Starring: Christopher George, Catriona MacColl, Carlo De Mejo, Fabrizio Jovine, Janet Agren

Directed by: Lucio Fulci    Written By: Lucio Fulci and Dardano Sacchetti

The Story: I don't get the ending of this movie. I'm confused. But I don't understand the beginning either. Full circle.

Father Thomas, a priest in the town of Dunwich, Massachusetts, hangs himself for no apparent reason. He just throws a noose over a tree limb, sticks his neck in it and has his own necktie party. Somehow this act is the beginning of the way to open the Gates of Hell. Why a priest of all people would want to do that is beyond me, and apparently beyond Fulci's ability to tell us. He just doesn't, unless there's some explanation that found its way to the cutting room floor.

Meanwhile in New York City, Medium Mary Woodward and Madame Teresa are holding séance. Somehow Mary has visions of Fr. Thomas killing himself, gets glimpses of a tombstone saying some mumbo-jumbo about Dunwich and promptly dies of fright. The police, soon on the scene try really hard to blame her death on drug use and ignore Madame Teresa's warning of some kind of prophecy in the Book of Enoch. Don't get your hopes up...the Book of Enoch might as well be a Curious George book since we don't get any real info on what the devil is going on. The cops don't care much either....flames appear in mid-air right in the room (why? I dunno) and they think its some kind of parlor trick.

Enough with the cops, though. Next we meet newspaper reporter Peter Bell (Christopher George). Sniffing a story Bell is turned away by the police at Mary's house and goes to the cemetery next to learn more about her. I guess he was too late since the funeral is over and the surly gravediggers are lowering her coffin into the ground. After the surly gravediggers leave Bell hears screams coming from within the coffin. Grabbing a handy pickaxe, Bell busts open the coffin (and almost busts open Mary's noggin) freeing the now alive and well Mary. Uh....first of all Bell has a knack for finding tools that are just there. Later on in the movie he finds a crowbar in a friggin' crypt...just when he needs it. Secondly....don't they embalm bodies in New York City? I guess I wasn't supposed to think about that. Bell takes Mary to Teresa, who tells them that they must go to Dunwich and stop the Gates of Hell from opening. Somehow Fr. Thomas' death has...well, I guess already opened 'em. (how? I dunno.) All Saints Day is a few days away and if the Gates to Hell are still open then, they'll stay open and the dead will rise. Gee, thanks, Teresa. Now how about telling us how this is all possible. Then tell me why, if you know this horrible thing is taking place, are you sending a newspaper reporter and a girl that just rose from the grave herself to fix it? (I dunno)

Bell and Mary head off to find Dunwich, which apparently Rand-McNally never heard of since its not on the map. Even though the movie says its built on the ruins of Salem, Massachusetts. So I guess Salem isn't on the map, either. Maybe I was dreaming ten years ago when I visited the place. The population of Dunwich are supposed to be descendents of the Salem Witch burners of olden days. I thought they hung the witches in Salem. Oh, well, lets keep moving. In Dunwich we meet Jerry, the town shrink, his assistant Emily and his one patient, Sandra. They're all a little concerned about local young troublemaker, Bob. Bob is off somewhere in an abandoned house where he finds a sex doll (in an abandoned house? Now that's scary!) and a dead body! (So much for whackin' off, huh, Bob?) This really scares the crap out of Bob, so he doesn't go to the police...he instead goes to some other abandoned place curls up into a ball and cries. I'd like to say help is on the way, but Bell and Mary have yet to develop a sense of urgency....they seem to be taking their own sweet time in saving the world.

This is more of a ghostly demon type movie than a zombie movie. The dead do walk...but they also vanish into thin air only to reappear behind you. Fr. Thomas appears to two teenagers parked in a lonely spot for a little loving....where he makes the girl's eyes bleed, and then she pukes up her intestines! Yuck! Amazingly in the extras on the DVD I read that the actress really put sheep's intestines in her mouth to show this effect. I hope they paid her well.....that's pretty icky. She then yanks her boyfriend's brains out of the back of his head. Emily, concerned for Bob, finds him cowering. He runs away from her leaving her for the ghostly Fr. Thomas to arrive and rub dirt and worms in her face...which I guess, scares her to death....literally. With these weird things going on, locals start blaming Bob. Being the troublemaker of the town he's an obvious target....sort of. Even though there's no evidence of bob doing anything wrong the police chief swears Bob will fry these crimes. Bob himself seems to be a favorite target for Fr. Thomas. He appears in front of him later on for no other purpose than to scare him some more.

