Paura nella città dei morti viventi
Tags: cruelty, grindhouse film, gothic, murder, paranormal, cult, violence, horror, atmospheric, psychedelic, sadist

Plot synopsis:
In New York City, during a séance held in the apartment of medium Theresa, Mary Woodhouse (Catronia MacColl) experiences a traumatic vision of a priest, Father Thomas (Fabrizio Jovine), hanging himself from a tree branch in the cemetery of a remote village called Dunwich. When the images overwhelm her, Mary breaks the circle, goes into convolutions, and falls to the floor as if dead. The police, led by Sergeant Clay, interrogate Theresa, but fail to heed her warnings of an imminent evil. Outside the apartment building, Peter Bell (Chirstopher George), a local journalist, tries to gain entry to the premises but is turned away. The following day, Mary is buried in a local cemetery on Long Island overlooking Manhattan and Peter visits her grave site. The gravediggers (Perry Pirkanen and Michael Gaunt) leave Mary's half-covered coffin at the end of their work shift and leave. Soon, Peter hears muffled screams as he reluctantly leaves the graveyard. Using a pickaxe, he frees the screaming woman from her premature burial, but with the pickaxe coming dangerously close to her head as it smashes through the casket lid.Peter and Mary visit Theresa where she warns them that according to the ancient book of Enoch, the events Mary has witnessed in her visions presage the euroption of the living dead into our world. The death of Father Thomas, a marked priest, has somehow opened a door through which the living dead can enter and the invasion will commence on All Saints Day, just a few days away.In Dunwich, Bob (Giovanni Lombardo Radice), a lonely youth with a bad reputation, wonders into a desolate, empty house. He finds a rubber doll which inflates itself. But before he can use it, the sight of a rotting babys corpse scares him away. At Junie's Lounge, the barman discusses recent events with two local men, Mr. Ross (Venantino Venanini) and Mike. Strange events have been occurring the last few days, and Mr. Ross is inclined to blame Bob. When a mirror shatters and the wall cracks inexplicably, the men leave, despite the bartender's offer of free drinks. Across town, Gerry (Carlo De Mejo), a psychiatrist, is in consultation with Sandra (Janet Agren), a neurotic patient, when Emily Robbins (Antonella Interlenghi), his 19-year-old girlfriend and personal assistant, arrives. She tells Gerry that she's on her way to meet Bob, whom she has been trying to help. After Emily leaves, Sandras pet cat, whom she has been holding through her session, suddenly scratches her badly on her hand, and huddles in a corner. That evening, Emily visits Bob at a disused garage, but unearthly groans scare him away. Emily is left alone when she faces the supernatural apparition of Father Thomas who smothers her with a maggott-covered hand.A short distance away, Rose Kelvin (Daniela Doria) and Tommy Fisher (Michele Soavi), a teenage couple, are making out in Tommys jeep near the vicinity when they too face the ghostly image of Father Thomas outside the jeep. With a powerful, mesmerizing stare, Father Thomas makes Rose's eyeballs bleed and she meets a ghastly fate by vomiting her entire guts out while Tommy watches, and he is immediately killed by getting his head ripped open by an unseen ghoul. The next morning, there is no sign of Rose or Tommy, while Emily's body is found at the garage. The local pathologist Dr. Joe Thompson (director Lucio Fulci), cannot make a clear assumption to how Emily died except from a heart attack caused by shear fright. After Dr. Thompson leaves the scene, Sheriff Russell finds a small puddle of black, worm-infested fluid nearby. Mr. Robbins tells the sheriff and Gerry of his suspicious about Bob. Meanwhile, Peter and Mary leave New York and embark upon their search for the town of Dunwich, as seen in Mary's vision.As All Saints Day approaches, the people of Dunwich suffer further ghostly visitation in advance of the Hellish outpouring. That evening, Bob sees Father Thomas hanging in the deserted house he frequents. At the local morgue, a mortician is bitten on his hand by the cadaver of a old women, called Jane Holden, whilst trying to steal her jewelry. The apparition of the dead Emily pays a nocturnal visit to her little brother John-John (Luca Paisner). At Sandra's house, the