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NIGHTMARE CITY
(CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD)
(1980)
DIRECTOR:
Umberto Lenzi.
STARRING:
Hugo Stiglitz, Francisco Rabal, Laura Trotter.
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Where would we be without our Italian friends? I probably wouldn't have stacked on 25 kg's in the last 4 years (unfortunately Italian food is too good to pass up), a large section of us wouldn't walk around quoting Goodfellas & we wouldn't have some of the most hilarious or most influential zombie horror movies ever to exist.
Now let me just state, I am NOT making fun of ANY of the Italian classics in this review here. I wouldn't dare say a dirty word about the main influences of zombie horror. George A. Romero is one thing, but that was all American, he is without dispute the MOST influential director for the zombie genre. But that's another story. I'm talking about Lucio Fulci, the director of ZOMBIE (Aka. Zombie Flesh Eaters & I'm not going to list the numerous other names it comes under) & numerous others. ZOMBIE was a classic that I believe set standards in gore. The eye scene in particular is fucking great.
Then we have hilarious Italian zombie horror movies, eg, Nightmare City. Directed by Umberto Lenzi, also the director behind the infamous Cannibal Ferox (a personal favourite), this movie is unfortunately one of the most ridiculous films I've ever seen, but clearly has a lot of energy and "heart" (if that's the word to use hehe). Umberto has an extensive background in Italian film whether it's writing, directing or numerous other crew roles. I'm not 100 percent clued up on his work but I do know he has such early "hits" as Orgasmo, with tagline(s) reading; "Love is the tool that strips a jet-set widow bare of her morals and her millions!" & "sucks you into a whirlpool of erotic love!". With taglines like that sitting below a front cover illustration of an orgy, who WOULD walk past it, not me.
Anyway, let's get down to the terrifying storyline *blinks*.
A leak has been discovered at the state nuclear plant and they have sent a scientist to investigate and report on his findings. The nuclear scientist is on his way back with the findings and it's big news. So Dean Miller, a reporter & the hero of this story, is waiting at the airport to film & report on the arrival of the plane. The scientist's plane is due to set down at the airport but there are problems. The plane has been flying mysteriously & without communication for some time before landing. The flight tower doesn't know what to make of it so they set up all their emergency vehicles and await its landing. The plane pulls up and the cockpit appears to be empty (so who the fuck landed the plane?). The police chief announces for whoever is inside to come out now & there seems to be no response.
Suddenly the door opens and it's filled with the planes occupants, all transformed into zombies due to some type of radiation exposure. Hilariously & very athletically they jump out of the plane, slashing away at everyone with their daggers. The zombies are clearly very athletic men with ridiculous looking almost mud smeared, scabby, mossy type masks on their face, with very nice clean clothing on. They run and jump all over the place with agility and speed! It's quite funny how mean & powerful they look and they seem to be quite in control of their actions and at a physical peak, with intelligence to boot. Why... they even know how to operate machine guns! They fire away at everyone, clutching their machine guns while gnashing their teeth with a ferocity and focus for death. It's fucking hilarious it really is, just how focused and fit all the zombies seem. Not one of them seems to really ever try to eat some brains or really even eat flesh. They're just quite happy killing people left and right.
It's Miller time & Dean manages to escape so he can get back to his wife and they can get the hell out of town. All other military personal try to get to or warn their loved ones as well as trying to keep the outbreak of the zombies quiet. Interesting choice of words, outbreak, mostly because there's only a handful of zombies on the plane. With all their slashing, stabbing, shooting, they only bite or suck the blood (yep, that too) a few select victims. So how is this outbreak happening, where are the extra zombies coming from when really there would only be about 10 extra zombies on top of the original handful. Oh well, that's like asking too many questions during a Back to the Future movie.
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Almost Famous is about William Miller (Patrick Fugit - who has REALLY gone places since this film. NOTE: SARCASM!), a boy beyond his years in intelligence, but years behind socially.
With thanks to the influences of his hippie sister, Anita (Zooey Deschanel), he is also beyond his years
in musical knowledge. He is turned to music after his sister moves out of home with her boyfriend due to conflict with their single mother, Elaine (Frances McDormand),
who is completely
old school (by 1960s standards) and leaves him her entire collection of records in the process. After becoming encaptured by the world of music and all that it
has to offer beyond the plain and straight walls of our work to live world he aspires to be a music journalist for Rolling Stone magazine.
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^^ Luckily weapons training was included in Dean's journalism course. |
The rest of the movie is filled with rather random scenes of physically fit men wearing badly made zombie masks slashing, stabbing, occasionally biting, occasionally sucking blood and mostly shooting lots & lots of innocent people. One particular scene is very brutal where a zombie slices & rips a woman's breast off. The zombies burst in during a filming of some sort of aerobics workout. Dean tried to warn them by cutting in during the broadcast to tell the world VIA television, but typically the powers that be were outraged and it was switched back in time to see all the aerobics people being slashed, stabbed, occasionally bitten, occasionally blood sucked & shot by the "zombies". The zombies also drive cars around but unlike Return of the Living Dead part 2, this is to be taken in a serious fashion. At one point they use this driving talent to infiltrate a survivor camp, it makes for a stupid yet refreshingly excellent scene. They are basically athletic, evil humans with serious facial skin problems that occasionally like to bite & suck blood from their victims, just occasionally, not a necessity.
