparently Giannetto de Rossi left too). This is not to say that the first 70 minutes of this film are perfect (the priest's appearances do get annoying), but there is a consistentcy to the first 70 minutes that is lacking in the latter part of the film. Fulci does set a stage of atmosphere and mood. One which reeks of gloom and impending doom. In the eyes of the people of Dunwich you can see depression (make-up helped). But, Christopher George is on his way; can he cut through the depression with his smile; he carries it with him everywhere he goes (I am sorry; I was having a little fun at Christopher's expense). I do wish that someone would do a re-edit of this film, and even add to it if necessary. There are too many good parts to this film to let the last 20 minutes tear it apart, yet, as it exists, I cannot recommend it to other than hardcore fans of Fulci and horor movies. [ On an ending note; Christopher George passed away from a heart attack only a couple of years after this movie was made. He was married to actress Linda Day George; and now you see why he always had that smile on his face.]--Bob

Rating:
Summary: Cheesy...
Review: First of all, Lucio Fulci apparently has an eye fetish. He focuses on the eyes way too much and it starts to get ridiculously annoying further into the movie. The zombies in this movie aren't your run-in-the-mill slow walking, lagging, etc. They disappear and can reappear behind you or right in front of you. It's one thing to do a different take on zombie movies. It's another to ruin it. The only cool part of this movie is when this girl pukes up her guts. Gory, and a nice touch to a really bad film.