corpse of Mrs. Holden appears without explination on her kitchen floor. Sandra calls Gerry for help, and he tries to cling onto the possibility of a rational explination. But as soon as Gerry arrives, the body has disappeared as mysterious as it appeared. Investing noises upstairs in Sandra's house, the doctor and patient witness broken glass fly from a shattered window into the wall opposite. The wall bleeds before their eyes, forcing them to flee the house. Meanwhile, Bob has taken refuge at the Ross household in the garage. When Mr. Ross's teenage daughter finds him and tries to comfort him after he tries to explain whats going on outside, the rabid patriarch enters, and mistakenly assuming that Bob is trying to seduce his daughter. The vicious Mr. Ross kills Bob in a horrific way by impaling his head on a drilling lathe.The following morning, Peter and Mary follow a bland village priest's directions to the shunned village of Dunwich. Arriving at the graveyard, they begin searching for Father Thomas' tomb. Gerry and Sandra also arrive after following a trail there, and the two couples exchange stories about their recent events. They begin to become acquainted at Gerry's office when a sudden violent storm blasts through the window, showering the four with maggots. When it's over, Gerry receives a distressing phone call from John-John Robbins. The little boy says that his dead sister has returned from the grave during the night and killed his parents. The four rush over the Robbins' house and find that John-John's story is true. Sandra offers to take the boy to her apartment while, Peter, Mary, and Gerry try to find the sheriff. Upon arriving at the entrance to Sandra's apartment building, she is killed by the malevolent zombie/ghost of Emily, who rips Sandra's scalp off. John-John runs through the fog-shrounded streets of the town, evading more zombies of the townspeople, when he is saved by Gerry who hands the boy over to the police.At Junie's Lounge, Mr. Ross, Mike, and the barman are attacked and finally killed by the marauding ghouls as a state-of-emergency is declared over the radio. Mary, Peter, and Gerry arrive back at the graveyard as All Saints Day begins. They decent into Father Thomas' family tomb, discovering an underground grotto of skeletal remains and cobwebbed putrescenes. Sandra appears as a zombie, and kills Peter by ripping his brains out. The zombie Sandra is then immobilized by Gerry who impails her to a cave wall with a pitchfork to her chest. Mary and Gerry are forced to go on until they reach a weired, stained-glass chamber coated in musk and dust. There, they face Father Thomas who has re-entered corporeal existence with his supernatural powers intact. Mary and Gerry look on as all of the dead begin to emerge from their tombs and surround them. Father Thomas once again begins to use his powerful and mesmerizing stare making Mary's eyeballs bleed. Before his stare can turn Mary inside out, Gerry grabs a large, rotting, wooden cross and disembowels Father Thomas. The evil priest's decayed guts are punctured, and he and the massing zombies burst into flames and return to dust. The Gate of Hell have apparently been closed. Mary and Gerry struggle from the subterranean catacombs of the night and emerge back out of Father Thomas' tomb into the graveyard at morning, to see John-John running excitedly towards them. As he approaches, Mary and Gerry's joy turns to disquietude, and then to fear, until the movie suddenly ends as ambiguously as it began... with Mary's scream.

Review: Like most of Fulci's horror movies and Italian horror in general, plot and logic take a back seat to gore and stunning visual set pieces.
Fulci's horror film about the dead coming back to life on a small location of Dunwich with inspiration on famous novelist H.P. Lovecraft .
A journalist named Peter Bell (Christopher George), a psychiatrist (Carlo De Mejo) and a psychic named Mary Woodhouse (Catriona MacColl , Fulci's fetish actress) race to close the Gates of Hell after the suicide by hanging of a priest caused them to open , allowing the zombies to rise from the tombs .
Watch for the great highlights as the alive burying and the pick-axe coming dangerously close to her head ; as when a drill punctures the face an unfortunate young -a Fulci's mark who repeats ad nauseam - and clergyman's mesmerizing stares making eyeballs bleed .
