City of the Living Dead
aka
Nightmare city
Umberto Lenzi
1980
92mins Approx Uncut
B.B.F.C. Running Time 83mins 33sec
Cut by 3 mins 5 sec
Must have been pre-cut before submission
This is one of my personal favorites, and a
film which seems to evoke a strong reaction in most, you'll
either love or hate it. Having seen it in both it's cut and uncut
versions I can safely say that trimmed of all it's nasty moments
this film is still a good laugh, although intact it's a brutal
bloodbath of sadistic gore and violence. It's been panned by many
critics for a variety of different reasons, but my advice is to
get a hold of an uncut copy and make up your own mind, because
for my money this is a classic and here are my reasons. This film
was never meant to be a serious horror film to be compared to the
works of Romero or Argento and anyone who does so is missing the
point, it's pure exploitation and should be enjoyed as such. Some
of these high and mighty film critics really piss me off when
they decide a film is crap either because it doesn't have some
deep 
meaning behind it or they don't even like that type of film,
many reviewers of this film clearly haven't even seen the complete
version in the first place.
Anyway now that I've got that off my chest
here's what the film is actually about.
An aircraft gets contaminated by some kind of
radioactive cloud and upon landing all its passengers are turned
into zombie like creatures who need fresh blood to survive, they
go about getting it in many brutal ways, wasting the airport
security and then going on the rampage in the city killing anyone
getting in the way. These arn't your usual zombie at all, and to
be right they aren't even zombies, just contaminated humans, but
to any zombie film fan it's close enough. These guys are like
atheletes and also retain their brains, making them a formidable
enemy.
Much has been made of the crap ending where it
all ends up being a dream and then starts all over again but it
didn't bother me as any ending which steers clear of the
Hollywood style goodies winning in the end has got to be a good
thing. A fantastic trashy film which is a must see.
Gore highlights
There's far too much for me to list so here are
the best.
Numerous clubbings, slashings, shootings.
A very nasty scene where a woman's breast is
sliced off.
Another woman has her eye gouged out with a
poker and then is stabbed with it in nasty fashion.
There are some great head shootings with the
zombies faces literally blown apart.
Plenty of blood sucking.
Also worth a mention is a fantastic scene where
a tv is thrown at a zombie exploding on his head. and some good
stunts.
Most of the really nasty scenes involve drawn
out killings of screaming women.
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