ben hibburd Nightmare City Is an Italian Infected 'Zombie' film directed by Umberto Lanzi. It sees reporter Dean Miller(Hugo Stiglitz) waiting on an airport runway ready to conduct an Interview with a nuclear professor. As the professor's plane arrives It does so under strange circumstances, there's nobody responding on the radio, and when It lands there's no response from anyone In the cockpit. When the plane doors open a horde(Including the professor) of Infected, 'zombies' come rushing out maiming and killing the surrounding police and soldiers stationed next to the plane. This blistering start, all occurs within the first ten minutes of the film. From this point on, the film springs Into action and becomes a non-stop quest for survival, as Miller also he tries to locate his wife Anna(Laura Trotter), a nurse at a city hospital that Is one of the main focal points of attack form the Infected(who need plasma to sustain them).The film no doubt has Issues that are Inherent with the era, the majority of the acting(especially the extras) Is pretty terrible, also the make-up effects look rubbish on the Infected, It's understandable that these Issues can be off putting to a casual viewer. However If problems like these(especially from Italian genre films) don't bother you, then there Is a-lot of fun to be had with this film. Despite the low budget the film Is perfectly paced, and Lenzi does a brilliant job with the scope of this film, you really do believe that the whole city Is under siege. There are scenes that have hundreds of extras scattered through-out fields and roaming urban areas, shot via a helicopter swoops, that do a brilliant job of Immersing the viewer.The score which has similar beat to John Carpenter's The Thing Is brilliant, It also has an effective catchy synth riff that Is synonymous to It's era, and genre. As I stated earlier this film kicks off with a bang, and It never lets up, until It's thrilling climax at a theme park. This Is a film that has clearly Influenced others, most notably the finale from Zombieland which Is taken from this film. Even Tarantino has stated this film was his main Influence for his Planet Terror project. It was also the first notable film to feature 'fast running' Zombies.The only downside I had with this film, and It's a major one, was It's final five minutes. The film decide to do a complete turnabout, and go another direction, which essentially made the previous eighty-five minutes, completely and utterly Irrelevant, It felt Incredibly cheap and I can understand why It would anger off a-lot of viewers(me Included).This was another Arrow Video film that I blind brought. For the most part I had a great time with this film, It's unfortunate the ending left a bitter taste In my mouth. The Arrow Blu-ray came with two restorations of the film, due to the severe chemical damage on the original negative print. Despite the Irreversible set-back, they did a phenomenal job restoring and salvaging this cult classic.

Giallo Fanatic I thought this movie would be one of those movies with a seriously bad plot. The kind of movie whose plot is so bad it has to compensate for it by having blood, guts and gore. But I was wrong, mostly. The movie started with a journalist at the Airport, witnessing a bunched of irradiated ghouls killing police in a gory and cannibalistic way. The journalist then gets away and tries to report it. Some mindless entertainment was being broadcast with some dancers and one of the dancers complained about being interrupted. He started his broadcast but his boss cut him off and said no because a general told him not to. Sounds familiar with what is happening today? People watching mindless entertainment whilst the authorities only let the media report what they want the public to know? So the script and plot isn't completely mindless, I would even say it has relevance to us today. It even has thoughts on science, technology and human nature. Religion too. So it has an above average plot and script.Umberto Lenzi as expected crafts his movie with professionalism. So the acting and directing is also above average. It has some pretty decent tension too, not all directors are good at building tension. I have not seen many movies of Umberto Lenzi, but so far he has made an impression on me and I have a serious interest in his movies. That is the main reason for why I have watched this movie, although I wasn't expecting it to be any impressive. But it is, the plot moves along freshly, it has atmosphere, the music is interesting, the plot is interesting, you care about the characters (well, at least I did) and it has an air of freshness in it. Not original (it has scenes that were like taken straight out of 'Dawn of the Dead' and 'Day of the Dead'), but still worth watching with an interesting twist at the end. By the way, this must be where Fallout has taken its inspiration for the Ghouls. Irradiated humans turned into monsters roaming and killing. After all, the Fallout games take inspiration from Sci-Fi, Horror and retro movies.But still, the plot is still a little absurd. It has ghouls running around sucking the blood out of humans like some vampires. Also the contamination spread pretty damn quickly. It was as if the Ghouls knew what they were doing. Like as if everything was planned from the beginning. Even if it was, the chances would not have been very high. But I am suspending disbelief and approve of this movie. In fact I will say that I like this movie. I am looking forward to watch more of Umberto Lenzi's movies P.S. Italian directors love eyes. Especially for gouging.8/10

