City of the Living Dead
City of the Living Dead is a 1980 film from Italy, directed by Lucio Fulci, running 93 minutes. reelscum files it under video nasty and zombie.
- Year
- 1980 · 1980s films
- Country
- Italy
- Runtime
- 93 min
- Director
- Lucio Fulci
- Updated
- 10 Aug 2026
- Obscurity
- known (23/100)
- Also known as
- Fear in the City of the Living Dead · The Gates of Hell · The Fear · Fear in the Town of the Living Dead · Twilight of the Dead · Lucio Fulci's City of the Living Dead
Defined in the glossary: Video nasty, Zombie
The drill scene. Otherwise thin, but the atmosphere is thick.
Fulci opens with a priest hanging himself in a cemetery, which tears a gate to hell open over the town of Dunwich, and from there the film runs on pure atmosphere and set-piece horror rather than sense. The dead teleport, weep blood, and in the film's most notorious moment make a woman vomit up her own insides.
It is the first of Fulci's loose Gates of Hell trilogy, and like the others it works as a sustained bad dream, scored by Fabio Frizzi's mournful synths. The plot barely functions and the dread never lets up.
Fulci prioritising sensation over logic, and getting away with it.
Trailer
The numbers
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Written about
- Gut-munchers: the Italian zombie boom, 1979 to 1983
There was no first one. Argento recut Romero, Fulci forged the sequel, and Italy spent four years feeding the British censors.
The cycle in depth
- Banned, cut and confiscated
A Fulci print flown out of the country, an Australian rating that just means no, and a German court that filed The Evil Dead under criminal violence. Three states, three machines for making a film disappear.
- The Exorcist was banned on video in Britain by one censor
The Exorcist passed uncut for British cinemas in 1974, then had no legal UK video release from 1988 to 1999 because one censor would not certify the tape.
Filed alongside
The Beyond
Makes no sense whatsoever and is Fulci's best film. Dream logic, fully committed.
Zombi 2
A zombie fights a shark. Fulci's splinter shot is still the worst thing here.
Cannibal Apocalypse
Vietnam veterans as cannibals. Sillier and kinder than the jungle cycle.
Cannibal Ferox
Lenzi chasing Deodato with none of the argument. Real animal deaths, no defence.
The Burning
The raft scene is the best kill in any slasher. The rest is fine.
The Crazies
A military bioweapon drives a town homicidally insane. Romero on institutional failure, again.
Mountain of the Cannibal God
The cannibal cycle in a dinner jacket, ex-Bond girl and real animal deaths included.
Maniac
Savini's effects, Spinell's performance, and a very bleak little film.
I Walked with a Zombie
Val Lewton doing Jane Eyre in the Caribbean. Beautiful and barely horror.
Possession
On the nasties list by pure bureaucratic accident. An actual masterpiece about divorce.
The New York Ripper
Genuinely nasty and hard to defend. The killer quacks. It doesn't help.
White Zombie
Lugosi, Haitian folklore, and the first zombie film. No eating involved.