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Nightmare City (1980)

DVD Cover (Blue Underground)
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Overall Rating 56%
Overall Rating
Ranked #5,209
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An airplane exposed to radiation lands, and blood drinking zombies emerge armed with knives, guns and teeth! They go on a rampage slicing, dicing, and biting their way across the Italian countryside. --IMDb
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Review by Christopher
Added: March 2, 2004
Zombies can not only just run in this movie, they can also fly airplanes. The first appearance by the zombies are when an unidentified aircraft makes a landing at an airport. As all sorts of airport security and some fellows from the army, come out to check out what's with this airplane. Out come what seemed to be about fifty or so zombies. Zombies carrying knifes, axes, and some other miscellaneous weapons. The zombies kill almost everyone in sight. During the entire battle, there's was only one decent killing and it wasn't even a killing. One of the zombies rips a guys arm off. The rest is knife stabs that don't puncture the skin, but bleed anyway, and gun shots that leave no holes, but still manage to draw blood.

It's not long until the zombies make it into a television studio where they interrupt "It's All Music", an aerobics show being shot live. As the zombies kill off the few dancers with their knifes and axes, then make their way through out the rest of the television studio. Again, one nice killing during the whole TV spree. A hibachi indian zombie rams his axe into the back of a woman's head. Nice slice it made with some blood made out of paint spurting out. Other than that, the non-puncturing knife wounds continue to kill.

The zombies continue to grow more intelligent through out the movie by strangling people with rope, cutting a phone line (while someone is on an important call), and sneaking into a power station to destroy the city's power, just no name a few. Even with all the zombies killing and growing smart, this movie manages to mostly revolve around Dean Miller (Hugo Stiglitz) and his wife Anna Miller. Dean, a reporter for the television station that got attacked, and his colleague camera man were some of the few that got away from the airport and tv station alive. After his colleague fades away, Dean is set on getting Anna and leaving the city.

To do that, he has to go to the hospital and get her because she's a doctor. By the time he got there, the hospital was already under attack by the zombies. Lucky him, he finds Anna and they start their journey away from the city. While on the road, their car starts to lose gas. Coincidentally enough, there was a gas station right up the road. Instead of getting gas and heading out, they stick around in the abandoned station long enough to be attack by zombies. In the end, they make it to a circus where hundreds of zombies are waiting for them. The movie comes to a hault with a horrible ending that should have been for seen thanks to the title.

Instead of having the standard zombie look, these people looked like rotting food. Their faces looked like mold were growing on them. Not the find of gross mold you'd find on a rotting body, but the kind you would find on an old piece of bread or fruit. Every one of them was wearing a long sleeve shirt to prevent having to waste more money on make-up to cover their arms. Same goes for their legs. Only pants were worn to avoid make-up costs. Their hands had a few drops of blood on them, some of them anyway.

Effects were quite awful, as mentioned before. There was about five some-what gory scenes through out the whole movie. Acting was decent. Story line was bad. Too many relationships going on and there was more talk about keeping safe and the zombies than there was actual scenes with the zombies. What made them, why are they killing, when will they stop, how can they be killed, it just dragged on for too long. Lenzi's a lot better than this and has proved it on many occasions.

Final Conclusion: 5/10
Chad #1: Chad - added July 29, 2008 at 1:16am
I didn't have a problem with the complete disregard for the "rules" of the zombie genre, and in fact, it was nice to see a film try something so radically different. It was silly, granted, but it was pretty fun. Gore effects were good in spots and shoddy in others, but the real thing that hurt this film was massive amount of padding. The beginning of the film is pretty slow, but at least the plot is being developed there; when you get towards the midway point, you find that everything between the actual zombie attacks (which are few and far between) is nothing but filler that completely misses the mark. 4/10.
Tristan #2: Tristan - added July 29, 2008 at 1:28am
Zombies flying planes? C'mon.
Chad #3: Chad - added July 29, 2008 at 1:30am
That wasn't even the worst of it, but it's sort of like Zombi 3 - it's silly as all hell, but entertaining. Wait until I get the caps done, there's a few great gore scenes in here.

Oh, but I forgot to mention: the ending is complete and utter bullshit.
Tristan #4: Tristan - added July 29, 2008 at 2:09am
I enjoyed it, but it was a terrible, campy movie. And yes, the gore was fantastic at times. Could you expect anything less from Lenzi?
Zombieboy #5: Zombieboy - added December 30, 2008 at 10:47am
One of the first of the "running" zombie films wasn't it? Took me forever to track it down again. Even laid my greedy hands on the wonderfully terrible disco italian soundtrack! That tv dance show...wow. I mean holy crap wow. I was born in the 70's and I cannot recall ever watching anything that fantastically rediculous! This was the 28 Days Later of its time.
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