I'm a big fan of Fulci. Love most of his work, but this one caught me off-guard.
A reporter (Christopher George) saves a psychic (Catrina McColl) from being buried alive, then teams up with her in a race against time to close the gates of Hell after the suicide of a priest causes them to open and allow the dead to rise from their graves in Italian horror auteur Lucio Fulci's grizzly ode to H.P Lovecraft (it is set in the fictional town of Dunwich, a nod to Lovecraft's The Dunwich Horror).
The first film from Fulci I saw was The 4 of the apocalypse. It came in a bargain set I bought from Mcfrugal's.
I first saw this in the late 80's on a vhs. Ten rupees rental man.
When I was very young, I remember seeing ads on TV for the home video release of 'Akira.' When?
So I think the best way to start this review of is explaining why I'm going to rate this movie low. I'm going to give this film a low rating because I felt like Bob in the drill scene and the movie was the guy who pushed me closer to the drill, and finally, the drill represents boredom.
Lucio Fulci was one of the major players in the Italian horror/exploitation scene in the 1970's and 1980's (though he worked in other decades as well, it's then that he made his mark in the world of low-budget gore and schlock), and sometimes he could make some really terrific, even awe-inspiring genre work (The Beyond hits the spot for me), and other times very much not so (Zombie 3 and Sodoma's Ghost are rather pitiful). City of the Living Dead marks some of the high qualities of Fulci's style that's loaded for bear with dreadful imagery (I mean that word as a compliment, up to a point), but there was barely any work on the script or characters.
I had wanted to see this movie for years, ever since I was about ten years old. I had heard that it was one of the best hlzombie movies, had seen it on numerous "best of" lists, and had heard that it was chock full of gore.
First time I ever seen this legendary film, was dubbed The Gates of Hell (which I always loved this tile). As a very young viewer, it was pretty nerve-wrecking, I related alot to this film since there was a child actor, "John-John" (played by Giovanni Lombardo) who was kinda of bad-ass heroe to me.
