City of the Living Dead
1980 Dir. Lucio Fulci The suicide of a priest in the small town of Dunwich, New England, mysteriously results in the opening of the gates of hell. As fate would have it, it falls upon a reporter, a psychic, a psychiatrist and his patient, to team up and find a way to close the portal before All Saints Day, when the dead will rise and feed upon the living. A hugely influential and much-admired work of horror cinema, City Of The Living Dead , taken purely as a stand-alone film, is a must-see horror classic and proves one of the most compelling and disturbing entries in Fulci’s undead trilogy. A languid and creepy opening scene sets the tone and mood for the remainder of the film as a priest makes his way slowly through a moody cemetery and takes his own life – his image will haunt the rest of the film, appearing to various people and driving them insane. City of the Living Dead possesses an uneasy, positively queasy atmosphere and the director not only creates a startling and high...