One particular puzzling scene has Dean & his wife stopping up to a gas station. The station seems free of zombies so they go inside, have a coffee each and Dean... well fuck, he feels like a cigarette and damn it he's earned one! I mean maybe it's just me, but after seeing these zombies brutally kill & savage so many people, I'd be a little frightened, hell maybe even just anxious. I'd be filling the car with petrol and getting the fuck out of there. Not these cool cats, they're both gonna have an espresso & Dean's gonna have a smoke. Then his wife can get all political and reflective about how man has done things wrong with our science it's come back to ruin us yadda yadda, world lessons in horror-action movies cannot be avoided! Anyway, it seems their inspection of the place was half assed and it actually WAS rampant with zombies, they were all just out the back loading their guns with ammo and sharpening their knives. The zombies trash Dean's getaway car and it leaves them pretty much fucked, all because they decided to stop for a fucking caffiene & nicotine hit, addicted smug bastards. Tortoise and the hare anyone??
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No, I won't eat your brains. BUT I'LL GIVE YOU THE ^^
STABBING OF A LIFE TIME!!
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Once stranded, the pair are forced to move forward on foot. This leads to a fantastic climax which has Dean and his wife (after pretty much everyone has been killed) waiting for a hovering helicopter at the top of a rollercoaster, shooting down hoards of zombies slowly making their way up so they can slash, stab, bite, suck blood from or shoot them. Dean's wife falls to her death at one point, showing us a floppy doll in place of the actress falling down off the side of the roller coaster track, hitting every support beam on the way down. Hahaha, man, that was classic. Anyway at the riveting climactic moment of this scene - he wakes up! He is in bed, thank fuck it was only a dream he thinks.
Anyways, Dean has a new story to follow up. He heads off to the airport to meet his camera man, they've heard news of a scoop where a plane is heading in to land but nobody is responding and the plane has been flying mysteriously without communication. The flight tower doesn't know what to make of it and all the emergency vehicles have been called down to wait for the landing. The cockpit appears to be empt- Wait... Wait a minute. This sounds familiar...
"Oh god no! My dream is turning into real life! N0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o!!!"
Well that's what you'd expect would happen but instead Dean just goes about exactly what he did in the dream. Even to the point of just staring at the plane as nobody responds to the police chief's demands of opening the plane door. He just keeps staring at the situation with a look of wonder and unknowing on his face, like he's just completely forgotten the terrifying life-like dream in which his wife plummeted to her death, that he JUST woke up from. Oh Dean Miller, what WILL we do with you!
The door opens up, the film pauses and writing comes onto the screen: |
Dean shows off his smarts as he blankly stares at the exact ^^
same events that transpired in his dream before a zombie invasion.
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THE NIGHTMARE BECOMES REALITY
Noooo shit, cheers for clearing that up, Umberto.
To be honest, I think I've been too harsh on this movie. I am quite a fan and if it's one thing this movie keeps you pulled in ALL the time. I think the most it slowed down was for two quick love scenes in which you were able to ogle the beautiful Italian women anyway. The film is bloody, brutal & violent. The zombies have a wretched look of hatred under whatever grotesqueness lies on their face which equally matches the powerful way they attack and run at victims. The women scream with a terrified shrill when being killed. The dialogue has more cheese than a cheesy crust pizza. The film is action packed and to be honest some of the most fun I've ever had watching a movie! It always cops a bad wrap and I think that's mostly because it plays out like an action film for a large section of the time which has a very LOOSE zombie theme to it. So naturally all the huge zombie fans out there start pissing & moaning. I for one find the change of pace refreshing and think that stereotypical zombie horror has become so fucking boring thanks to it becoming the newest trend for every fucking emo wannabe out there to grab onto and say "LOOK WHAT I LIKE! I BELONG TO SOMETHING!!!!". Sure ya do.
The video quality of the DVD I watched wasn't fantastic but it wasn't unclear either. I don't know how much you can expect considering we're talking about a 28 year old (at the time of this review) budget Italian zombie-horror-action film. The sound was about as equal with the video in 2.0 sound. Quality as a whole is still worth the expense for any Australian collector to get hold of such a title.
This movie is fun, funny, brutal, action-packed. I suggest it to any horror or action fan, unless you're a zombie-obsessed emo. But you're not an emo are you? |
I have supplied a video of the zombies breaking out of the plane at the start of the film, it's a fucking classic scene and needs to be seen to be believed.
If you don't wanna see any of the film before you buy it, well just look away :)
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As my nightmare becomes reality, I give this classic: |
3.5 OUT OF 5 JAGER-BABIES. |
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