Tonight’s October Challenge Review is the 1980 Italian Giallo Horror “City of the Living Dead” (A.k.a. “Gates of Hell”) from one of the main maestro’s of the genre Lucio Fuici. This one was recommended to me last October and so I slotted it in to this years challenge. Written by Fuici and Dardano Sacchetti, this zombie movie features a classic Fabio Frizzi soundtrack. So classic, I recognised several of the tracks, despite not having (To my memory) seen the movie before. Yes, I often listen to horror film soundtracks for fun.
The has a multi-national cast with Christopher George (American), Catriona MacColl (English), Carlo De Mejo (Italian) and Janet Agren (Swedish) taking up the lead roles. This was a pretty common approach for Italian Giallo movies in the 80’s since they wanted to appeal to as broad an audience as possible.The actors would quite often be speaking in their native languages and then everyone would get dubbed after. The result being that some characters would always appear better dubbed than others. You get used to it and the tactic paid off as these movies became international cult classics.
The Dunwich Horror.
The main setting for this movie is the town of Dunwich. The name is a tribute to the Lovecraft story, but this isn’t an adaptation of the Dunwich Horror, instead this town was built on the ruins of Salem (Which in reality is still standing, so you just have to ignore that). A priest hangs himself, breaking down the barrier between this world and the world of the dead. Meanwhile in New York during a séance, “Mary Woodhouse” (MacColl) experiences a traumatic vision of the priests death and what will result from it. The impact of the vision gives Mary the appearance of being dead. She remains in that state long enough to almost be buried and is only saved at the last minute. Her saviour is journalist “Peter Bell” (George), a character quite reminiscent of Carl Kolchak from the Night Stalker series.
Together they set off to Dunwhich to try and prevent the dead rising en mass on All Saints Day. Although not directly mentioned, the movie is set mostly during Halloween. In Dunwich, meanwhile, all hell is breaking loose (Literally). A couple are murdered out in a romantic parking spot by the undead priest. Another girl is found dead after an encounter with the priest with a local vagrant is blamed for the crime. The now dead Emily also starts to turn up along with a few other recently deceased. As Peter and Mary reach Dunwich they team up with psychiatrist Jerry (De Mejo) and his patient Sandra (Agren) and must find a way to close the gates of hell.
Powers Of The Living Dead.
This is a film where the plot and the characters are secondary to the general atmosphere and the moments of shock. A lot of the characters act like the zombies hunting them, standing around and waiting to die. Even the more active ones act sort of dumb. Mary and Peter quickly arrive in the cemetery where Father Thomas is buried but then go off with Gerry and Sandra to give them an off screen exposition dump and then get sidetracked saving a child whose parents have been killed. By the time they get back to the cemetery it is All Souls Day and the invasion of the living dead has begun in force.
Speaking of the living dead, these ones have unique abilities. First of all they tend to teleport, because I guess it’s a lot scarier than just shambling after people. They basically have two modes of attack too, one is grab the back of peoples heads and pull their brains out (Particularly dangerous when combined with the teleporting). Their other attack is to stare at people until they throw up their own insides. It’s a strange set of abilities but these zombies are very consistent in using them. As daft as it sounds, that is basically establishing rules for the fictional world so it”s not a bad thing… Just a very strange thing. Eventually Gerry figures out that the Zombies have a weakness to being stabbed in the gut by things. Seriously, no one else tries to fight back in any way until Gerry gets all stabby.
Maximum Fuici.
Being a Lucio Fuici movie, nothing is done quickly. When a woman is forced to vomit out her insides, we see pretty much every foot of guts come out of the poor unfortunate girl. In another scene in which a man falsely suspected of murder is killed with a drill. The build up to the actual death seems to go on forever, making you wonder if he will get a last minute reprieve from his fate. He does not. Earlier in the film when Mary is mistakenly put in a coffin to be buried, Peter hears her screaming, but not sure what it is almost walks away several times before eventually realizing what has happened. All these scenes drag, but they drag with them the tension of the moment. To be honest, I think Fuici drags this out a bit too much, but it still works to some extent.
In the case of the gore though, this is largely what people turn up to a Fuici movie for and he makes sure to deliver it. From the vomit scene, to the swarms of maggots and rats, to the many, many victims of the rear brain attack and the particularly graphic drill through the face (The one murder not directly caused by zombies). It’s all there in full colour. But the creepy atmosphere is there as well and it should be obvious from the choice of town name (Dunwich) that Fuici is going for a bit of a Lovecraftian atmosphere and he succeeded pretty well. The constant fog is a good part of it, but there is also things like the cracks in the walls (and even in the end credit) suggesting something evil creeping into the universe,
Conclusion
Before hitting the conclusion, I just want to mention how much I like this soundtrack. It’s very 80’s for sure, but that’s not a bad thing. It has a relentless beat to it, like an evil slowly plodding after you. This is accentuated by discordant patterns and screeching noises in the creepier moments like the world is falling apart. It fits perfectly with the movie. It has a few catchier riffs in it too. Although this kind of music was fairly common for the era, it makes a nice refreshing change from the more standard horror music I’ve been hearing throughout October.
Ultimately this is a very “Cool” Horror, but objectively not a particularly good one. If you can get your kicks from the atmosphere and the gore and just accept the nonsensical plot and ridiculous way the characters tend to act then you will have a good time. It basically has “Cult Classic” written all over it. It’s a movie that you’ll easily forget the plot within a few days, but you will never forget the kills. In short it’s a Lucio Fuici movie! The soundtrack is a 7.5/10 but the movie itself is only a 5.5/10, though it is a high one (Just short of a 6). It’s not for everyone and definitely don’t watch it over dinner!
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