City of the Living Dead

This is another Fulci film I was able to get my hands on. I gotta thank my friend Justin for this. Just about daily he brings me a new movie or wrestling/MMA pay per view on dvd to watch. Today's movie however, after watching Cat in the Brain was quite a disappointment.

City of the Living Dead, first and foremost, has nothing to do with the very successful George A Romero dead series. Though I do wonder if this was Fulci trying to capitalize on their success. The movie itself falls flat. The whole movie feels like a big build up but in the end doesn't build up to anything special. Here's a brief plot of the movie.

In the small New England town of Dunwich, a priest commits suicide by hanging himself in the church cemetery which somehow opens the gates of hell allowing the dead to rise. Peter, a New York City reporter, teams up with a young psychic, named Mary, to travel to the town where they team up with another couple, psychiatrist Jerry and patient Sandra, to find a way to close the gates before All Saints Day or the dead all over the world will rise up and kill the living.

So pretty much All Saints Day shows up and it is a big let down. Nothing really special happens. On the horror scale I give this movie 1 Burning Skull. After Cat in the Brain this movie was just too slow and not nearly as much action packed. Don't get me wrong a horror movie to me doesn't necessarily need a lot of gore but if you're not gonna do that you gotta go the thriller route and this film didn't do that either. I wont give it a zero because I have seen some atrocious horror films in the past and it certainly wasn't the worst thing I'd ever seen. Check out the trailer below, and again pleasant dreams