 |
| All images courtesy: Cauldron Films |
After its absurd number of home media releases, Cauldron's new set – freshly available in the standard edition counterpart to its previous limited-edition hardbox release – has got to be the (currently at least) definitive edition of the film in terms of picture quality, and its plentiful extras are quite impressive. Double-dipping yet again may be a tough sell for some fans (those who haven't already had this pre-ordered since announcement day, that is), while others may find themselves wondering if it is worth springing for the pricier new edition versus trying to find one of the older Arrow or Scorpion or Blue Underground blu-rays secondhand. So let's take a deep dive into the film itself and Cauldron's new special edition package to see what the score is, in this tag-team review. First I (Chris Jordan) will take a fresh look back at this possibly-greatest of Fulci cult classics, and then Andrew Kotwicki will review Cauldron's new and improved 4K UHD restoration and their wealth of extras.
The Film:
While Zombie and The Beyond often get a bit more love, City of the Living Dead in many ways is the archetypal Lucio Fulci film, stripped down to its most basic components, but with all of those components executed extremely well. It was made just after Zombie, as the first installment in Fulci’s loose “Gates of Hell Trilogy:” a tryptic of narratively separate, but thematically and stylistically linked sibling films, also including The Beyond and House by the Cemetery. The three films are all inspired by the cosmic horror of H.P. Lovecraft, all revolve around gateways to hell and evil grimoires inspired by Lovecraft’s Necronomicon, and all utilize a highly dreamlike style and slippery unreal logic (or lack of logic). They all feel like nightmares captured on film, with the kind of progression of events that feels totally natural in a nightmare, but defies logic and explanation in waking life. And of course they are all brutally violent, featuring Fulci’s trademark outlandish gore effects.
Since the Gates of Hell Trilogy films are all meant to feel more like nightmares than realistic sequences of events, all three of them are fairly unconcerned with plot and internal logic; they are all about atmosphere, dream-logic, and cultivating the right kind of vibe of occult menace. Of the three, this is the most true of City of the Living Dead: it has the barest possible skeleton of a plot, just enough to hang the events of the movie on, which is why I think of it as Fulci horror stripped down to its essentials. It isn’t overly concerned with whether or not it really makes sense in retrospect, because in the moment it doesn’t matter; all that matters is the vibe, and that the nightmare-logic feels convincing and creepy when you’re in the thick of it. It concerns a spooky rural town in New England called Dunwich (yes, the one from Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos stories), where a priest hangs himself in his church’s graveyard, and in doing so inadvertently provides the human sacrifice necessary to open a gate to hell, long rumored to sit beneath the town. A psychic (Fulci regular Catriona MacColl) and a journalist (B-movie stalwart Christopher George) race to close the gate, before it permanently opens at midnight on All Saint’s Day and causes the dead to rise up and end the world. Meanwhile the citizens of Dunwich face all sorts of nightmarish horrors, as the apparitions of the dead priest and his victims appear like hallucinations and cause people to die in horrific ways.
That truly is all the plot Fulci cares to give us: no explanation of WHY the suicide of the priest causes the gates of hell to open, and no explanation of why they are only partly open until All Saint’s Day, when they will blow wide open and swallow the earth; these things are just stated as fact by a psychic at the very beginning, and we are asked to accept it. This isn’t a criticism, it’s just the logic by which this film operates: Fulci asks us to go with the flow or get out. After all, that kind of premise would work with no further explanation in a nightmare. It is a film that plays by its own rules, and even breaks those when it sees fit. The ghouls that appear throughout the film are likewise their own strange beasts: they are corporeal like zombies and can kill people with their bare hands when they want to, but they also appear and disappear like ghosts or spirits, and can curse people to die in horrific ways just by looking at them. The latter is certainly the case in the film’s most notorious gore scene (maybe Fulci’s most notorious gore scene, period), when a woman who has been cursed by the apparition of the dead priest starts crying tears of blood and (literally) vomiting out all of her internal organs. Whether or not you like City of the Living Dead will largely depend on two factors: do you have the stomach for jaw-droppingly gruesome moments like that, and are you willing to go with the flow and accept the movie’s willfully nonsensical nightmare-logic in the name of the Fulci “vibe?” If you have a strong stomach and don’t mind narrative cohesion being largely absent as long as the movie has a vibe that really works, then there is a lot of spooky goodness to be found here.
