Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Redundant and unnecessary.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

Zombies with super powers, heads getting drilled, bleeding eyes, creepy synth music and much more. They don't make them like this anymore, if they're not running cannon fodder then its asking too much these days. By the end of the movie it did feel short, the speed of the movie certainly ramps up and keeps going pretty quickly. It is a video nasty imo mostly because of the head drilling. Definitely in this zombie movie fans top 10. Don't expect Dawn of the Dead, its closer to Cemetery Man (another zomg zombie movie). One last thing, it is a 1980 release but it feel like a 70's horror. Enjoy, go watch.

I've seen director Lucio Fulci's City of the Living Dead several times over the years. Perhaps strangely, this pecking persistence doesn't reflect any deep affection on my part. Though Gino De Rossi's infamously grisly gore effects carved lasting scars into my teenage cortex, I've always found it a rather dull film, overall. Absent the esteem in which so many veteran genre fans hold City of the Living Dead, I'd probably have written it off long ago.I know, of course, that one shouldn't expect brisk pacing or narrative cohesion of Italian horror films. Even allowing for that, Fulci here pushes turgid incoherence well past the breaking point. Things happen on screen because, well... Just because they do. Because the Maestro apparently thought the shot would look kind of cool that way. Which is fine. There's nothing necessarily wrong with cinematic dream logic (or even nonsense for its own sake), and while Fulci's work is hardly above criticism, only a fool would question his mastery of the atmospheric and grotesque.Basically, I'd come to view City of the Living Dead the lazy, off-day hackwork of an erratic and occasionally brilliant horror auteur. The progress of images, for instance, frequently seems all but literally random, as though the final cut had been assembled in a last-minute panic by a drunken editor with no clue as to the intended storyline. While The Beyond (1981) can be accused of similar faults - it's arbitrary in construction and the action is often risibly absurd - that film somehow sustains a captivating tone of morbid dread throughout, and Sergio Salvati's gorgeous cinematography helps smooth the narrative's more baffling contortions. Even its silliest and most clichéd moments feel of a satisfying piece, and the animating breath of Fulci's artistic inspiration never flags. City, in comparison, is a lurching, disconnected mess. The tone swings erratically from goofy camp (see Christopher George's ineradicable smirk) to knockout shock with stray chunks of meandering dead space wedged awkwardly in between. Worse yet, the images that carry us through are generic as often as they are arresting.*Or so I thought. An enthusiastic Horror Board regular recently convinced me that, despite my reservations, I owed the film one last look. To that end, I picked up Blue Underground's widely-praised 2010 restoration on Blu-Ray, settled in on a long dark night, and tried my level best to keep an open mind. Much to my surprise, I enjoyed it! Though I'll probably never call City of the Living Dead a personal favorite even where Fulci's work is concerned, it's far more engaging, creative and artistically interesting than most of the "so bad it's good" cult oddities treasured by die-hard horror fans. The splattery set-pieces are dazzling and nauseating in equal measure, Fabio Frizzi's score is a seductively psychedelic gem, and a convincingly apocalyptic final act manages to wrap things up on a relatively energetic note. If I'm not careful, I just might wind up watching it again...* While regular Fulci collaborator Sergio Salvati shot both films, The Beyond and the criminally under-appreciated Seven Notes in Black (AKA The Psychic, 1977) provide a far better showcase for his considerable gifts.

Lucio Fulci made three films that have become dubbed the gates of hell trilogy. The Beyond and House By the Cemetery make up the other two thirds of this set of films. This one and The Beyond fit the theme as both films revolve around the gates of hell opening. I never thought The House By the Cemetery really fit the bill and that the film, Manhattan Baby kind of fit in with this theme better though neither really does. This one probably had the most coherent plot of the trio as something happens that unleashes the gates of hell and something most be done to close them again. In The Beyond, people keep dying here and there and by the time things begin to be figured out it is pretty much too late. While in House By the Cemetery, it kind of teases that there is simply a serial killer before ending in vague fashion, though not nearly as vague as this one does! So you get lots of kills, lots of gore and lots of questions, so in that way all three films do tie in together as they all have their confusing moments, good kills and nasty gore. This one and The Beyond having the best.The story has a priest who kills himself right from the get go and this is the catalyst that sets things in motion as the dead begin to rise from their graves to hunt and kill the living! Meanwhile, a woman apparently dies during a séance only to be found still alive as she is about to be buried in the cemetery. Best not to think about this film too much as it just ruins the fun. She and a reporter go on a quest to find the town the priest hanged himself in as they must put him to rest as he begins terrorizing the town killing the townsfolk and then turning them into the living dead where they have the ability to teleport and kill you unexpectedly! A psychiatrist will join the two as they must track down the priest's grave, but they do take a lot of side trips as it almost seems they are trying to get the last second win!The living dead in this one look rather good, much better than the zombies at the end of The Beyond. The gore though has some weaknesses as at times the blood looks like fruit punch. The best kill in the film belongs to a father and not the zombies as the film also features the most overprotective father in the history of cinema! No nudity in this one, but I do not really recall any in The Beyond either and only very briefly in House By the Cemetery, Fulci was more gore than nudity, though he did have that awesome scene in Zombie featuring the topless scuba diver.So all in all, it is a fun movie to watch if not particularly good. The film does drag a bit in spots as the deaths are not spread out as well as those in The Beyond, but it is better than Cemetery as that one gets kind of goofy. All three films have Catriona MacColl in them and this one and House have Giovanni Lombardo Radice along with other Fulci staples in it. The acting is about as well as can be expected for a film of this type. Overall, I would say that this one has good gore, kills and atmosphere to offer while some of the things within are a bit goofy too. Still, the gates of hell trilogy starts off with a bang and this one is probably the most hellish of the bunch for various reasons!

The scene early on in this film where the zombie rises from a pile of leaves amuses me to no end. Most people- before being turned undead by whatever unseen forces- are usually buried in A COFFIN a few feet down- not literally right at the surface. Of course with all the goofs and lapses in plot and continuity, this is just one example, but I thought I'd point it out since viewers have mentioned most of the others.The infamous gore scenes are too fake-looking to be truly stomach- churning. If Tom Savini had done the FX on Fulci's movies..oh man think of how that would have been. Christopher George is always a pleasure and adds some respectability to the otherwise poor acting. The worms and maggots on some of the zombies were better actors!