It's February and thanks to a broken heating system I'm sitting here in the freezing cold trying to wear all my clothes at once. So it's time to indulge myself with another of my guilty pleasure films: Nightmare City (also known as City of the Living Dead - not to be confused with the Lucio Fulci film of the same name - and the much better title Invasion of the Atomic Zombies).
Nightmare City hits the ground running as we're barely 10 minutes in when a plane lands and disgorges a few dozen crusty-faced zombies, armed with knives, cleavers and anything else they can get their hands on, who proceed to massacre and drink the blood of the people waiting to greet them. Only two men get away, one of them being our protagonist, a TV journalist named Dean Miller. Understandably he wants to get to reporting this big news story as quickly as possible, but his boss at the TV station blocks him on orders from the military "to avoid causing a panic". Instead, they continue with their scheduled programming, a kind of Spanish Pan's People show called It's All Music!... which the zombies promptly invade live and slaughter everyone, so there goes not causing a panic (the DVD box for my copy of this film actually advertises this particular part of the film by touting "gunfire, gore and gratuitous aerobics", which probably makes it the only film other than Aerobicide to be able to say that). So instead Dean goes to rescue his wife from the hospital she works at, which is also being besieged by the zombies. Oh, and there's also a sub-plot involving the wife of one of the military leaders being menaced by some zombies at their home, and the daughter of another general and her husband who decide that, national panic or no national panic, they're still going on that camper van holiday.
As you might have guessed, there's a lot going on in this film. Director Umberto Lenzi set out to make a zombie film that wasn't just another rip-off of Romero's classic, and it's safe to say he succeeded. At the very least the zombies are nothing like the classic "Romero" zombie - they've come about because of a radioactive spill, they can run, use weapons and make plans (even managing to cut the power to the city at one point in a siege attack) and they need to drink blood rather than just chow down on humans, which I suppose technically makes them vampires but who's counting. They also have a pretty original look... sometimes. You see, sometimes the zombies have their faces covered with crusty lumps and sores, like they've caught a serious STD from a barnacle, and yet other times they just look like they've had a light dusting of talcum powder before being sent out on set. These inconsistent special effects follow through to the gore effects as well, as sometimes people's heads explode in glorious technicolour and sometimes a slashed throat bleeds like a paper cut. I'm not the biggest gore fan in the world by any means, but I do like some consistency in the effects... There are some stand-out gore moments, however; it's an Italian zombie film, so of course someone gets an eye gouged out and someone else gets a breast cut off, which are what probably got it on the DPP's Section 3 list for a while.
I'm being unfair though. The wild swings in everything, from tone to quality to dubbing translation, are all part of what makes this film so enjoyable to watch. It's just fast, frenetic fun, with only just one niggle at the end that I feel compelled to discuss (so, obviously, spoiler warning if you ever plan to see this film):
At the very end, when the cast has been reduced to about two and there are crusty running zombies everywhere... the movie suddenly has our protagonist Dean Miller wake up. It was all a dream! Or was it, as he promptly heads out to the airport where it all began in the first place. "AND THE NIGHTMARE BECOMES REALITY..." an end caption ominously informs us.
No. Oh Nightmare City, no. The "it was all a dream... or was it?!" ending is one of the fastest ways to piss off and alienate your audience, second only to abruptly killing off a likable protagonist in a film that's been relatively upbeat until that point. We root for these characters, we (somehow, in some cases) grow to like them, we experience a radioactive zombie apocalypse through them. The "just a dream!" ending is a cop-out, a cheating ending that robs us of closure, and it tarnishes an otherwise very enjoyable film. Take my advice and just watch till the helicopter bit (you'll know when) and then consider the film over then; it works so much better that way.
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