Another hallmark of Lucio Fulci films that is on display here in top form is how he makes movies that have the content of exploitation films – grisly, gory death, pulp-horror zombies, ghouls, and apparitions, scripts of questionable quality – but that are shot like European art-house films. Like basically all of his cult-favorite horror movies, City of the Living Dead is shot by Fulci’s regular cinematographer Sergio Salvati, who is simply an incredible cinematographer. All of Fulci’s horror films look absolutely stunning, with macabrely gorgeous widescreen shot compositions and long, intricate dolly and crane moves. Salvati and Fulci love doing complicated unbroken crane and dolly shots that go from wide-shot to close-up and back again, and they are always mindful of how to use the frame in the richest possible ways. These films look meticulously planned and storyboarded, in stark contrast to the down-and-dirty zombie violence and B-movie acting happening within the shots. And City of the Living Dead might be one of his best-looking films (Zombie is unquestionably the best-looking, but this might be second place). The town of Dunwich is a gorgeously ethereal and haunting dreamscape, where every exterior oozes menace and horror, with dust and smoke swirling around large but dilapidated houses. Every building looks like it is standing in the middle of an empty void with nothing around it, in the way that they might in a nightmare, where every location just feels wrong somehow. Add in the creepy production design, from Italian horror regular Massimo Antonello Geleng, and this is a wonderfully atmospheric, visually very well-executed piece of grisly gothic horror.
The gore effects by Gino De Rossi and Franco Rufini also frequently steal the show, and are also meticulously crafted, to results that are memorably stomach-churning. The gut-vomiting scene is definitely the grossest and most rightly notorious scene in the film – indeed, it is probably the most disgusting gag in any one of Fulci’s films, and will test the stomachs of even experienced gorehounds – but it is far from the only memorable one. And even beyond the outright gore, the zombie/ghoul makeup effects are very spooky and memorable. Those who expect an outright zombie movie might be a bit disappointed: it really isn’t, and while there are certainly some zombies in it, it is much more of a supernatural/occult film (which is why I actually prefer the old US theatrical/VHS title, The Gates of Hell, over the slightly misleading City of the Living Dead). But the ghouls and the gore that are here are top-notch.
Fulci regular Catriona MacColl, in the first of their three collaborations, has the thankless job of grounding all of this madness in believable human emotion, and she does a very good job. She delivers a genuinely good performance despite having a far from stellar script to work with, and gives our heroine strength and intelligence that makes her a very likeable lead. She is clearly a very good actress, and it’s a shame that the notoriety of her Fulci films during the video nasties era seems to have hurt her career, which never took off like it should have. Christopher George is okay as the male lead, but plays such a smarmy and generally unlikeable character that it’s hard to root for him too much. Carlo De Mejo is a much more likeable male co-star, as the much-suffering psychologist investigating the creepy goings-on in Dunwich. Besides those three, the rest of the cast is mostly just disposable victims for Fulci’s ghouls, but MacColl and De Mejo bring more than enough acting talent to hold things together, and give some human point of reference amid the hallucinatory madness.