bournemouthbear Nightmare City (1980)When director Umberto Lenzi was approached to helm Nightmare City he was presented with an original script for a short film about zombies. Lenzi balked at the idea feeling that the material should be longer and, more importantly for him, not about zombies. He considered that George A. Romero had covered zombies fully by then with both his original Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead and there was little more he could add. Instead Lenzi adapted the script using the Seveso incident of July 1976 fine-tuning it into a film that attacks the military and the effects of chemicals on the environment. What he has actually made is a pure exploitation film. There is a plot of sorts but don't dwell on it because no one involved in the writing of this film did. It's frankly absurd. Local television news reporter Dean Miller (Hugo Stiglitz) arrives at an airport with his cameraman. They are there to cover the arrival of famous doctor Professor Hagenbeck. Quite how they know the scientist is arriving there is never made clear as no one else at the airport is aware of the plane arriving and are treating it with the highest level of suspicion. Just as well really as when the plane's doors open out pop a tonne of blood- thirsty creatures who waste no time chowing down on the soldiers.Rather oddly the infected fail to notice Dean and his cameraman - and rather conveniently too as the plot needs Dean to get the word out and warn the public - not that anyone will listen of course. It appears that the plane that Dean saw spill out its deadly formerly-human cargo had been exposed to radiation. It's a form of radiation that doesn't seem to affect the creatures too adversely, they can still run and chase potential victims. That's hardly in keeping with the known effects from radiation exposure. Instead they just get a little crusty in the facial make-up department (it looks awful) and drink blood from the uninfected.Dean has no joy in trying to broadcast an urgent transmission. He is stopped by the military who would rather that the public not be panicked (no, we'll just have them killed by the radiation crazies that we cannot contain instead, makes perfect sense). The military, led by General Murchison (Mel Ferrer) do nothing except take phone calls and ponteficate whereas Dean is more proactive. He is constantly trying to get hold of his wife Dr. Anna Miller (Laura Trotter) but she's having none of his nonsense, silly cow. However once she's onboard and looking to escape from the nameless city she does nothing but scream and expect her wooden hubby to rescue her when all she has to do is move.Lenzi claims that his film heavily influenced director Danny Boyle's later 28 Days Later, with it's running infected, as well as some of Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror. And like Danny Boyle Lenzi refutes that his film is a zombie film and quite rightly too. Lenzi sees his film as anti-military and that his ghouls are infected by radiation sickness and therefore not zombies. His 'infected' have an awful habit of ripping off the clothes from a female victim, to reveal their boobies, rather than simply kill them as they do the men that fall victim to them. I found this distasteful. No really I did. Pure misogyny at it's ugliest!Nightmare City (also known as Incubo Sulla Città Contaminate and City of the Walking Dead) is not a particularly good film but it IS a fun watch, aside from the wanton misogyny. It moves at such a pace that you can easily overlook it's numerous shortcomings. It is what one would call a 'guilty pleasure' - it's trash but you can't help but warm to it. Make- up artist Tom Savini is remaking Nightmare City and supervising the film's special make-up effects too. It is due for release in 2016. Here's hoping it plays better than his misguided Night of the Living Dead remake.Check out more of my reviews at www.mybloodyreviews.com

callanvass Nightmare City is a low budget Zombie film done right! It knows what it is, and doesn't try to be anything but cheesy and provocative entertainment. At this juncture, many zombie films were being made; some of the stupid, some of them cheesy fun. Umberto Lenzi decided to add a little bit of a twist to his project. He made the zombies fast and relentless. This would be brought up again in the remake of Dawn of The Dead, but it was unheard of at this juncture, and I found it to be a bit refreshing in ways. The makeup is extremely cheap. The Zombies aren't all that intimidating, but all I cared about was the fun factor, and this has plenty of that. Hell. This movie takes a huge fad of the 80's (Aerobics) and we get a gore filled scene during an aerobics session! It wasn't afraid to be daring or different that's for sure. I have mixed feelings about the ending. All I'll say is the ending takes place at a fair of sorts. It was really quite original and suspenseful (Seriously) my jaw dropped at some of the creative violence, and one particular scene stuck with me. Then…something happened that took it all away. I won't reveal what it is, but I was a bit bummed out by what happened. You may feel differently, but you may see what I'm talking about. I was quite disappointed with it, despite that Umberto Lenzi redeemed himself a bit at the very end. Everyone is dubbed, and there are only two performances worth mentioning. Hugo Stiglitz (Dean Miller) Makes for a great reluctant hero. He had some crappy dubbing, but he was pretty cool, and also likable. Laura Trotter is a bit whiny as the wife, but she was fairly decent for the most part. Before I forget, gore hounds will rejoice at this movie. It's pretty violentFinal Thoughts: Aside from mixed feelings in the finale, I really dug this movie. I had a lot of fun with it for what it was. The action is constant, and I dug Lenzi's vision with this one. If you're looking for a entertaining Zombie film that comes from the 80's, check this one out!6.5/10