Nightmare City (1980)

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Highly Overrated But Still Good

best movie i've ever seen.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Have you ever paused a movie and yelled aloud, "I LOVE THIS MOVIE!" and you're all alone in the room? If you've answered in the affirmative, you understand the pure joy that I felt while watching this movie.Dean Miller, an American reporter, is waiting to interview a nuclear scientist when a military plane lands and mutated men emerge, killing everyone in their path. Even the worst wounds only slow them down as they hack their way through their victims, pausing to drink the blood of those they kill.General Murchison (Mel Ferrer, The Visitor) shuts down any news stories about the attack. Meanwhile, the city is overrun with the killers and their victims, who soon join their ranks. Miller saves his wife at the hospital where she works as the city's power is shut down.It turns out that they're fighting humans who have been contaminated by a leak in the nuclear power plant (that's why the scientist was meeting with Miller in the beginning) and now they have strength, speed and reflexes beyond the range of normal humans. However, because they can't regenerate red blood cells, they must consume blood. There's only one way to kill them, which will be familiar to zombie movie fans: shoot them in the head.No one is safe - the general is looking for his daughter and her husband, but by the time they are discovered, they are infected and must be killed. And Major Holmes warns his artist wife to stay in the house when two infected men break in and kill her friend and almost murder her. By the time he gets to the house to save her she's been infected and he must kill his wife.That's the theme of this movie - everyone gets turned into something horrible, even a priest at the church where Miller and Anna try to hide. Finally, they make a last stand in an amusement park, using submachine guns and grenades to keep the attacking horde at bay. Major Holmes tries to save them, but Anna can't hold the rope and falls to her death. This being an Italian movie, we see every moment of her demise.Miller then wakes up. It was all a dream, except he goes back to the airport and the movie starts all over again!Known as City of the Walking Dead in the U.S., this is a fast-moving, down and dirty gore packed film. Directed by Umberto Lenzi (Eaten Alive!, Cannibal Ferox), this film feels like it's out of control from the first scene. Once that plane opens and the mutated fiends emerge, it's an orgy of heads being opened up, breasts being eaten, gunshots galore and eyes being ripped from their sockets. In short, this is. a true crowd pleaser. How can you not love a movie where a studio full of disco dancers are mauled and murdered by an army of mutated killers?

OK, so the zombies look ridiculous and the film is not scary in the least. But what you have is a very well-directed action-thriller with plenty of blood, beautiful women and locations and a fast plot.Zombies are on the loose in Italy and a couple do their best to survive and stop the epidemic. I was reminded of Brad Pitt's World War Z a bit. Its a good movie even if its not a real zombie movie.Nowhere near as interesting as the films of Lucio Fulci but a definite watch for fans of low budget Italian action.

Of the countless Italian-produced zombie movies that came out in the late 1970's and 1980's, many of them can easily be labelled the worst of the lot. Nightmare City, a silly, gun-and-knife-wielding zombie attack movie directed by hack Umberto Lenzi, is certainly up (or down) there. With it's bland, beardy lead, nonsensical story, lazy plot devices and extremely dodgy make-up, Nightmare City is very bad indeed. But it just manages to squeeze a toe hair over the so-bad-it's-still-bad-but- bearable line and raises a few titters with it's ludicrous execution, and can also boast that it's not quite as bad as Zombie Creeping Flesh (1980).'American' news reporter Dean Miller (Hugo Stiglitz) travels to the airport to await the arrival of a scientist, whom he is to interview following a recent nuclear accident. When the plane arrives, it is surrounded by the military when no-one responds or opens the door. After a brief stand-off, the plane opens it's doors and dozens of bloodthirsty zombies pile out and attack the soldiers with guns, knives, bats and teeth. Eager to report the outbreak, Miller is halted by General Murchison (Mel Ferrer), who wants to hush the incident to save face. When his television station is attacked during the filming of some disco aerobics programme, Miller must find his wife and escape to the countryside.Looking between a mixture of an out-of-date potato and a used teabag, the zombies here are much more human than your traditional Romero zombies, using weapons, moving at pace, and even clearly taking some sadistic pleasure when slitting a throat and carving a woman's breast off. As the film plods on, at a breakneck pace that somehow still manages to be boring, the make-up department seem to lose interest in the 'new' zombies and simply smear their faces with some dirt. But if Lenzi deserves credit for something, it's in keeping the violence inventive. There's eye gouging, stabbings, exploding heads and blood- drinking, and the fact that the gore looks absolutely crap makes it all the more fun.The other familiar Lenzi traits are there, recognisable from his large collection of bizarre giallo such as Seven Blood-Stained Orchids (1972), Spasmo (1974), Eyeball (1975), and Cannibal Ferox (1981). This means lots of boobs. Every female attacked by the zombies seem to have their tops torn off. Didn't nurses wear bra's back then? We also the obligatory wrinkly has-been actor (Francisco Rabal - who made three films with Luis Bunuel) fondling a beautiful European model scene. It's quite despicable film-making if taking seriously, which you simply can't, you can only try and enjoy this for what it is, a film designed to make money by spilling some blood and showing some skin. But even that is hard, as when the film finishes with a 'twist', you feel like you've had 90 minutes of your life snatched away from you in some cruel joke. Pure dread, but it's earned an extra star through sheer audacity.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

A fun horror movie from director Umberto Lenzi ("Eaten Alive!", "Cannibal Ferox"), "Nightmare City", a.k.a. "City of the Walking Dead", doesn't have a lot of story, it just has a lot of lively, gory mayhem for those Italian horror fans looking for some undemanding thrills.The set up is simple enough: sadistic fiends, contaminated due to atomic radiation, run amok in a city, brutally slaughtering some victims and contaminating others. Even if not technically zombies, they do exhibit a certain tenacity (and CAN be killed by shots or blows to the head) and also are vampire like in that they enjoy drinking the blood of victims. They don't just use their bare hands, either, still being able to employ various lethal weapons. The army is content not to let too many details get out, while the body count rises, and a reporter (Hugo Stiglitz) and his doctor wife (Laura Trotter) try to make a trek to safety.A nice amount of cheese (for one thing, one major set piece has the fiends cause havoc during the taping of a TV dance show) adds to the entertainment value, as does the music score by Stelvio Cipriani and the kind of gore we as fans come to expect from this sort of thing, and pleasurable doses of female skin.Now, some viewers can take issue with the way the movie ends, but personally I don't feel it really hurts the movie at all, even if it has the air of familiarity. Lenzi keeps the action flowing for much of the running time, only slowing down somewhat for an interlude with our two main characters as they attempt to take a breather at a remote location.The acting may not be exactly Oscar calibre stuff, but it gets the job done, with Mexican star Stiglitz definitely creating a real take-charge kind of guy, and entertaining performances by Francisco Rabal and special guest star Mel Ferrer as two of the Army guys. Other cast members include Eduardo Fajardo ("Django", "Lisa and the Devil") and Stefania D'Amario ("Zombi 2"). The ladies here sure provide fine eye candy.Mostly, this movie is enjoyable for seeing our antagonists on the attack, no matter what they're doing, and "Nightmare City" amounts to 92 solid minutes of action, gore and sexiness that's never ever boring. It's highly recommended to lovers of Italian genre cinema.Seven out of 10.