I've seen a lot of bad movies, particularly in the horror genre, but City Of The Living Dead just may be the worst horror movie ever made. How anyone can consider this the apex of Lucio Fulci's career is beyond me, but it just shows that one man's trash is another man's treasure.
For starters, this movie is sloppily edited (which seems to be a problem with most of Fulci's movies). Bad music cutoffs, random shots of scenery, and of course the ever-present horrible voice dubbing. I haven't checked if the same editor has worked on most of Fulci's films, but I'll bet it was the same guy making the same bad cuts over and over again. This is easily the sloppiest in Fulci's canon.
The special effects, while passable through most of the movie, are glaringly bad in some scenes, another Fulci trademark. Several closeup shots involve people's brains getting torn out of the back of their heads, which is pretty cool until you notice that the hand doing the brain grabbing is obviously the hand of some black dude. The only person of color in the movie appears at the beginning, and I'm pretty sure Fulci wasn't trying to imply that the guy was secretly the killer for the rest of the film. How Fulci could slip something like this up shows how amateur a director the guy was.
The plot is nonexistent. It has something to do with teleporting zombies rising from their graves and a priest (who hung himself early on in the movie) using telepathy to make people's eyes bleed and spew their guts out of their mouths. The editing is to blame for most of the nonsensical plot, but once again this is something that Fulci did for pretty much every movie he ever made in the horror genre. At least his earlier films made some attempt at a clean plot.
The ending makes no sense whatsoever. The good guys win for no apparent reason, or at least you think they win. But then the last scene throws your presumptions out the window and leaves you wondering what the hell just happened. I'm still trying to figure out what the point was.
Having seen most of his attempts at horror films, City Of The Living Dead is without a doubt Fulci's worst movie. Yes, it's even worse than The Beyond (another so-called classic) and Murder Rock. It's gore for gore's sake, but it can't even get that right.
If you really need to watch a Lucio Fulci movie, please try House By The Cemetery or Zombi. At least then you'll see the potential Fulci showed as a director. It's really too bad he had no visible talent in the profession. And by the way, if you're one of those people who insists that Fulci be classed with real Italian horror directors like Dario Argento, then you need to have your eyes poked out with a very sharp splinter.
For starters, this movie is sloppily edited (which seems to be a problem with most of Fulci's movies). Bad music cutoffs, random shots of scenery, and of course the ever-present horrible voice dubbing. I haven't checked if the same editor has worked on most of Fulci's films, but I'll bet it was the same guy making the same bad cuts over and over again. This is easily the sloppiest in Fulci's canon.
The special effects, while passable through most of the movie, are glaringly bad in some scenes, another Fulci trademark. Several closeup shots involve people's brains getting torn out of the back of their heads, which is pretty cool until you notice that the hand doing the brain grabbing is obviously the hand of some black dude. The only person of color in the movie appears at the beginning, and I'm pretty sure Fulci wasn't trying to imply that the guy was secretly the killer for the rest of the film. How Fulci could slip something like this up shows how amateur a director the guy was.
The plot is nonexistent. It has something to do with teleporting zombies rising from their graves and a priest (who hung himself early on in the movie) using telepathy to make people's eyes bleed and spew their guts out of their mouths. The editing is to blame for most of the nonsensical plot, but once again this is something that Fulci did for pretty much every movie he ever made in the horror genre. At least his earlier films made some attempt at a clean plot.
The ending makes no sense whatsoever. The good guys win for no apparent reason, or at least you think they win. But then the last scene throws your presumptions out the window and leaves you wondering what the hell just happened. I'm still trying to figure out what the point was.
Having seen most of his attempts at horror films, City Of The Living Dead is without a doubt Fulci's worst movie. Yes, it's even worse than The Beyond (another so-called classic) and Murder Rock. It's gore for gore's sake, but it can't even get that right.
If you really need to watch a Lucio Fulci movie, please try House By The Cemetery or Zombi. At least then you'll see the potential Fulci showed as a director. It's really too bad he had no visible talent in the profession. And by the way, if you're one of those people who insists that Fulci be classed with real Italian horror directors like Dario Argento, then you need to have your eyes poked out with a very sharp splinter.