Paura nella città dei morti viventi (1980)

... aka: City of the Living Dead
... aka: Ein Zombie hing am Glockenseil (Zombie Hung on a Bell Rope)
... aka: Fear in the City of the Living Dead
... aka: Frayeurs (Fears)
... aka: Gates of Hell, The
... aka: Pater Thomas (Father Thomas)
... aka: Zombiernes by (Zombie City)

Directed by:
Lucio Fulci

In a small New England town, priest Father William Thomas (Fabrizio Jovine) hangs himself in a cemetery. Meanwhile, in New York City, psychic Mary Woodhouse (Catriona MacColl) and some of her colleagues are having a séance. Mary has visions of the suicide and of a zombie rising from the grave, freaks out, breaks the link and keels over onto the floor dead. When police show up at the scene, they're told she was scared to death. Not buying into the story, wisecracking journalist Peter Bell (Christopher George) decides to look into matters. He goes to the cemetery, rescues Mary from being buried alive when she miraculously springs back to life and then accompanies her to a friend's apartment to learn all about a prophecy contained in the Book of Enoch, a religious text written over 4000 years ago. According to the book, the gates of hell will open somewhere in a small town and mankind will be wiped out because no dead body will ever be able to rest in peace again. The only remedy to the situation is closing the gates before All Saint's Day.

Back in Dunwich, strange things are afoot. Winds are atypically strong, the town is enveloped in a cloud of “dust” (fog), windows and mirrors shatter on their own, walls crack open and sometimes bleed and cute little kittens attack their owners. Even worse, the dead priest has returned from the grave and now has supernatural powers that he doesn't hesitate using against the townsfolk, who are rumored to be descendants of “Salem witch burners.” He starts out by force feeding pretty young Emily (Antonella Interlenghi) a mouthful of worms and muck. During the film's most memorably gross bit, he appears before a pair of necking teens and squeezes the brains right out of the guy's head after making his girl puke up all of her internal organs. Others disappear or start turning up dead and the recently deceased return to life and add to the army of the undead. At a mortuary, an old lady kills a thieving mortician. Emily returns as a pizza-faced zombie to haunt her parents and kid brother. And so on and so on.

Since Mary saw “Dunwich” written on a tombstone in one of her visions, she knows just where to go. Peter, despite his skepticism, decides to tag along. I'd like to say the two are in a big hurry to get there considering a zombie apocalypse and the fate of all mankind life is at stake. But nope. With just 48 hours to find the town (which isn't even on a map), the two decide to flirt, act casual about the whole ordeal and even take a detour to sample some fine regional cuisine. Getting directions from another priest in a nearby town, the two finally make it to their destination, but not until many have died and everything's pretty much gone to (literal) hell. Our heroes eventually team up with town shrink Gerry (Carlo De Mejo) and one of his patients, neurotic painter Sandra (Janet Agren), in an effort to close the gates. The four get showered with maggots at one point and the big finale takes place in an underground tomb and some catacombs.

This is one of the key titles on Fulci's filmography that helped turn him into a cult director during the early days of home video. Like most of the director's other works, it drags at times (particularly around the midway point), some scenes work better than others and there are about 1001 zoom shots into eyeballs, but it's also atmospheric, gloomy and gory. Nicely shot by Sergio Salvati (who shot all of the director's films around this time), this also boasts an excellent score from Fabio Frizzi and a more straightforward and less confusing story line (co-written by Dardano Sacchetti) than some of Fulci's other efforts.

Italian horror / exploitation fans should recognize much of this cast. Aside from those already mentioned, small roles are also played by future director Michele Soavi, Fulci regular Daniela Doria (who almost always gets the best death scene in these things), Venantino Venantini, Luciano Rossi, Robert Sampson and Fulci himself as a pathologist. Giovanni Lombardo Radice (aka “John Morghen”) has a memorable bit as the slow-witted town outcast whose girlfriend is an inflatable doll and who may or not be a sex predator. He also meets a memorable demise when the father of one of his supposed victims pushes a huge electric drill through his head (an excellent effect). American porn actor Michael Gaunt also turns up playing a gravedigger in one scene alongside Percy Pirkanen of Cannibal Holocaust fame.

Here in America, this was picked up by Motion Picture Marketing, who wanted to release it as Twilight of the Dead with ad art copying Romero's DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978) until they were served a cease and desist order. It was then re-titled The Gates of Hell, great new posters were made and it played theaters unrated and uncut in 1983. On home video, it was issued the following year by Paragon, also unrated and under the same title. Later VHS, DVD and BR releases (from Anchor Bay, Arrow, Blue Underground, etc.) used the City of the Living Dead title. The full running time of the uncut version is 93 minutes, though some countries (like Australia) received a shorter cut missing some of the gore.

