 Thanks for checking out this movie review. This is for the 1980 film city of the living dead And this is a Luchio Fulci film and surprisingly enough to maybe some people out there But maybe not other people. This is my first Luchio Fulci film. I believe I know some people will be like Oh my god, why haven't you seen zombie? Why haven't you seen zombie 2? Which I believe zombie 2 is the one that has the shark and zombie underwater fight scene Which I've heard so much about so I'll get there. This is just another one of those things where I have so much on my horror list to get to and I'm just finally getting these things So city of the living dead is available on shutter currently So that's where I watched it when I'm dropping this review. It's there So go and check that out now. They actually have a bunch of Fulci on there, which is cool so I'll talk a little bit more about that in a minute because I do want to do more of the Fulci stuff Not just watching it myself, but also doing the reviews and putting them up here So you may see a bunch more of that and I'll probably even create my own playlist on my channel for Luchio Fulci films Like I did for Dario Argento as well because I'm going through a bunch of those as well So let's get into it written and directed by Luchio Fulci like I said some of the films that he's known for Don't torture a duckling which is available on shutter at the moment zombie also available on shutter The New York Ripper and a cat in the brain now I have not seen any of those because like I said city of the living dead is my first This was also written by Dardano Siketi or Siketi. I don't know which way you say it, but his other writing credits are demons demons to 1990 the Bronx warriors which is available on shutter at the moment the scorpion with two tails a Bay of blood and cat o nine tails which cat a nine tails is also on shutter at the moment And that's an Argento film. So I think it's interesting because Siketi worked with Fulci on this and then he worked with our gentle on cat a nine tails and he worked with both of them I believe on demons and demons to correct me if That is not correct people out there This is the first installment in the gates of hell trilogy that he ended up making So it's kind of weird because he made a film trilogy. That's not the weird part of it But the weird part of it is this came out in 1980 and then the other two films in the trilogy came out in 1981 so just one year later. So he had to kind of like work fast to pump them out So the other two films in this are the beyond and the house by the cemetery Which I said both from 1981 now I plan to do reviews on all of these so you'll see them popping up within the next few weeks So I I figured when I watched it and I figured and I found out that these were part of a basically a trilogy I was just like well, why don't I just do the whole trilogy because they're all on shutter, which is awesome So let's everybody go out there watch these and then let's do these reviews together Michelle So so Avi is actually in this and he might be known to you but from demons He's like the guy with that kind of like partial mask like in the beginning of the film in the subway and Then our train station and he also directed the film stage fright Which is a giallo film, which is a good one and I actually have a review for it on my channel So go check that out. That was fun. So the film City of living dead was shot mainly in the United States in New York City In New York in areas around New York and Savannah, Georgia with a bunch of the interior shots done in Rome Italy because this is one of those it's an Italian film, but it's all dubbed over in English This is what was going on in like 60s 70s early 80s. So we all know it was inspired by Lovecraft To a degree Siketi. I had read had been reading a lot of HP Lovecraft So when he was working on the script, he injected a bunch into it and actually I think I think when he started the script He wasn't reading so much Lovecraft and then he got towards the end of it And then he was so initially when he did the script the town that the film is set in it It's supposed to be Salem. It's supposed to be called Salem. So if you watch that and you keep that in mind there are a lot of like Things that you're like, oh, this makes sense if it was initially Salem because there's a lot of like witch stuff and It ties in quite a bit But they changed the town to Dunwich then because he was so heavily inspired by HP Lovecraft at that time Which is interesting Alright, so let's get in the actual film. I dig the music early on in this I think it's kind of cool and it gives me a bit of a Fantasm vibe which I'm a huge phantasm fan if people don't know so if anything's gonna remind me of phantasm I'm in I like it all about that There's a lot of jumping around in the start of this which made me kind of feel like What are we really gonna get here? How is this really gonna feel connected because it keeps jumping from like here are these people in this part of the town now Here are these people in this part of town here are these people over here So basically it was you know all these things going wrong and you know terrible things coming out of the ground and you know people coming back To life and all this terrible demonic stuff going on and they just keep like jumping around the town and showing these things So at first I was like this just feels so like chopped up and disconnected and weird and How's this gonna come together? and I mean it it kind of comes together, but it stays very segmented like that and There's a certain charm to that in itself and I kind of like that about the film But it also makes sure that you can't really have much of a story which to be honest the script doesn't have much of a story to it This is one of those films. It's just kind of more about Here's a fun time. Here's a fun concept. We're making it fun. We're doing cool kills We're making it look really great with some really good Directing some of the acting is a little bit over the top And then here's just some cool like visual scene ideas And so it's just a bunch of like those moments scattered throughout the film like to be honest The actual story just sucks like it's not a good storyline. It's pretty dumb. It's overdone. It's