So much average

Just perfect...

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

***SPOILERS****This horror started when Father Thomas,Fabrizio Jovine, for reasons only known to himself decided to call it quits by stringing himself up at the local Dunwich Cemetery after visiting hours. Thus making it possible for the dead to rise out of their graves by opening up the very gates of hell itself. It's back in NYC during a boring seance that the medium of the seance Theresa, Mary Woodhouse, sees what's to come an world wide army of walking dead Zombies and suddenly went into convulsions and dropped dead, at the tender young age of 25, of a massive heart attack! Things get even better or worse when at Theresa's burial in Long Island reporter Peter Bell, Christopher George, hears noise coming from her partly buried coffin, the gravedigger took off on their coffee brake before finishing the job, and found her to be alive!From then on it's both touch and go to what's happening in the movie with a time limit set for "All Saints Day"-November 1-when the dead are to rise again and take over the entire earth. Were also entertained with a number of grossed out episodes with flesh eating worms and maggots and brains being ripped by member of the living dead just to show those still living that they mean business. This all boils down to the late Father Thomas who's actions of killing himself is the reason all this to be happening!. And it's up to Peter Bell and those still living to right that what was wrong by Father Thomas, by exorcising his evil spirit, to prevent any more damage.****SPOILERS**** Lots of blood and gore as well as brain matter keep you watching this mindless as well as brainless movie that to add to its already mass confusion has a number of sub-plots that have to do with a group of hard drinking members of the community of Dunwiich who are among the first victims of the Zombie invasion,. That together with Dunwich resident and village idiot the over sexed Bob,Giovanni Lombardo Radice, who in trying to hide from the rampaging Zombies takes refuse in the Ross' garage. And it's there where Bob ends up getting his skull drilled through and through by Mr. Ross who thought that he was molesting his teenage daughter who In fact invited him in! Were left up in the air in what exactly happened at the end of the movie by being given the impression that the gates of hell that were shut are to open very soon with the movie disintegrating cracking up or going fade to black before we ever get to see the ending credits!

Lucio Fulci was one of the major players in the Italian horror/exploitation scene in the 1970's and 1980's (though he worked in other decades as well, it's then that he made his mark in the world of low-budget gore and schlock), and sometimes he could make some really terrific, even awe-inspiring genre work (The Beyond hits the spot for me), and other times very much not so (Zombie 3 and Sodoma's Ghost are rather pitiful). City of the Living Dead marks some of the high qualities of Fulci's style that's loaded for bear with dreadful imagery (I mean that word as a compliment, up to a point), but there was barely any work on the script or characters.I want to give the movie more of a break for how Fulci and his crew make this town of 'Dunwich' eerie and fogy and genuinely spooky for much of the 2nd half (which seems to be an obvious allusion to the Dunwich Horror, but may also be connected to 'witches' or the supernatural). It's a 'living dead' movie but not connected in any way to the Romero films; this is a zombie movie but not one that involves the eating of flesh. The living do die and come back as the un-dead, and their primary task is to tear into people's skulls (usually when they're not looking) and take out some brains. Why don't they eat them and then just go on their shuffling, make-up-face covered ways? Uh, ask the writers I guess.There are supposedly characters here - I know Christopher George is one of them - and like a lot of horror films from Italy and of the super-cheap variety (several from Fulci of course), New York city is used because it's... New York city, though only briefly. There's a priest who seems to be hung at the start of the movie, and his corpse sort of sets off this or that and then there's gates of hell (this is the "first part" of an unconnected Gates of Hell trilogy by Fulci by the way), which is supposed to be why the dead are returning to life and making things difficult for those in the town.Things with characters just happen, and why bother with rhyme or reason when there's still some space for Fabio Frizzi's score (which at times is the one thing shamelessly ripped from the Goblin's score for Dawn of the Dead, listen for it and it's plain in sight). Aside from one notable scene where a father shows the young man screwing around with his daughter in a car (he isn't but he thinks he is and that's enough) by using a powerful table saw to grisly effect, the violence in the movie is done via the undead. And boy there is a damn lot of it: heads crushed, torsos and abdomens punched through, a head is drilled, limbs get cut or sawn in to, and among all of these the opening with the hung priest is perhaps the most unsettling of all.I wish I could comment on the characters but they're so thin that it's not worth commenting, and I don't think there could have been a solution via a longer cut; this is all about setting up some basic situation, throw in a psychologist or a psychic and a detective who can read people's minds, not to mention a s***load of close-ups of people's eyes looking at each other even when nothing is exactly happening (sometimes there is the psychic angle, others not), and you got yourself a baseline for a whole lot of gore effects, make-up jobs, and people shuffling while usually appearing out of jump cuts. In other words, when it comes to humans talking it's not too satisfying, but when Fulci keeps it to being just a hardcore, brutal horror movie, it's like going into a haunted house and getting the works: cool cinematography, obvious music score, and gruesome kills.

Okay, this is the briefest of brief reviews! I love 'Don't Torture a Duckling'; it's a great movie. I really like 'The Beyond' (for all it's negative aspects, it's a fine film). 'Zombie Flesh Eaters' is brilliant (a personal favourite). This film is not in the same league. It's a really trashy B movie with poor effects and it simply has none of the magic which makes his best movies what they are. I really wanted to like the film, but in truth it wasn't all that good. If you see it cheap to buy somewhere then perhaps pick it up for a viewing, but I can almost guarantee that you won't like it anywhere near as much as the movies mentioned above!

This movie if we can call it that has a barely coherent story which is poorly acted and boring to boot. How it had a rating of over 6 out of 10 is beyond me. Some people like the Italian style of horror exploitation cinema but this is barely watchable. Actually it's not watchable to be honest. It's terrible. It makes bad movies appear good, and a half-decent movie will appear like a masterpiece when compared to it.What this movie has is: a hanging priest, a lot of fog, a séance gone wrong, a psychic woman who supposedly dies and is half way to being buried and she is alive again. Luckily a reporter saves her from a half filled-in grave. Because it was 5 o'clock and the unionized grave diggers wouldn't finish the burial. Oh yes, there is something about the dead coming back through a portal to hell in the city of Dunwich. Then the reporter and the psychic have to try and close this portal before the dead rise and feed on the flesh of the living. Even though they are already rising and doing exactly that. There is also a blow up doll that self inflates and a lot of gore. A lot of gore!Overall it's a bad story with bad acting and hardly anything is explained. If that's a type of movie that you like then by all means go and watch it. If you like movies (horror or otherwise) that make any sense whatsoever, then save yourself some time and watch something (anything) else. A 1/10 and that's being generous.