City of the Living Dead

aka

Gates of Hell

Lucio Fulci

1980

A priest hangs himself and by doing so opens the gates of hell in Dunwich, a small town.Elsewhere, in New York a woman is pronounced dead after a dabble in witchcraft goes wrong.Her coffin is placed in the hole and just before it is about to be filled in she wakes up, starts screaming and is eventually saved by a local reporter.They find out they must travel to Dunwich and destroy the priest before all the dead come back to life and the world ends.

And so begins another classic fulci gore film which anyone who likes his other films will love.As soon as the film starts you can tell who directed it,his style really is that striking,and this film lays it on thick in the atmosphere stakes with fantastic photography(bySergio Salvati) and nightmarish settings,wait till you see the old shack that bob stays in.This film has went down as a lesser favourite than some of his other films but after a few viewings it certainly grew on me .There are some outstanding scenes with some of the best looking zombies of any dead films, you feel like you can actually see them rotting in front of you.Overall this won't be many people's favourite Fulci flick but it's still a must have film and a very stylish horror film in it's own right.

Gore highlights

Bob finds a maggot ridden rotting corpse, a long close-up is given.

The priest squashes a handfull of worms and maggots into a girls face (very messy!). The priest stares at a woman until her eyes start bleeding, then she vomits up all her internal organs, she then rips the back of her boyfriends head off and his brains spill out.

The mortician has a chunk bitten out of his wrist.

Bob has his head drilled on a bench drill, with a long close-up of the drill entering one side and exiting the other. (VERY NASTY !)

A woman has the back of her head ripped off.

Scene with a zombie feeding on a corpse.

ANOTHER guy has the back of his head ripped off!!! His brains spill out again !!!

A Zombie is speared in the gut.

The priest also gets speared and his guts fall out leaving a gaping hole.

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