Film Review: CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD (1980, Lucio Fulci)

Stars: 3.5 of 5.
Running Time: 93 minutes.

Tag-line: "From the bowels of the earth they came to collect the living..."  From the bowels of somewhere, anyway.

Notable Cast or Crew:  Written by Lucio Fulci and Dardano Sacchetti (DEMONS, THE BEYOND, 1990: BRONX WARRIORS) and inspired by the writing of H.P. Lovecraft (!).  Starring Christopher George (ENTER THE NINJA, PIECES), Catriona MacColl (THE BEYOND, THE HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY), Carlo De Mejo (TEORAMA, THE HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY), Giovanni Lombardo Radice (THE OMEN, CANNIBAL FEROX), Michele Soavi (director of STAGEFRIGHT and CEMETERY MAN).  Music by Fabio Frizzi (ZOMBI, THE BEYOND).  Cinematography by Sergio Salvati (ZOMBI, 1990: BRONX WARRIORS).  

Best One-liner:  "It contains man's first recorded description of his... his boundless mortal fear in the face of malice itself."

In a familiar, darkened alleyway:

"Okay, what now?"
–"Mamma mia!  It'sa time'a for a little Fulci!"
"Halloween is over."
–"It ain't over till I say it's over.  It ain't over till Thanksgiving."
"That's a bold claim.  So what the hell is this thing?  Zombies take over New York City or something?"
–"Not really.  Though that's sort of the ending to Fulci's ZOMBI.  But even then they just cross a bridge and infiltrate a radio station."
"So what city do they take over?"
–"It's more of a town, really.  'Dunwich.'"
"Like from 'The Dunwich Horror?'"

–"Yeah, I guess Fulci thinks this movie has something to do with Lovecraft.  But maybe it shoulda been called TOWN OF THE LIVING DEAD."
"WHISTLE-STOP OF THE LIVING DEAD?  HAMLET OF THE LIVING DEAD?"
–"Something like that.  So we kick things off with some rockin' Italo-electronica grooves (courtesy of Fabio Frizzi) that directly rip off Goblin's DAWN OF THE DEAD soundtrack.  They didn't even try to hide it.  I like that."
"Nice."
–"So then a priest is wandering an empty cemetery in Dunwich and decides to hang himself.

When the rope of the noose swings over the tree branch, it cracks like an explosive bullwhip."
"Gotta love Italian dubbing."
–"We then cut to New York City where a medium is apparently frightened to death because the priest hanged himself three states away.  I think.  Then the cops show up and they're screaming things like "WHERE'S THE STASH, IN THE TOILET?" and there's a rug fire and an M. Emmet Walsh lookalike.

M. Emmet Walsh lookalike on the left.

And then we have the incomparable Christopher George as a bizarre, wisecracking journalist (and soon to become romantic lead), interested in the unexplained death and the rug fire and all that jazz.

Sometimes a mere screengrab can show the entire scope of a man's acting talent.

And then a cat shows up, and I said aloud, 'I betcha that cat's about to be thrown,' because it's an Italian horror movie, and within ten seconds of my utterance, the cat was thrown.


It's dark, but you can still the tossing of its furry body.  See also:  Dario Argento's INFERNO.

And there's a near-eye trauma psych-out–

(don't worry, this is a Fulci movie, there will be eye trauma later) 

and then we're back to Dunwich where all sorts of weird stuff is happening, like when the gates of hell split a wall wide open right next to two signs for "Early Times" bourbon,

a bourbon so cheap and evil-tasting that it caters to the sort of people who would probably say something like "it's never too early for early times" and so it's a perfect kind of tableau for a rift in the space-hell-time continuum or whatever's supposed to be happening here.  I hope none of that makes too much sense to you, because next up is a self-inflating blow-up doll and a creepy guy with lascivious intentions



and they have kind of an Italo-stare-off, and  I bet you thought this was supposed to be a zombie movie, didn't you?"
"Whoa-ho-ho-ho!  You need to slow down. What are you talking about?  You're talking gibberish."
–"Have you never seen a Fulci film?"
"I've seen plenty o' Fulci."
–"Then you know it's going to be full of amazingly stilted storytelling, as if the editors and dubbers decided in post-production to project whatever plot they fancied onto the footage of somebody else's fever-dream.  Don't believe me?  Then explain to me why there are random monkey noises throughout.  I'm not even joking."
"I got nothin'."
–"I mean, for those with an interest in stilted storytelling, look no further than this scene:
"There's a lollipop in the glovebox?'  And why does he pronounce 'galloping cadavers' that way?  Er, wait– why does he say 'galloping cadavers' in the first place?"
–"There's another terrific scene where a man sees the ambulatory undead for the first time and reacts with this wondrous, low-key response."

