A reporter and a psychic race to close the Gates of Hell after the suicide of a clergyman caused them to open, allowing the dead to rise from their graves.
“City of the Living Dead” was co-written and directed by Lucio Fulci, the Italian film director who came into his own during the 1970s with a plethora of violent and gruesome movies, most of them incorporating zombies. “Zombi 2” and “The Beyond” catapulted him to cult film stardom, but some of his other titles, including “The Black Cat,” “The House by the Cemetery,” and “The New York Ripper,” were not as well received. He lost a lot of fans with “The New York Ripper” because of its excessive violence toward women, and his career never fully recovered as a result.
“City of the Living Dead” was one of Fulci’s movies that I had never seen, so I was excited to get a 4K review copy from Cauldron Films, but my enthusiasm was short-lived as the story unfolded. It is incoherent, with a bunch of scenes that are totally disconnected from each other. While watching it, it felt like different directors were given various segments to shoot, with no knowledge of the rest of the script, and were then edited together haphazardly, presenting a feature that is erratic and chaotic. There is no functioning narrative, random scenes of violence permeate throughout the movie, and most of them bear no relevance to the rest of the script.
While many of Fulci’s movies were shot in America, the actors, an assembly of Italian, American, and English, spoke their lines in Italian only to have them dubbed into English later on. This has always been a point of contention for me, and many others too, because the voice actors who are dubbing the actors onscreen are overly melodramatic and exaggerated, so any indication of a decent performance from the onscreen actors is jettisoned in favor of an over-the-top, unintentionally hysterical one. Fulci was no actor’s director, and it shows. The performances here, or lack thereof, are laughably bad and, at times, take you out of the film.
The story revolves around Mary (Catriona MacColl), who, along with some friends, holds a séance in an apartment in New York City. During the ritual, Mary has a vision of a priest, Father Thomas (Fabrizio Jovine), who hangs himself in a cemetery in a village called Dunwich. After breaking the circle and collapsing on the floor, she is presumed dead and then buried. While investigating her mysterious death, Journalist Peter Bell (Christopher George) visits her grave only to hear her screams coming from within the coffin. He opens it up and realizes that she is very much alive.
After telling Peter about the vision she had, they both decide to try and locate the small village as Mary is convinced Father Thomas’ death has opened the gates of hell. As the dead begin to rise from the grave, attacking people and killing them, they eventually discover Dunwich and find Father Thomas’ tomb, which leads to an underground cave of skeletal remains. As zombies begin to fill the cave, Father Thomas appears, and Mary and Peter must quickly try to end his reign of terror before the world succumbs to his army of the dead.
The movie never explains why Father Thomas hung himself, and it doesn’t disclose how his death was able to open the gates of hell, thereby bringing the dead back to life. It seemed like a convenient plot point that allowed Fulci to bring his zombies to life to descend upon the living but had he hired a good screenwriter, a credible scenario could have been created, instead of the non-existent one the movie now employs.
Cauldron Films has done an incredible job restoring Fulci’s vision in 4K. While my critique of the film itself is disapproving, the visual presentation is outstanding. The 4K disc sports strong detailing in the darker scenes, and the film preserves a slight layer of grain throughout. The film is fully restored with a brand-new Dolby Vision™ color grade, exclusively commissioned by Cauldron Films. The 3-disc set includes the 4K UHD Feature, a Blu-ray™ Feature, and a Blu-ray™ Extras Disc double-sided Blu-ray™ wrap with artwork by Matthew Therrien.
The extras disc contains an abundance of special features, including a new audio commentary with film historian Samm Deighan, archival audio commentary with actress Catriona MacColl moderated by Jay Slater, archival audio commentary with actor Giovanni Lombardo Radice moderated by Calum Waddell, plus many more. If you are a die-hard Fulci fan, I would recommend this for the extras alone. The film? Not so much.
Now available on 4K Ultra HD™ for the first time