pretty crappy I mean the beginning of it feels very very akin to Night of the Living Dead it takes a lot from that has so many echoes of it at least early on in the film It does depart from it later, but it just doesn't seem very original or interesting story wise But like I said, there's a lot of amazing visuals in it. There's great directing to it. The music is really cool A lot of very cool inspired scenes the practical effects are awesome. The kills are really good Just a lot of good things about the film, but just the stories blows So I mean overall I like it though. So, you know The casual conversation about a childhood desire for incest in this is one hell of a way to introduce a character Granted that character doesn't stick well doesn't get like a whole lot of screen time But it was when that lady was you know with her therapist I guess and she was talking to him the shrink and she's talking about how she like had all these ideations of incest when she was a kid and it's just a weird way to introduce a character, but This was 1980 and you know, especially with horror where you're doing a lot of you know wacky in your face offensive stuff So, you know that that kind of fits for the time and then they keep with that kind of sexual Feel to the whole thing and I wrote it feels like the excessive talk about sexual matters It's meant to establish that it's a town of many sinful individuals Kind of to give the idea that maybe terrible things are happening into this town because there's so many terrible people there So this is the prime place for kind of the gates the gates the gates of hell under Ground to kind of open up and bring all these terrible things to the town So, you know, that's a that's a thing with horror films that happen a lot People who end up getting it or end up in a in a terrible situation like that It's often because they're sinning in one way or another. So I just kind of saw that in there Like I said has a lot of echoes of Dundee the living dead to it at least in the beginning The scene of the girl in the car coming apart from the inside is pretty Amazingly great. And that's the scene where the guy in it is Michelle. So Avi He's the one who gets killed. She like you it's the first time you see these like zombies Grabs back of someone's head dig their fingers in and pull the brain out Which is weird like it's a weird way for zombies to kill But the way they shoot it and the way they do to practice the practical effects It really looks good when they do it. It's just conceptually Weird for the film and I just like don't understand that choice, but I mean it looks good So I guess it's okay in the end but in that scene in the car specifically like It looks that scene of her like kind of like melting down in a sense looks amazing like kind of she's She's dying from the inside out and like, you know Her eyes just start like bleeding which you can see like when they do the close-ups that they had like Put some like really small tubing up around the sides of her face like under her I like under her tear ducts and they kind of like cover it up with makeup You you can see that if you look closely, but they did a good job with it So like that's a really cool scene the blood's going and then she starts like Vomiting out her insides basically and if you're really paying attention You can tell when it's actually her doing some of that and then when it's actually like a fake head That they're just like shoving stuff through, but it looks cool It's a great scene and it's a lot of fun And I feel like that's the moment that the film really grabbed my attention Because I was like, oh, this is interesting and cool and then they had a bunch more scenes kind of like that afterwards So I like how the woman who brought up the prophecy in this initially who had who was involved like I think she was involved in the seance early on All of a sudden when they're like traveling you go take care of things She's like we have to do this and make sure that you know the gates of hell get closed And then all of a sudden she's just like let's just slow down for a bit Let's let's take in the local cuisine all of a sudden this person who's driving a lot of the panic We need to take care of this issue. It's just like, you know what? I'm not that concerned about it anymore because I'm kind of hungry and I would love to partake in some local cuisine It's just a weird thing But that you know, that's one of the things about this film Like it's it's got this quirkiness to it because of those moments that go along with you know They're not being much of a story to it and it goes with the fun of it The camera motions in this and the way they do panning is really good. It looks amazing Like I said, the directing is really awesome But the cinematography is great in this as well in particular the camera movements inside of Sandra's house Super engaging the way they they kind of maneuvered within the house And if you know what I mean like they kind of start a one door showing like in the kitchen This is just one example They're showing the people in the kitchen and then it kind of like pans around and like shows them from the other door in The kitchen and just kind of like cool motions like that and very very fluid Very slick movements from one thing to the next looks great Like I said, especially within Sandra's house when they're kind of investigating what's going on there and Then my favorite shot the most gorgeous shot in this film is actually right before They go there in Sandra's house where the car pulls up in front of her house and comes like right up to the trunk of the Tree in front of it. It's just the way everything looks like the tree pulling into the frame or the car pulling into the frame The way the tree is positioned The lighting of the house the house structure itself and the kind of like light fog that's going on. It looks beautiful It's an amazing shot. It looks so good. I'm a fan It was pretty 80s for the guy in there to say that like 70% of women in the United States are neurotic That's definitely like an 80s thing to be said you wouldn't be getting that in horror films now But like I said, you know, it was a different time and those things were just like Actually those things range for people being like, oh, whatever. It's