City of the Living Dead

Though I have a weakness for Italian gore, this is a dud. Fans of Lucio Fulci consider it to be one of his best works, but... City of the Living Dead seems like it wasn’t even shot according to a screenplay. It utterly disregards plot connections, cause and effect and story, and it is thus merely an incoherent, boring patchwork of gratuitous repulsiveness. Fulci’s The House by the Cemetery is equally bloody and brutal, but it at least has a normal storyline and a mysterious atmosphere. (18/05/2002)

A pleasantly straightforward script that retains mystery throughout, and the sombre mood is priceless. This is typical Fulci as I like it: provocative in its naturalistic depiction of violence (too detailed and disgusting for many people) and powerful in evoking a sultry horror atmosphere. And there’s also the legendary scene of the drill to the brain. (23/09/2003)

I had a feeling that I wouldn’t like The Gates of Hell and that’s why I avoided it so long, but recently I fancied filling one of those gaps in my horror education and I finally sat to watch what some fans consider the best Fulci. Bad for me. An incredibly gratuitous farce with a plot that has only one purpose: to stick together several scenes that Fulci probably longed to shoot, and he didn’t even do a very good job of it, by the way. Zombie 2 remains the only entry in Lucio’s filmography that I really enjoyed. (21/05/2009)

The first film of Fulci's so-called Gates of Hell trilogy, in which the famous Italian horror filmmaker completely broke away from traditional narrative conventions and gave a clear pass to his visual skills and macabre poetics. The lack of logic and a coherent plot may discourage many viewers, but some will be delighted. Indeed, Fulci makes great use of it to evoke an apocalyptic atmosphere of chaos and decay in a cursed city where the boundaries between the rational and supernatural worlds are being eroded. The gates of hell are opening, smoke and blood are pouring from the cracking walls, people are vomiting their guts and zombies are beginning to teleport around the city. Fulci deliberately plunges you into a world where nothing makes sense. Most absurd, then, is the very end, which feels like someone cut out the last crucial seconds. Even more absurd, however, is the story that the originally filmed ending could not be used because the editor spilled coffee on it in the editing room. (15/08/2023)