Paura nella Città dei Morti Viventi (A.K.A. City of the Living Dead) (1980)

City of the Living Dead is Lucio Fulci's first film in the ''Gates of Hell'' trilogy. And once again he manages to create a very, very entertaining movie. 

In the small New England town of Dunwich, a priest commits suicide by hanging himself in the church cemetery which somehow opens the gates of hell allowing the dead to rise. Peter, a New York City reporter, teams up with a young psychic, named Mary, to travel to the town where they team up with another couple, psychiatrist Jerry and patient Sandra, to find a way to close the gates before All Saints Day or the dead all over the world will rise up and kill the living.

City of the Living Dead is far from an average zombie flick. In fact, zombies are not the main thing in this movie. Certainly not the first +- 30 minutes. Fulci focuses more on the supernatural in this movie, and it turns out to create a very cool one.

The cast is fun. Carlo De Mejo does a decent job, although I would have liked a little bit more facial expression in the last scene. Christopher George is cool, Giovanni Lombardo Radice is great as always as the creepy guy and Fulci's favorite scream queen Katriona MacColl has a leading role again as well. Also look out for small role of Perry Pirkanen, who around that same time had been viciously killing a turtle in the jungle in front of the cameras of Cannibal Holocaust. 

City of the Living Dead starts fairly slowly. The music and atmosphere are great though so you will definitely be entertained even though not a whole lot is happening. When Fulci decides to up the tempo we mainly get to see some amazing gore. The ''drill scene'' and the ''puking guts scene'' are classic gore scenes in this genre. Especially the latter one is downright insane. 

The ending scene in the tomb is very atmospheric but kinda loses its power due to the lack of facial expression of Carlo De Mejo, who continually just stares in front of him like he's bored. The evenual ending isn't really clear to me either. I think Fulci was trying to get the audience to create their own ending in their head but in my opinion this attempt fails miserably.

City of the Living Dead is another one of Fulci's classics that doesn't disappoint. The atmosphere is great, the music is creepy and the gore is simply amazing. The perfect formula for a great Fulci movie, though somehow it still doesn't match up against the likes of The Beyond (1981) and Zombi 2 (1979).

Fun Fact (Source: IMDB)

For Daniela Doria's death scene, in which her character vomits up her internal organs, the actress swallowed and regurgitated a plate of tripe. In closeups a fake head was used, which contained a pump that spewed the organs out more forcefully.