just a movie too. Yeah, I believe that but I wouldn't hold up now The blood coming through the walls after the window breaks is awesome I see I didn't see that coming and that's one of those scenes I was talking about that are just really interesting that are Scattered throughout the film and it seems super inspired like here's a really cool idea and they executed it Well, we're like they're looking around and I think it's in the attic like the window just bursts and all the glass flies and goes into the wall and Then from that like from all those entry points like blood just starts leaking through the wall What a great scene. What a cool idea And it just like those are the things that kept me engaged with this film and those are the things that are so fun There's so much fog in this film It's unbelievable like it's not a bad thing because I actually like the way they did the fog and it adds just like this extra level of You know mystery and you know spookiness to the whole thing But there's just a lot of fog and I was surprised by that. But like I said, I like the way it looked I Wrote I want to drink at that really crappy bar in Dunwich That bar looks so beat up and run down and like your typical like destitute town Bar on the corner that I was just like man That makes me think back to my college days when I like to go to dive bars And I was like I want to drink a beer and that crappy Dunwich tavern. I'm sure they would call it a tavern actually It looks terrible when the zombies just blink into existence. This is one big issue I have with the film where I mean they should just have like the zombies like walk out of somewhere and show up But all those moments were like they're showing it and like a zombie's not there and then blink it blinks into existence And there's a zombie right there the worst of which there are a few that are bad But the worst of which is like the one that shows up on top of a fence It was such a random moment They're like looking at the top of a fence and there's nothing and then bloop there's a zombie and it's it doesn't work It's terrible like I don't know if people were okay with it back then or if it seemed like it was better back in 1980 but just a bad choice Already talked about the brain-pulling thing. It just seems weird and dumb to me already got on that And then there's not a whole lot that happens in this film So I'm gonna talk about the end of it because like I said, there's really no story It's just going from like scene to scene and it's kind of slow But the end is so anticlimactic I said because it's done in a very slow way and the music does not at all match the material If you've seen this are you feeling me on that put some comments down there The music was so mismatched at the end of it They took forever to finish the film when they get to that the last sequence underground That should move a lot faster and been a lot more engaging But it was just so slow and I was just like what a bad Bad anticlimactic kind of like ending to this film, but overall like I said I enjoyed it. It was it was a good time Yes, Chloe, sorry my cats getting crazy Yeah, like I said the Stories just not there and what story is there actually sucks, but it's very stylized. It looks really good I mean another one of the great things in it that I thought was when Bob gets his face drilled When he gets his head pushed into that drill Mounted on the table and they show it go through and then they show it like sticking all the way through and still spinning That looked unbelievable and like like I was saying like the kill scenes the gore the practical effects all looked so good And they were so inspired with what they came up with and I love that. I like Christopher George in this He was also in the films the exterminator Graduation day and pieces just to name a few his acting was a lot of fun I wouldn't say it was like great acting because no one was like a great actor in this His acting was a lot of fun He had a fun character and he he just the way he plays roles He's a fun actor, so I enjoyed that and then at the end I just have to say the film is just a slow adventure through a town being plagued by zombies and other crazy random things But that makes it a fun film. So This sets me up to be very very excited to watch the beyond I have heard or I have read because I already did some of my initial research on the film I've read that it's considered to be one of Fulci's best films the beyond So I'm very very interested to get in that and then get into the conclusion of the gates from hell trilogy The house in the cemetery or what was that one? Let me look it up real quick. I'm sorry I forget these things sometimes The house by the cemetery I was one word off So very very excited to get into those like I said I will be reviewing them and putting them on this channel So It'll be cool to to kind of go through all those because I want to make comparisons as I go through as well to say Oh, this feels much like this or doesn't feel like this one So but anyway got to give you a star rating on this one. So out of five stars with half stars in play I gotta give it a three and a half. Um, I Feel like the way I was talking about, you know, how how the story is not really there and what story is there sucked Usually that that brings the the rating down more for me But it's just so fun and so many other aspects of it are covered so well that I have to give it a three and a half Stars like it's good. I definitely recommend it. It's fun I mean, I can't say fully that it's like a good film, but it's a it's a good time So anyway, if you haven't seen it, you probably shouldn't watch this because there's so many spoilers But go watch it put some comments down there if you've seen it and let's talk about it And are you excited for me to do the trilogy? Hopefully Do me a quick favor hit that subscribe because that is the only way I get motivated to do things here is when I keep Getting subscribers kind of want to know that I have more people I can talk to out there about horror stuff And then give me a thumbs up, especially if you're already subscribed just give me that thumbs up to let me know you're still there and watching and Comments are awesome. So thanks everyone for checking this out and until next time keep it brutal