★★1/2

Alien Contamination (1980)

... aka: Aliens Arrive on Earth
... aka: Astaron
... aka: Contamination
... aka: Contamination: Alien on Earth
... aka: Toxic Spawn

Directed by:
"Lewis Coates" (Luigi Cozzi)

A crewless ship from South America called the "Caribbean Lady" washes into New York Harbor, so it's immediately quarantined at an isolated area. Because of a strange smell "like something rotting" emanating from the boat, NYPD's lousiest, Lt. Tony Aris (Marino Masé), calls in Dr. Turner (Carlo Monni) from the health department to investigate. The men and a few others suit up and board the ship. They eventually discover a bunch of corpses littered throughout; each a bloody messy as if they exploded from the inside out. After following a trail of "green gunk" down into the storage area, they see a bunch of bizarre objects they liken to overgrown vegetables (including pumpkins... what the f?), a football and "big green eggs" stuffed into a bunch of crates labeled coffee. One resting near some hot pipes is picked up and explodes, sending slime all over most of the men, who then steam up and themselves explode. Aris is the only one who manages to get out of there alive. He contacts the authorities, the government is called in and he goes through a thorough decontamination process before the head of the project - Internal Security Colonel Stella Holmes (Louise Marleau) - will let him free.

Just what these avocados-on-steroids are doing in New York, where they come from and who sent them there are three of the major topics immediately on hand... and Stella knows just where to begin her investigation. Two years earlier, a pair of astronauts - Ian Hubbard (Ian McCulloch) and Hamilton (Siegfried Rauch) - went to the polar ice caps of Mars. They ventured into an ice cave, saw similar eggs and then some kind of glowing alien life form. When they returned to Earth, Ian's claims were rebutted by his fellow astronaut and he was court-martialed and stripped of his rank. Since then, Hamilton is believed to have died in a mysterious plane crash, while Hubbard had a nervous breakdown and has turned into a miserable, whiskey-soaked drunk. Stella was on the commission that helped to ruin his life but she's still able to somehow coax him out of retirement and, along with Lt. Aris, the three fly down to Colombia, where they have 72 hours to get to the bottom of things and hope to locate the "egg plantation."

"What is it you want to know? How many times a week I screwwww?!"

"If you're always in this condition, it's quite obvious you couldn't get it up even if you used a crane."

It's pretty obvious why this one exists. Someone watched ALIEN (1979), noted the chest-burster scene was a crowd-pleaser and decided to make an entire film centered around that concept. This has four or five bloody moments where chests explode, but the rest of the film is pretty forgettable, dragged out and much of it is too darkly lit. The English-language dubbing and dialogue are both terrible. Toward the end we get some slightly interesting stuff involving possession and actually get to see the Mars extraterrestrial (a one-eyed "Alien Cyclops" blob with hypnotic abilities that eats people alive) but, again, it's primarily hidden in the shadows and looks at best like a slightly-updated take on one of the monsters from a 50s-era Corman movie. We also never really learn how the alien itself even managed to get on Earth in the first place, nor do we get much of a motivation. When pressed to give a reasoning for trying to blow people up, an alien-possessed just spouts "The strongest creature shall crush the weakest... That is the purpose!" Now that we got that all cleared up, anyone for some giant squash?

Contamination is among a long list of films made in response to Ridley Scott's masterpiece. Others include the British productions Inseminoid (1980 aka Horror Planet) and Xtro (1982), the Italian Alien 2: On Earth (1980), which faced a 10 million dollar lawsuit from 20th Century Fox (later thrown out of court) and a long list of American films that included Scared to Death (1980), Galaxy of Terror (1981), The Intruder Within (1981; made-for-TV), Forbidden World (1982), Parasite (1982), Creature (1985 aka Titan Find) and many more. On the Blue Underground DVD, there's a 17-minute-long interview with the director, who pretty much confirms what we already suspect: he was asked to make an Alien copy and delivered just that. He explains that the "low-key" lighting is intentional to disguise the "defects" in the fx and says the film was originally called Aliens Arrive on Earth, but he was forced to change it to Contamination by the producers. Cozzi also claims he wanted Caroline Munro (star of his previous film Starcrash [1979]) to play the lead role but the producer wanted someone "ugly and older" for the part and "...in the end, he got his way." Lord, what a tactless and shitty thing to say!

Most of the NYC scenes (everything but exterior shots) were actually filmed in Rome. There's a score from Goblin (which I've seen some people praise, though I found it utterly forgettable) and Gisela Hahn (Jess Franco's DEVIL HUNTER [1980]) and Fulci film regular Carlo De Mejo are also in the cast. The "Alien" was added to the title and the cast and credits were Anglicized for the U.S. release by Cannon, who later hired Cozzi to make the fantasy-adventure Hercules (1983) with Lou Ferrigno (which was nominated for five Razzie Awards), and the follow-up The Adventures of Hercules II (1985). The company Lettuce released it on VHS under the title Toxic Spawn. Cozzi retired from filmmaking in the 90s and now manages Dario Argento's "Profondo Rosso;" a horror-themed store / museum in Italy.

★★