City of the Living Dead is not a film for everyone. There definitely are those who will be put off by its defiant lack of internal logic and coherent plotting, and even more who will be put off by its (literal) gut-puking gore, and both of those things are fair. But if you’re game for going along with Lucio Fulci’s hallucinatory, unhinged vision, there is a lot to like in this film. The way it evokes the feeling of watching a nightmare unfold is undeniably powerful and effective, and it is beautifully shot, and incredibly atmospheric. The atmosphere and cinematography are probably my favorite things about the film, and do even more to elevate it to artfully unhinged waking-nightmare status than the scares themselves. While the second film in the Gates of Hell Trilogy, The Beyond, often gets a bit more love and exposure (if only because it has the distinction of having been loudly championed and re-released theatrically by Quentin Tarantino, which solidified its cult-classic status), I give City of the Living Dead a slight edge as the better of the two. I think this is very probably Lucio Fulci’s best film, and certainly the one that most clearly and succinctly lays out his formula and executes it very well. Whether you’re a Fulci fan or just a horror fan who wants to see what all the talk is about, this is one that I highly recommend.
- Christopher S. Jordan
The Cauldron Special Edition Features:
The Video:
When Blue Underground and Arrow Video put out their own 4K restored special editions made from the original 35mm Techniscope camera negatives, the reactions to the transfer were controversial at best. Lensed by Sergio Salvati with Lucio Fulci’s oversight in 1.85:1, the film has always had a soft focus and light fog over the image sometimes appearing as heavy grain in daytime and particularly nighttime scenes. While always present on the original photography, subsequent labels such as Scorpion Releasing and now new boutique label Cauldron Releasing with the first ever 4K UHD disc release of the film have taken efforts to try and reduce the light gray haze overlaid on the footage. Colors in this new remaster seem to be slightly boosted as well though contrast levels and tonality seem to be about the same as previous releases. Grain levels are still high and soft focus photography still blurs despite the higher resolution, but overall yes this is a slight improvement over the still very good Arrow Video release.
The Audio:
Offered in English language as well as Italian dubbed form in monoaural DTS-HD audio, the soundtrack is about the same as it was on prior releases with soft bass levels radiating through Fabio Frizzi’s haunted electronic score that sounds very like his score for Zombie. Most of the audio is production audio save for some post-production editing effects of squishy sounds of worms and maggots. Dialogue comes through reasonably loud and clear though fans of this new 4K release are mostly here for the exquisite new digital mastering of the footage. Overall it sounds good but for the sake of purity it ditches the 2.0 stereo and 5.1 remixes included on the Arrow Video set as well as the Dolby Atmos mix on the Blue Underground which were nice if not unnatural sounding. For Cauldron, its mono all the way!
The Extras:
Here’s where things get complicated due to rights issues and such. With Arrow Video and Blue Underground, each set produced their own set of extras with different interviews and audio commentaries. While the audio commentaries by Troy Howarth, Nathaniel Thompson, actors Catriona MacColl and Giovanni Lombardo Radice have been ported over, there’s a new commentary with film historian Samm Deighan exclusive to this release. While including a fair number of archival interviews with cast and crew members, Cauldron Films shot new exclusive video interviews for this release including but not limited to Massimo Antonello Geleng, a new interview with Giovanni Lombardo Rice and a special-effects mini-documentary with effects artist Gino De Rossi.
There’s also a fair number of q&a sessions with actress Catriona MacColl, composer Fabio Frizzi and even one moderated by none other than Cannibal Holocaust director Ruggero Deodato. Each of the newly filmed Cauldron exclusive interviews run about 45 minutes to an hour and include a fair number of amusing anecdotes about the gruff and ill tempered but dedicated personality of Lucio Fulci. Sort of going across the board with the old saying “everything you’ve heard is true”, the cast and crew seem delighted to have worked with Fulci while also remarking on the difficulties of working for such a demanding provocateur.
While sadly losing a number of the exclusive extras on the Arrow set which include several newly conducted interviews with the cast and crew including but not limited to cinematographer Sergio Salvati, the newly filmed exclusive Italian spoken extras shot by Cauldron Films and the gorgeous new 4K UHD transfer more than make up for their absences. Region free completists keen on all the extras possible are inclined to hang onto their different release editions rather than replace them but even casual fans who just want to upgrade will still have plenty of new supplemental material to chew on here.
- Andrew Kotwicki
Score for the film:
.png)
Score for the disc:
.png)
Share this review! The gates of hell probably won't open if you don't, but why risk it?