A recently dead woman somehow appears in Sandra's home, prompting her to call Jerry in a fright. When he arrives and sees this he knows something is not right in Dunwich. Especially when the walls start bleeding. He goes to the cemetery just in time to meet Bell and Mary who've just arrived and are looking for Fr. Thomas' grave. I'm going to jump ahead a bit.....Thomas' crypt is in the cemetery. They need to find it to shut the Gates of Hell. Why then do these characters go to Jerry's office to discuss the fact that the Gates of hell are open? They're all in the f***ing cemetery! Go do it now, why wait for night? Especially when midnight is the beginning of all Saint's Day! Of course if they just went on and did what they had to do we'd miss the windstorm of maggots flying into the window, and the parts where little boy John-John gets scared by Emily's dead corpse ripping the brains out of Sandra's head.

Eventually (At last) Bell, Mary and Jerry find the Thomas Family crypt and enter it. They head through the obligatory creepy passageway with lots of rotted corpse all over the place. (This is a big ass family tomb! Geez, Fr.. Thomas must have had a freaking huge family!) The now Corpsified Sandra appears and rips Bell's head open. Jerry, moving as slowly as possible and with the urgency of a man picking his toenails, rams a steel rod into Sandra, killing her again. I'll tell ya, that kind of nullified the scariness of the zombie-demons for me. Jerry didn't even make it look like it was hard to do. Hell, when Fr. Thomas appears before them he takes a wooden cross that was just lying around and rams it into the evil priest, causing him to burst into flames along with the other animated dead. They all burn up and disappear.

Jerry and Mary emerge from the crypt for the confusing ending. The police and little john-John arrive. The boy sees them and runs towards them smiling. Mary starts screaming "No! No!" and the movie ends. What the flyin' cow poopoo does that mean? I was confused as hell by that and I still am. I was so put off by it I searched for an explanation online. The IMDb led me to Dr. Freex and his reader comment page about it, but even those answers don't satisfy me.

Truth be told, I thought the movie had some pretty good moments. The fact that the dead weren't just a bunch of shambling corpses, but supernatural ghosty-demony-things was a nice touch. When they just appeared and disappeared I thought that was unnerving. The gore effects were good too. I watch a lot of movies....which any reader of this site knows, already...and I can watch a fair amount of sick-ass sh!t on the screen without flinching. But this movie had a few bits that put me off of my feed for awhile. The drill going through Bob's head didn't phase me too much, but the maggot storm...ugh. I hate maggots. I was thinking of eating some shrimp fried rice when I saw that. Instead I opted for bowl of soup. Maggots are disgusting! also when the girl throws up her innards....yep, I think I'll be doing without dinner tonight.

The late Christopher George was Bell. Catriona MacColl was Mary, and she's in a lot of Italian horror flicks, like the Seven Doors of Death. Lucio Fulci himself had the uncredited part of Dr. Joe Thompson, the pathologist. And you know what....here's special mention to Daniela Doria...the actress that put sheep entrails in her mouth in order to puke up guts. Wherever you are, Ms. Doria, you've earned the respect of the Inferno...and put me off of red meat for a good damned long time.

Best Lines: "You're a comic book version, detective." Madame Teresa to the NYC cop that swears they must have been doing drugs during the séance.

 Are you kidding me?

1.) You gotta love it. You also gotta expect it. The detective doesn't believe that Mary died of fright during a séance, he insists that the other séance member were up to no good and on drugs. Wouldn't an autopsy reveal what she died of? Besides, if there aren't any drugs present why ask the supposed culprits if they flushed it down the toilet? If they did why the f*** would they tell you? They supposedly went to the trouble to hide it, so you can't very well expect them to just admit that they committed a crime. (which they didn't, but obviously this guy ain't buyin' it.). I especially like the flames appearing out of nowhere and the detective still insisting that nothing paranormal is behind it. I don't believe in dragons but if one parked its rear end in my backyard I think I'd be able to accept the fact that I was wrong.

