A seance goes badly wrong when one of those involved, Mary, has a vision of events that happened in a place called Dunwich years before, when a priest hung himself. Mary freaks out and collapses to the floor. She is later found to have died. The police arrive and think that something underhanded has occurred. Journalist Peter Bell thinks there might be a story here. He goes to where Mary is due to be buried and is astounded to find that Mary is still alive and banging to be let out of the coffin she’s in. He sets her free, and after consulting with Mary’s medium friend, Theresa, they set off together to Dunwich to investigate the very disturbing vision she had.

This Lucio Fulci film was the kind of movie that was synonymous with the advent of home video in the early 80s here in the UK and also with the burgeoning Video Nasties furore. All of the ingredients are here- the bad dubbing, the gory and very brilliant effects, the synth-heavy Fabio Frizzi score. In other words, all of the genre staples that I absolutely love.

City of the Living Dead doesn’t disappoint. It has sequences that still shock, even today. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen the iconic scene in which a character cries tears of blood and then seemingly expels all of her internal organs from her mouth. It really is something to behold, as is the ‘drill’ scene (this was cut from the UK cinema version, spoilsports).

In fact, City has a very interesting release history. It was first released in Italy (naturally) but then had its title changed to Twilight of the Dead when released in the US. It was issued with a lawsuit by the distributors of Dawn of the Dead as being too similar (look at the newspaper ad below and you’ll see why).

It was then re-released under the title Gates of Hell, which also involved it being recut (I will be reviewing this new cut soon).

In the UK, when released at the cinema, it played as part of a double-bill with the excellent Happy Birthday To Me.

City’s cinema cut was released on pre-cert video before all of the Video Nasties moral panic kicked in. It was then classified by the BBFC for video but with several cuts. As time has passed, however, it’s now had all of its previous cuts waived and is now uncut in Britain. 

Does City of the Living Dead make sense? Nope. But it doesn’t have to. It provides excellent sleazy, gory and atmospheric fun that is still admired today. It not only still works as a fantastic slice of giallo but also serves as a time capsule of when horror was going through another golden age and when a new wave of nastier and more exotic cinematic fare was playing in cinemas and video machines alike.

4 out of 5 stars