"Did he just say 'I don't believe in the Twilight Zone, so I guess I'll call the sheriff on this matter?'"
–"Yup.  There is no logic in a Fulci film.  Not even dream-logic.  And that's sorta the draw for me.  And I love when he sets a movie in America.  The man was obsessed with New York City– he uses it, at least in part, in MANHATTAN BABY, ZOMBI, NEW YORK RIPPER, MURDER ROCK, and CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD.  It's where he learned all the authentic American patois.  Like when a hardboiled cop sees a pile of earthworms and says, 'WHAT THE DICKENS IS THIS?'  It's very true to life."


"WHAT THE DICKENS IS THIS?"

"Well, that's kind of a good point.  Why, indeed, is there a pile of earthworms?"
–"If you have a question about CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD, the answer is always 'earthworms.'  The zombies are always smackin' you in the face with big wet wads of 'em.  Cause they like it."

KER–SCHMACK

"Don't be so hard on the man.  I like Fulci zombies.  They're more visceral than the Romero ones.  They're so goopy and maggoty."

–"Did you just ask about maggots?  Cause we got 'em.  Hoo boy, we got 'em.  Lemme qualify my earlier statement:  'If you have a question about CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD, the answer is either 'earthworms' or 'maggots.'  You want maggots in the face? 

Maggots on the phone?

Maggots in yer hair?  On yer cheeks?

Maggots all over your whole damn living room?

It's a practical effect.  And that practical effect is a truckload of actual maggots.  So many maggots.  So many.  Maggots."
"Wow."
–"Knock, knock."
"I get it."
–"No, just do it– knock, knock."
"Who's there?"
–"Maggots."
"Maggots, who?"
–"An entire truckload of maggots."
"Okay.  So what else happens in this movie?"
–"Um, let's see.  A woman cries tears of blood.

It's a stirring visual, but, if I know my Fulci, it probably involved exposing the actors to toxic chemicals.  Afterward, she vomits up her own intestine, but– pro tip– it's only sheep intestines.  And I guarantee you she wasn't even making SAG minimum."

"Some actors are just in it for the love of the art, I suppose."
–"Also, for the gorehounds, there's a scene where a sweaty dad impales the head of blow-up-doll-guy on a table-mounted drill while his girlfriend watches."






"Gruesome.  By, 'the girlfriend,' do you mean the blow-up doll?"
–"No, he's got a real girlfriend, too.  Don't ask me.  Kind of a 'Dad, stop murdering my boyfriends' moment."
"Is he a zombie at the time?  I thought this was a zombie movie."
–"No.  It's unrelated to the zombie activity.  Maybe the idea is that the evil from the gates of hell or whatever is pervading everybody in town, but that point is never elucidated in the least.  Probably Fulci just wanted to do a 'drill through the head' scene and didn't want to wait for a more appropriate context."
"Anything else of note?"
–"Did I mention that the zombies' preferred mode of killing is to rip out a handful of your brains from behind while you stand still?"

"That seems pretty specific."
–"Yeah.  I also love this screengrab, which depicts zombies and 'Schlitz on tap' in the same ghoulish tableau."

"Pretty nice.  I'd hang out there at that bar.  A bar where everybody knows Fulci's name."
–"Yep.  So we build to a finale where our heroes must face off against the undead priest and his bevy of zombie-maggot-ghouls.  Our hero grabs a giant wooden crucifix to do battle.  He has to stake him like a vampire, I guess.

Then– I swear– he stakes the priest in the nuts.  Right in the nuts.



It's very clear.  That ain't the heart.  You can't deny that the priest is being staked in his undead nuts.  But why?"
"Maybe the man just likes a good low blow."
–"Maybe.  And then the coda is even more confusing."
"Go on..."
–"So there was this kid who was basically unimportant to the movie till now.  Our heroes emerge from the crypt, and the kid runs toward them.  We have no reason to suspect the kid is evil, or a zombie, and he's not even acting nefariously.  He just wants a hug.  But then there's an ominous wind and they begin to look horrified and scream and then the screen spiderwebs, via cel animation, into a dark void.  Then the credits roll.
Even by Fulci standards, this makes no sense.  Now, I heard a rumor that coffee was spilled on the actual ending and they had to improvise this one in the edit room.  Okay.  Sure.  But I'm going to modify that rumor for when you spread it along:  I'm going to say that they spilled maggots on it.  Makes sense."
"Would you stop with the maggots?"
–"Fulci wouldn't.  Why should I?  Three and a half stars."