"The Gates of Hell" is another masterpiece directed by one of the best horror directors Lucio Fulci.Fulci,who sadly died in 1996,was a real artist.Anyway this film concerns a priest committing suicide and opening the gateway to Hell,allowing the dead to rise from their graves and feed on the living.Christopher George("Pieces")tries to stop them.The gore effects made by Gino de Rossi are excellent(maggots,rotting flesh,lots of squished brains etc.)Giovanni Lombardo Radice gets an electric drill through his head,and there's also a notorious scene of woman(Daniela Doria)vomiting up all of her internal organs in a really nauseating torrent of blood and guts.The plot is weak,but the film is highly atmospheric and imaginative.Again brilliant director Lucio Fulci created a masterpiece of pure horror!10 out of 10-not to be missed..
But first: year of release: 1980, genre: horror/fantasy, director: Lucio Fulci, writers: Lucio Fulci and Dardano Sacchetti, themes: sin, heresy, death, afterlife and doom, plot: close the Gates of Hell before it is too late, summary: a priest commits a sin by hanging himself on a cemetery and consequently opens the Gates of Hell; a medium and a reporter sets out to close the Gates of Hell again before All Saints Day. We are thrown into a much more otherworldly heresy and sin compared to 'Zombi 2'.
Meanwhile in Dunwich there are weird deaths and Peter and Mary meet the psychiatrist Gerry (Carlo De Mejo) and his friend Sandra (Janet Agren) to find out the grave of Father Thomas to close the gates of Hell before All Saints Day; otherwise the dead will raise and destroy the living.
This leads to a series of grim events, including several supernatural zombies.City of the Living Dead is the second of Italian director Lucio Fulci's four celebrated zombie films from 1979-81.
In the case of City of the Living Dead it is most probably two gruesome set-pieces in particular that have established its infamous reputation - a nasty scene where a man is killed by a power drill through his head and a sequence where a woman vomits up all of her innards.
There is also a notable macabre scene that doesn't involve any blood and guts, where a woman who has been buried alive is freed by a man hacking her coffin open with a pick axe, which just misses her head several times.Lead actor Christopher George will be familiar to a few fans of early 80's splatter flicks from his lead role in the bonkers Spanish slasher Pieces.
Zombies that appear and disappear in your bedroom are far scarier than ones that just amble around like Albert Tatlock on Mogadons.There are concessions to Fulci's juvenile gore, of course - one girl bleeds tears and then regurgitates her own internal organs before snatching out her boyfriend's brains.
Fabio Frizzi's music also adds much to the film in its dated synth-drum machine type way, though its inability to continue from scene to scene does jar somewhat.The new skills Fulci brought to this project  pace, characterisation, an actual plot, of sorts  were themes he continued with in his third zombie flick, E tu vivrai nel terrore  L'aldilà.
I wouldn't say there's a "lot" of gore, but what is here is pretty shocking in the context of the plot...Anyway, if you do decide to see this movie, just know that you're going to enter a world with the greatest atmosphere I've ever seen in a horror film.
I think a lot of people expect some kind of American-ized action-packed zombie movie where watching this film and don't understand all the elements at work here.And this film has probably the greatest and most terrifying ending scene I've ever witnessed.
City Of The Living Dead is a Gothic splatter masterwork that makes much of the horror movies at the time look tame.
So, I digress that even outside of film, these movies had an impact and Lucio Fulci was one of the finest horror directors to have ever lived..
A reporter named Peter Bell (Christopher George) and a psychic named Mary (Catriona MacColl), whom Bell saves from being buried alive, race to the small town of Dunwich to close those damn gates in time for All Saints' Day.Fulcis' set pieces are so potent that they can keep entertaining on every viewing.
We're treated to repeated scenes of brain smushing, and a fantastic drill through the head sequence, but the scene that really gets people talking when it comes to this film is the one of Rosie Kelvin (Daniela Doria, who was made to take a lot of abuse every time she worked for Fulci) literally puking her guts out.
Another typical representation of the great FULCI.Gates of Hell is without a doubt the most intriguing fulci's supernatural splatter movies, second only to "THE BEYOND" in sheer atmosphere and over-the-top inventiveness.As is often the case, ridiculous dialogue and hysterically brain-damaged character motivations anchor the film in an endearing netherworld between uinintentional camp and surrealistic terror.Very macabre and nightmarish.A hell of a movie.Lucio fulci at his best!!!!!!!!!!.
