Review: Nightmare City (1980)
(aka Incubo sulla città contaminata, City of the Walking Dead)
Directed by: Umberto Lenzi
Starring: Hugo Stiglitz, Laura Trotter, Maria Rosaria Omaggio
Written by: Piero Regnoli, Tony Corti, Jose Luis Delgado
Music by: Stelvio Cipriani
Country: Italy
Available on: Blu-ray/DVD (Raro Video)
IMDb
It’s required of every Italian genre director to helm at least one zombie movie, so Umberto Lenzi (Man from Deep River, Cannibal Ferox) went with Nightmare City in 1980. Uber-prolific Mexican actor Hugo Stiglitz is a reporter who finds himself in the middle of an inconvenient massacre committed by some nuclear-irradiated maniacs with a thirst for human blood in this very briskly paced and over-the-top flick.
Nightmare City wastes absolutely no time in throwing shit into multiple fans at Mach speed. Within the first five minutes or so, a mysterious plane makes an emergency landing at an airstrip and a horde of oatmeal- and fake blood-caked folks spill forth from it with stabbing implements, slashing away at the flesh of the gathered crowd. And from there until the end, this is pretty much a series of slashings at different locations while Stiglitz and a lady friend try to escape to somewhere. This isn’t exactly Lenzi’s best-executed movie, stuffed with some really shoddy special effects, but it’s a hell of a lot of fun and Lenzi tries to compensate for quality with so, so much quantity. Every few minutes, a throat is gashed open, a skull is splattered, a limb is torn asunder, or a titty is destroyed (yes, multiple titties are destroyed). The bodily ravaging is broken up here and there by military types talking military things or women in leotards doing jazzercise, but the diversions from stabbings, machine-gunnings, and blood-drinkings never last long.
Lenzi’s baddies are definitely not your traditional zombies. They’re not fans of munching guts, though there’s some reference to their need to drink blood to replenish their own diminishing supply. But it seems like these ghouls have different prerogatives because they leave a whole lot of victims just lying around, still full of delicious sanguineous refreshment. Very wasteful, if you ask me. If their mouths weren’t slathered shut by two inches of breakfast cereal gunk, I’m sure they would ask. But anyway, shots to the head still do the trick, but since this is an Italian horror movie, no one with a gun has any ability to aim it, artificially stretching the tension.
This is a movie pretty short on atmosphere and craftsmanship, as Lenzi and his crew did not have many fucks to spare. But they came supplied with plenty of extras, squibs, and blanks and used every last one of them during these 88 minutes of carnage. Stelvio Cipriani’s music is a fantastically energetic aural burst of ‘70s discotheque goodness that ushers things along with aplomb. Stiglitz has the charm of a Muppet porn star. So, there’s lots of good stuff still. Nightmare City is nowhere near the best Italia has to offer, but ya ain’t gonna go wrong here if you’re after sleaze, slayings, and silliness.
Overall rating: 7.5 out of 10