–Sean Gill

2014 HALLOWEEN COUNTDOWN– OVERFLOW!

1.  FROM DUSK TILL DAWN 2: TEXAS BLOOD MONEY (1999, Scott Spiegel)

2.  MARK OF THE VAMPIRE (1935, Tod Browning)

3.  FULL MOON HIGH (1981, Larry Cohen)

4.  EIGHT-LEGGED FREAKS (2002, Ellory Elkayem)

5.  MASTERS OF HORROR: WE ALL SCREAM FOR ICE CREAM (2007, Tom Holland)

6.  STEPHEN KING ON SONS OF ANARCHY (2010, Bill Gierhart)

7.  THE INITIATION (1984, Larry Stewart)

8.  MUTANTS (2008, Amir Valinia)

9.  JAWS 2 (1978, Jeannot Szwarc)

10.  THE PREMATURE BURIAL (1962, Roger Corman)

11.  DRACULA 3D (2012, Dario Argento)

12.  HALLOWEEN (1978, John Carpenter)

13.  X: THE MAN WITH THE X-RAY EYES (1963, Roger Corman)

14.  TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE: THE NEXT GENERATION (1994, Kim Henkel)
15.  CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD (1980, Lucio Fulci)

Film Review: THE EXTERMINATOR (1980, James Glickenhaus)

Stars: 4 of 5.
Running Time: 104 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Robert Ginty (COMING HOME, HARLEY DAVIDSON AND THE MARLBORO MAN), Samantha Eggar (WELCOME TO BLOOD CITY, THE BROOD), Christopher George (PIECES, ENTER THE NINJA), Steve James (VIGILANTE, THE DELTA FORCE, I'M GONNA GET YOU SUCKA), Irwin Keyes (DEATH WISH 4, David Lynch's ON THE AIR, FRIDAY THE 13TH, THE WARRIORS, the voice of 'Bruno the Bigfoot' in SAM AND MAX HIT THE ROAD), David Lipman (FRANKENHOOKER, WEEKEND AT BERNIE'S II), and Stan Getz as himself. Special makeup effects by Stan Winston.
Tag-line: "A one man army. A new kind of soldier in a new kind of war."
Best one-liner: "If you're lying, I'll be back."

So I saw Cannon Films' EXTERMINATOR 2 before I saw the first one, and I gotta say, while I enjoyed 2 quite a bit on a certain level, 1 is the far better film. THE EXTERMINATOR is sort of like a ROLLING THUNDER/TAXI DRIVER mashup as directed by an adolescent boy in 1980. EXTERMINATOR 2 is a DEATH WISH II/BREAKIN' mashup directed by an eight-year-old in 1984. That's probably the most diplomatic way to put it. Additionally, after seeing Robert Ginty's (R.I.P.) mumbly, unfocused performance as the Exterminator in Part 2, I was prepared to write him off as some bland no-talent, but after seeing him in Part 1, he's actually, at times, a pretty solid actor. I think this marks the first time EVER that the influence of Golan/Globus has dulled someone down (instead of making them more flamboyant).

Anyway, let me tell you about the fil– FOOOOOOOOOOSH!!

This movie starts right out with an explosion, and this a full five years before RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II. And it's not just an explosion– it's a human body spiraling through the air in agony as it blows away from an explosion. Damn! This movie is gonna be brutal! It's a 'Nam flashback, and, naturally, we segue to a torture scene– pre-FIRST BLOOD and post-ROLLING THUNDER. Robert Ginty and legendary martial arts actor Steve James have been captured by the Viet Cong, and of their comrades is gruesomely beheaded via a Stan Winston special effect.

Ginty holds fast.

They're about to do Ginty when James breaks loose and, together with Ginty, take out all the VC.

Amidst the carnage, some random dudes are running around on fire– this series has standards to maintain.

We then cut to NYC, 1980.

A bigger war zone than Vietnam? Possibly, according to this movie. James and Ginty now work for some kind of grocery warehouse, packing meats and produce into trucks.

There are some shady gangster-types who hang around, which gives it a kind of 'THIEVES' HIGHWAY/ evil fruit trucker biz' feel. A street gang called the "Ghetto Gouls" busts in and fights James and Ginty. Whenever gangs attack in this movie, you get a lot of 'victim POV,' where the gang member looks directly into and taunts the camera.

This is a good thing. James and Ginty mop the floor with the Ghetto Ghouls (they get their blood-pumping from 'Nam flashbacks), and we think that's the last we've seen of them. Well, we think that's the last we've seen of them if we've never seen a vigilante movie before. Anyway, the Ghouls come back and beat Steve James within an inch of his life (and with a gardening claw, no less), paralyzing him. Within one minute of finding out his friend has been paralyzed, Ginty is already torturing a random Ghoul with a flamethrower for information-

and within ten minutes, the original perps have been ejected from a house party (where they're playing 'Burn, Baby, Burn' by the Trammps) and have had their faces EATEN BY RATS. The Exterminator is born, and the movie's in high gear. It's not really done out of revenge, per sé- The Exterminator just seems to be on 'Nam-induced autopilot.