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.
But this is still a very good horror film by Fulci though it was the beginning of his "Bizarro" phase.Do enter these Gates of Hell!.
City of the Living Dead moves too slow, there isn't a hell of a lot of gore, the dubbing is poor, there are almost no zombies (and the make-up is pretty poor) and the ending is annoyingly dumb.The only good points were the great gore effects (there are brains and guts galore), some great camera-work and another great score by Fabio Frizzi.
Thus is the basic premise behind The Gates of Hell(also known as City of the Living Dead) by that Italian director of renown...Lucio Fulci.
The best we get in this picture is a psychiatrist that watches everyone around him die and Christopher George as an annoying, charmless newspaperman who drives up from New York City looking for Dunwhich with a woman who was buried alive(by the way, for me, the best scene in the whole film is the one where the woman cries and tries to get out of her dirt-covered coffin...very effective).
I'm still trying to figure out what the point was.Having seen most of his attempts at horror films, City Of The Living Dead is without a doubt Fulci's worst movie.
It's gore for gore's sake, but it can't even get that right.If you really need to watch a Lucio Fulci movie, please try House By The Cemetery or Zombi.
It's a competently made Italian splatter flick, with plenty of grisly FX work, but it's not quite up to other Fulci films like ZOMBIE, THE BEYOND and HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY.A supposed "sequel" was also released, but it's actually just a cheap, unrelated American movie that steals the title.Score: 4 out of 10.
Director Lucio Fulci who also created other classics flicks, The Beyond 1981 and Nightmare Concert (A Cat in the Brain) has created another gem in City of the Living Dead.Starring Christopher George who was also in the classic flick, The Exterminator 1980.Also starring Catriona MacCall who was also in Lucio Fulci's The Beyond.Also starring Carlo De Mejo.I enjoyed the coffin, drill, intestines and other gore scenes along with the sound effects.If you enjoyed this as much as I did then check out other classic zombie flicks, 28 Weeks Later 2007, 28 Days Later 2002, Dawn of the Dead 1978, Dawn of the Dead 2004, Day of the Dead 1985, Day of the Dead 2008, Dead and Buried 1981, Dead Meat 2004, The Horde 2009, Pontypool 2008, Quarantine 2008, Resident Evil: Extinction 2007, Resident Evil: Afterlife 2010, Resident Evil 2002, Resident Evil: Apocalypse 2004, The Return of the Living Dead 1985, Return of the Living Dead 3 1993, Braindead 1992, Of Death and Love 1994, Diary of the Dead 2007, Land of the Dead 2005, The Last Man on Earth 1964, The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue 1974, Night of the Living Dead 1968, Flight of the Living Dead: Outbreak on a Plane 2007, Planet Terror 2007, Shaun of the Dead 2004, Undead 2003, Dead Heat 1988, The Dead 2010, Mutants 2009, World War Z 2013, Dead Shack 2017, Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead 2014, Re-Kill 2015 and Zombie Strippers!
FACT: City Of The Living Dead (AKA: The Gates Of Hell) is an Italian Hardcore-Horror Film directed by Lucio Fulci (1927-1996)!
This is maybe my favorite Horror movie cause "City Of The Living Dead" has some special Zombies that none other Zombie-films have!
He switched back and forth from zombie films and Lovecraft horror (probably whichever one was more marketable at the time).The story is about an evil priest who's spirit has returned to wreck havoc on the living and bring hell on earth.
Cigar-chomping journalist Christopher George thinks something's slightly off about the whole situation (just as well he didn't see the dancing flames in Mary's apartment!) and heads to graveyard to dig a bit further, which he literally does some time later when he realises that the muffled screaming he can hear is Mary, who has regained consciousness.Mary didn't die at all (try not to apply logic to this or anything else that happens - the sequence with Mary in the coffin is still effective) and since waking up she's now bangning on about this priest who's suicide has opened up the gates of hell in a place called Dunwich.
