City of the Living Dead

In New York City, during a séance held in the apartment of medium Theresa, Mary Woodhouse (MacColl) experiences a traumatic vision of a priest, Father Thomas (Jovine), hanging himself from a tree branch in a cemetery of the remote village of Dunwich. When the images overwhelm her, Mary breaks the circle 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 (George), a 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. As Peter visits Mary's grave, she is mysteriously revived and tries to claw her way out of the casket to no avail. Peter then hears her cries just as he is about to leave and rescues her before she would have eventually been buried alive by the cemetery caretakers.

Peter and Mary visit Theresa, who warns them that according to the ancient book of Enoch, the events Mary witnessed in her visions presage the eruption of the living dead into our world. The death of Father Thomas has somehow opened the gates of Hell through which the invasion will commence on All Saints Day, just a few days away. Meanwhile, in Dunwich, Bob (Radice) wanders into an abandoned house and finds a rubber sex doll which inflates itself. Before he can use it, the sight of a rotting fetus corpse scares him away. At Junie's Lounge, the barman talks with two local men, Mr. Ross (Venanini) and Mike, about recent strange events for which Mr. Ross is inclined to blame Bob. When a mirror shatters and the wall cracks inexplicably, the men are scared and leave. Across town, Gerry (De Mejo), a psychiatrist, is in consultation with Sandra (Agren), a neurotic patient, when Emily Robbins (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.

That evening when Emily finds Bob crying like a baby, he becomes startled and pushes the therapist to the floor upon hearing a sinister sound. The supernatural apparition of Father Thomas then appears as Bob leaves the building, smothering to death a frightened Emily with a maggot-covered hand. A short distance away, Rose Kelvin (Doria) and Tommy Fisher ( Soavi), a teenage couple, are making out in Tommy's jeep when they too see the ghostly image of the priest. Father Thomas makes Rose's eyeballs bleed and she meets a ghastly fate by vomiting her entire insides, while Tommy has his head ripped open. The next morning, Emily's body is found at the garage with mention of the couple being discovered too. Mr. Robbins tells the sheriff and Gerry of his suspicions about Bob. Meanwhile, Peter and Mary leave New York and embark upon their search for the town of Dunwich.

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 elderly Jane Holden while trying to steal her jewelry. The apparition of the dead Emily pays a nocturnal visit to her younger brother John-John (Paisner). At Sandra's house, the corpse of Mrs. Holden appears without explanation on her kitchen floor. Sandra calls Gerry for help, but as soon as Gerry arrives, the body has disappeared. Investigating 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 what's going on outside, the rabid patriarch enters, and mistakenly assumes that Bob is trying to seduce his daughter. The vicious Mr. Ross kills Bob by impaling his head on a drilling lathe.

The following morning, Peter and Mary follow a village priest's directions to the shunned village of Dunwich. Arriving at the graveyard, they begin searching for Father Thomas' tomb. There, they meet Gerry and Sandra, 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 explaining his dead sister has returned from the grave during the night and killed his parents. The four rush over the Robbins' house and Sandra offers to take the boy to her apartment while, Peter, Mary, and Gerry try to find the sheriff. Upon arriving to her apartment building, Sandra is killed by Emily, who rips Sandra's scalp off. John-John runs through the fog-shrouded streets of the town and 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 led by Bob's corpse 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 descend into Father Thomas' family tomb, discovering an underground grotto of skeletal remains and cobwebbed putrescences. Sandra suddenly appears as a zombie and kills Peter by ripping his brains out. Gerry impales her to a cave wall with a pitchfork through her chest before she can kill Mary. Mary and Gerry continue on until they reach a weird, stained-glass chamber coated in musk and dust. There, they face Father Thomas who has re-entered corporeal existence and an army of the undead. 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 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 Gates of Hell have been closed just before the dead fully rise. Mary and Gerry exit from Father Thomas' tomb into the graveyard at morning to see John-John and the police. Mary is relieved to see John-John survived the ordeal, but her relief turns to fright as John-John runs towards her and Gerry, and she screams as the film crumbles to black.