Then we got the totally schweet Christopher George in the role of 'cop investigating the Exterminator, but begrudgingly being won over by his take-charge attitude' role, which had been seen many times before (Robert Ryan in THE WILD BUNCH, Vincent Gardenia in DEATH WISH, etc.) and would be seen many times again (Yaphet Kotto in THE PARK IS MINE!, Ed Lauter in DEATH WISH III, etc., etc.).

They try and build this whole annoying subplot in, though, where George is dating a doctor played by Samantha Eggar (who is really quite talented- she played the wife and mother in Cronenberg's THE BROOD).

"What was 'Nam like?"
"–It was bad. Not as bad as New York City. But it was bad."

She's given absolutely nothing to do in this role, though, and when they're on dates (and they go on a million dates), you yearn for the scenes of the Exterminator carefully loading his weaponry or the bad guys mugging old ladies and high-fiving.

A common scenario.

The film's street cred comes from its possession of a certain attentiveness to quotidian detail:
the shabby denizens of Times Square (including a whacky, face-fondling trans woman who touches the Exterminator in passing),


a stuttering junkie hooker that can hardly form a coherent thought, the mob henchmen who scrutinize a bathroom stall before their boss uses it, the awesome interior design of the Exterminator's apartment,

and the drawn out exchange (in the midst of a TAXI DRIVER hooker-saving subplot) between the Exterminator and a ramshackle hotel lackey involving the cost of sheets for a paid sexual encounter ($5 for clean sheets, and a $5 deposit on the sheets)...

"YA WANT DA SHEETS?! YA WANT DA SHEETS?!"


Maybe Enzo G. Castellari worked on this thing as an uncredited asscrack coordinator. Stranger things have happened.


Anyway, probably my two favorite 'vigilante-in-action' scenes are these:

#1. The Exterminator captures a mobster in a restaurant's bathroom (he hides in the trash can with a hypodermic needle).

He chains him up and interrogates him about his home security above a gigantic meat grinder.


"If you're lying, I'll be back," Ginty says (pre-Arnie, I might add). Turns out the mobster was full of shit and only wanted his vicious guard dog to take out Mr. Ginty. The Exterminator survives said attack, which only means one thing:

Burgertime.

And I really admire the filmmakers' willingness to go there.


#2. The Exterminator learns of a dungeon where young boys and hookers are tortured with a soldering iron and other such implements by a New Jersey State Senator (played by David Lipman, FRANKENHOOKER's first electrocuted John). This New Jersey State Senator must never show up to work- it doesn't matter if it's midnight on a Saturday night or 12 noon on a weekday, you better believe he's gonna be at his Times Square dungeon, torturing some slave child. Makes you wonder what exactly goes on in the New Jersey State Senate. Not much legislating, I guess. Anyway, the Exterminator decides to prep for this encounter by hollowing out his bullets and pouring mercury into them.

Why he does this exactly is left up to the viewer to imagine. I mean, if he's already shooting people dead with the bullets, is it really important to him that they get mercury poisoning, post-mortem? The intent is different, but it's kind of in the same ballpark as sanitizing the skin with alcohol prior to a lethal injection. Seems a bit pointless. Anyway, the Exterminator busts in and shoots him dead, right in the kidney.


And then, um, I guess he gets mercury poisoned afterward. Take that!

There's also a faction of evil politicians and CIA men who want the Exterminator dead- with no trial or subsequent public embarassment of the government, whose inability to clean up the streets is being highlighted by this angry, mercury poisoning man. Christopher George is pissed off by their holier-than-thou, big shot attitude (which is similar to Robert Davi's FBI douche in DIE HARD) and tells them what's what:

"What do you think?"
"I THINK YOU HAVE TO TAKE A SHIT- IT'S COMIN' OUTTA YOUR MOUTH INSTEAD'A YOUR ASSHOLE!!!"

It's moments like this that I'm truly glad Christopher George pursued a career in acting. Anyway, I won't spoil how it all goes down, but you have to love that a character commits a heart-wrenching act of euthanasia and then delivers a "You're fly's open!" one-liner within, literally, thirty seconds of each other.

Your fly is open, Christopher George. Zing!

Well, EXTERMINATOR, you've impressed me. I'm not sure why the flamethrower was so essential to the marketing (he threatens one man with it but never once pulls the trigger) and the plot of the sequel (he exclusively uses the flamethrower in part 2). I guess a dude cleaning up the streets of New York with a flamethrower certainly has pull (or at least Golan and Globus thought so). Well, a dude cleaning up the streets of New York with mercury poisoning bullets and a giant meat-grinder has a lot of pull, too, in my opinion.

Obviously not quite in the same league as Paul Schrader's additions to the genre, or even something like Bill Lustig's VIGILANTE, but THE EXTERMINATOR is still a damned solid, furious, n' sleazy revenge flick. Pass the burgers.

-Sean Gill