Emily's death is blamed on local weirdo Bob (Giovanni Radice), but we all know that in Italian horror, the dead don't stay dead for long...Flimsy plot aside, the whole film works because Lucio Fulci and scriptwriter Dardano Saccehetti thought up loads of cool things they'd like to see in a horror film, then tried to connect with a tenuous end-of-the-world storyline.
Director, Lucio Fulci had a way of capturing a cold, bleak sense of doom in his horror efforts, and CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD is a great example of this.
I really miss those dark pieces that focus on the undead, on horror, on gore and on creating a dark tone - not the kind of drama queens now filling a once great show called The Walking Dead (I am rewatching the first seasons and I am shocked how bad the last seasons are compared to them).You should put this one on your watch-list - if you don't know it yet but you like zombies on your screen regularly.Good one..
I had almost watched The Beyond before I realized that it was part of the "Gates of Hell" Trilogy which had lead me to City of the Living Dead to start with the first film.Holy gore this movie has some great kills and practical effects for it's time.
This movie isn't the best work I have seen from Fulci but it is a great starting point for the Gates of Hell Trilogy and I can't wait to watch the next two films..
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).
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...
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..
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.
Being a fan of zombie movies, I was very disappointed in watching Fulci's "City of the Dead".
I've seen director Lucio Fulci's City of the Living Dead several times over the years.
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.
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.
If you are familiar with Lucio Fulci's films you pretty much know what to expect from his horror movies.
'The Gates of Hell' (aka 'City of the Living Dead') is the strangest horror movie I've seen.
This is the second of the four movies that gave fulci the reputation of godfather of gore.It is great.You can read the plot in every other comment so...The gore is plenty,in fact this probably is the goriest of fulci films.IT has almost everything:squashed brains,worm attacks,a drill in the head,vomiting your insides out...everything.It also has a good atmosphere,though nowhere near as good as the beyond or house by the cemetary.I love this film BUT...it has the two most inconceivable scenes in any fulci film(and you know there are many inconceivable scenes in fulci films).First the drill scene:you see a man you believe is a pervert and guilty of many crimes but now he seems weaker than a fly.So what do you do??Call the police??NO!Punch him?NO.You put a drill in his head!!Why??The supposed pervert seems much more normal than the man who kills him.Second and much worse:the ending scene.Whether you like it or not this IS a happy ending.The demonic priest dies in flames,the zombies are destroyed and the gates of hell stay shut.So what does Mac kol screams about??And why does this kid suddenly seem scared.Nobody will ever find out.A happy ending is a happy ending and sorry great late Fulci this is a happy ending no matter what!!.
the first movie i ever saw by Lucio Fulci was House By The Cemetery and hated it, i thought the directing was really bad as well, but City Of The Living Dead aka Gates Of Hell was a classic, and i must say that Fulci created a very creepy feeling through out the film.
I've seen a lot of zombie movies and I'd put this one up against any of the "Living Dead" series of films for sheer gore and fright factor.
You know going in that a Lucio Fulci movie is going to have plenty of gore, and this one doesn't disappoint with lots of maggots, rotting flesh, drilled heads, squished brains, and a girl vomiting up her insides.Peter Bell (Christopher George - I Escaped from Devil's Island, "Rat Patrol"), a skeptical reporter, joins with psychic Mary Woodhouse (Catriona MacColl - The House by the Cemetery, The Beyond) in an effort to find the Gates of Hell and close them before All Saint's Day.Gerry (Carlo De Mejo - Manhattan Baby, The House by the Cemetery) and Sandra (Swedish model Janet Agren) join the search after some of the dead come back to life.No one really has any idea what to do and there are zombies everywhere!
I thought that Lucio Fulci's City Of The Living Dead was a great film.
In New York City, an ace journalist (Christopher George) with psychic Mary (Catriona MacColl) where they must go to Dunwich to find the grave of the priest in order to shut the gates of hell before All Saint's Day and if it doesn't get shut then the spirits of the dead will take over the world.Exciting, gruesome and very H.P. Lovecraft-esquire supernatural Italian shocker from Lucio Fulci is one of his best movies.