2.) Whazzup wid dis? In Dunwich, two men and the bar talking. A mirror shatters for no reason. The two men are spooked, but the bartender says it was freak accident, maybe a truck passing by the broke the mirror. (Even though one of the men says "after Father Thomas died weird things have been going on."). Well, the bartender calms their nerves with the offer of free ice cold beers. (Hey ya got my vote, buddy!) Then the brick wall cracks for no reason. I mean a big crack, too. The two men are really spooked now and leave. But the bartender is incredulous. "What about the beers?" he says to them as they leave. Dude, at best your bar is structural unstable....at worse...well, you'd better call Ghostbusters.

3.) Hey...I thought it was SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) for an autopsy to be performed when a dead body is found. And I thought it was SOP to remove certain organs, or at least cut the stiff open to see what killed them. I also thought it was standard to fill the body with embalming fluid. How then, can Mary have been buried alive? If she didn't die of fright from the séance wouldn't the autopsy either prove that she wasn't dead or finish her for good when the mortician started pumpin' her full of formaldehyde?

4.) Now I know you're kidding me...Bell rescues Mary from being buried alive and where does he take her, the remarkably resurrected girl? To the creepy old Medium lady! Oh, Yeah, Right! A newspaper reporter? Isn't this, like, what one call a BIG SCOOP!? And wouldn't a doctor be a more appropriate place to take her? You'd think Mary would demand to see a doctor since she was pronounced dead and buried alive. (Not to mention a psychiatrist...you can't tell me that experience wouldn't seriously F*** somebody's mind up.)

5.) I can understand Jerry, as a professional psychiatrist, trying to remain calm and not frighten Sandra and more than necessary. But, Funk Dat. When dead bodies start wandering intro a house and walls start bleeding its time for a controlled burst of panic. Panic can be good....if you use it to get the hell away from whatever is scaring the living snot out of you!

6.) Mr. Ross is real mean son of a bitch. I could understand him beating the living daylights out of Bob, but he purposely runs a drill through his head! How do you explain that to the cops? No matter how you slice it, its still going to look like murder. You can't just tell the police that Bob broke into your house and slipped and fell on a drill that went clean through both sides of his head.

7.) Hahaha! I love the police bulletin we get to hear on the radio. There's a state off emergency in Dunwich and under no circumstances is anyone to try and reach the state turnpike. With the dead walking? Storms of maggots blowing around the town? By the time I heard that bulletin I'd have already been at the tollbooth. Scratch that, by the time I heard it I'd have been on the turnpike alright....the turnpike in Maryland and still heading south! (most likely with a trail of State Troopers trying to catch up with my constant speed of 120 MPH.)

Nudity and Sex: None

Huh?:

I was going to let it slide, but funk dat....Bell goes to the cemetery to look at Mary's grave and sees two gravediggers by an open grave. One of them says "What's the matter? Never seen a body unearthed before?". That's a stupid question! How many people have actually seen a body unearthed before? Can anyone even name a friend that has? I'm betting not a lot of people can. When Bell actually gets to Mary's tombstone the gravediggers ask him what he's still doing there. Geezus, buddy, its none of your frickin' business. How do you know Bell isn't a relative of the deceased? If I were Bell I'd lie to make him feel like sh!t and say "Its my sister! *sob* I miss her so much!". Lets see what his smart ass would say after that.

I never knew that gravediggers were such a surly bunch.

Note to Self: If I ever rescue a person from being buried alive, don't try to open the coffin with a pickaxe. Bell was just really damned lucky it didn't crack her skull open....three times.

Sometimes it is the little things that count. the trip to Dunwich from New York must have taken some time for Bell and Mary....how much time isn't really told, but lets say more than a day (since they get lost and have to ask a priest in another town for directions.) the thing that I thought was cool was that Bell has a little stubble on him, so he hasn't shaved for at least a day. Nice....it gives that "Man, I've been the road for awhile" look. Its not much, but even a small dose of reality is good. Especially in a movie where dead people walk.

This movie says that the town of Dunwich was built on the ruins of the original Salem. I've been to Salem....what'd they do, move the town brick by brick to a new location? It didn't look like a ruin to me.

Good thing that crowbar was just layin' around inside of the Thomas family tomb.

The Final Judgment: Even with the whacked out ending and the Non-explanation of how, what or why, the City of the Living Dead is worth a look see for horror fans. The Infernal Court would have given it four devil heads if they could have understood Fr. Thomas' motives.....oh well, three devil heads will suffice. Look for it next time you hit the Horror Section, my droogies.