City of the Living Dead

Directed by Lucio Fulci, City of the Living Dead details the chaos and horror that ensues after the gates of hell are opened by a suicidal priest. It’s immediately apparent that City of the Living Dead has few, if any, elements designed to capture (and sustain) the viewer’s attention, as filmmaker Fulci delivers an amateurish and entirely momentum-free endeavor that rarely makes sense and suffers from a complete absence of stirring (or even competent) performances. And although the picture’s been peppered with an assortment of appreciatively brutal gore sequences, including an absolutely spectacular interlude in which a character is impaled on a drilling lathe, City of the Living Dead is, for the most part, dominated by long, excruciatingly padded-out stretches that couldn’t possibly be less interesting and more tedious. The final straw comes with an absolutely endless climax that’s capped off with a laughably nonsensical conclusion, with the end result a typically inept Fulci effort that would hardly be worth mentioning if not for the admittedly strong special effects.

* out of ****