Moronic gory exercise about a priest who hangs himself in a Dunwich graveyard resulting in the opening of gateway(s)to Hell. How this comes to happen is anyone's guess. I'm guessing it's the significance in the location. In folklore, Dunwich was built over the ruins of Salem..the witch's playground. Now, how hanging yourself in a graveyard in a town once housing witches is one thing, but how a priest's suicide unlocks the gates of hell is another. If Fulci would just take the time to explain the reasons why a priest's suicide could do such a thing, I might be a little closer to accepting this poor excuse to throw up gore scenes and supernatural hocus pocus. The zombies are incredibly photographed, but understanding how they come to be and why the priest brings them back to life confuses me. Okay, this priest hangs himself, comes back as some sort of ghoul who finds victims, scaring them to death. Once they are dead, the victims come back as zombies pulling brains out of poor people's skulls while their backs are turned. Some actually come from thin air, I'm guessing because they represent some sort of fear, but trying to come up with answers to all this foolishness was tiresome. Some perv named Bob gets a drill all the way through his skull thanks to a vengeful father whose daughter was almost molested by him. The film has a woman psychic who actually dies during a séance where she sees the priest kill himself..how she awakens and why are a mystery. Anyhow, she gets a reporter to take her to Dunwich to find the remains of the priest before "ALL SAINTS DAY" because if he arises, the dead will walk amongst the world to feed on flesh..they do already, but that is beside the point. You know, thanks to a psychiatrist who lost his girlfriend to the priest's fear(..and comes back as a zombie), the three find the burial tomb of the priest, but it is too late since ALL SAINTS DAY had begun. Oh well, Fulic just abandons that whole line letting the priest die anyway when he gets a cross thrust through his stomach as his torso burns to ash(..and so are his relatives who rise momentarily to moan a bit). The film is so incomprehensible and badly conceived, one should simply watch for all the bloody effects like one of the priest's victims who vomits up her intestines. Have a nice day.
Review of City of the Living Dead