After grossing over 1.5 billion Italian lire in Italy with his first horror film (Zombi 2), director Lucio Fulci began working on a new horror script with screenwriter Dardano Sacchetti.[4] Elements of the story are influenced by the work of H.P. Lovecraft, such as naming the town the film is set in Dunwich, after Lovecraft's The Dunwich Horror.[5] Sacchetti noted that Fulci had just reread Lovecraft before working on the film's script, stating he wanted to re-create a Lovecraftian atmosphere.[5] In Sacchetti's original writings, the story is not set in Dunwich, but Salem.[6] This script also includes characters not used in the film, such as Gerry the psychoanalyst and a homeless man named Mike who is devoured by cats and reappears later in the film as a zombie.[6] Sacchetti recalled that after completing the script they had to wait a while to work on the next film leaving their script to sit while working on other projects.[4] Fulci did not want to work with Zombi 2 producer Fabrizio De Angelis again, and convinced Renato Jaboni of Medusa Distribuzione and Luciano Martino and Mino Loy of Dania and National Cinematografica to contribute.[4] The project was greenlit during the production period of Fulci's Contraband, which Fulci left leaving his assistant director Roberto Giandalia to finish the project.[4] Early choices for the cast included Zombi 2 star Tisa Farrow as Mary Woodhouse, Fiamma Maglione as Sandra, Aldo Barberito as Father Thomas and Robert Kerman as Mr. Ross; they were replaced by Catriona MacColl, Janet Agren, Fabrizio Jovine and Venantino Venantini respectively.[4] MacColl had recently made her film debut in the title role of the manga adaptation Lady Oscar, and would be cast as the lead in Fulci's later films The Beyond and The House by the Cemetery. Argen and Christopher George were hired to increase the film's commercial prospects.[5]

Film historian and critic Roberto Curti stated that the according to the Public Cinematographic Register, filming was published as beginning on March 24, but it was more likely that filming had not begun until April 1980.[5][7] Shooting schedule allowed for shooting on location in both New York City and six weeks shot in Savannah, Georgia, and two weeks in Rome at De Paolis Studios for the special effects scenes.[2][5] Among the special effects scenes included a scene where the cast is attacked by maggots via two wind machines and a 10 kg of maggots.[5] To surprise Fulci, one crew member took some of the maggots and placed them in his pipe tobacco which Fulci only learned after a few puffs of what he was smoking, angering him immensely.[5] Fulci would later theorize that this incident led to his future illness as he went for heart surgery in 1985, suffered a ventricular aneurysm, contracted viral hepatitis and developed Cirrhosis of the liver.[5] Many of the film's gory and graphic scenes were not included in the original scripts or story, such as the scene where a character vomits their own intestines is absent.[8] This scene was performed by having the Daniela Doria spit up baby veal intestines, and then having her head replaced with replica for further vomiting.[8]

City of the Living Dead was distributed theatrically in Italy by Medusa Distribuzione on 11 August 1980.[2] It grossed a total of 985,238,798 Italian lire domestically, a figure described by Curti as "somewhat disappointing".[2] The film was distributed theatrically through Europe, including West Germany on September 11, 1980, France on December 10, 1980 as well as the Netherlands, Spain and Portugal.[2][9] The German edit of the film distributed by Alemannia/Arabella was about 10 minutes shorter than the Italian version, removing some dialogue scenes but keeping the gory scenes intact.[9] In Paris, the film was screened as Frayeurs at the Festival international du film et de science-fiction.[3] At the festival, the film won the "Grand Prix du Public" (The Audience Award).[3]

The film was released in the United Kingdom on May 7, 1982,[2] where it was passed by the BBFC after the drilling scene was cut.[3] In the United States, the film was released on 8 April 1983,[2] and was originally promoted as Twilight of the Dead, which resulted in a cease and desist order from United Film Distribution Company[3] due to the title's similarity to their own film, George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead.[10] This resulted in the distributor, Motion Picture Marketing, withdrawing the film and re-releasing it with a new title, The Gates of Hell.[3]

• City of the Living Dead at IMDb
• City of the Living Dead at AllMovie
• City of the Living Dead at Rotten Tomatoes