Blu-Ray Review - Nightmare City (1980)

Nightmare City aka. City of the Walking Dead in some territories is your run of the mill Italian Zombie film from the late ’70s/Early ’80s so it’s no wonder noted Italian gore maestro Umberto Lenzi was responsible for the carnage than unfolds on-screen. Lenzi however felt it should be a considered a radiation infection film instead of a Zombie film. The film has been become a surprisingly influential film over the years, Danny Boyle called his zombies infected in 28 Days Later instead of calling them zombies and Nightmare City has some of the earliest uses of a “running zombies” well before that remake of Dawn of the Dead.

The film as Italian films from post-war to fairly recently is dubbed in both its Italian and English versions so both versions are dubbed so it’s up to your own preference, I choose the English personally. Nightmare City boosts an international cast which is also common of its time. Mexican born Hugo Stiglitz (a name familiar to Tarantino fans) plays a journalist who is in Europe to interview a scientist about a nuclear accident but at the airport a military aircraft flies in and it’s full of deformed infected zombies and all hell breaks loose for the next 90 minutes.

The gore levels are rammed up to 11, the zombies get rapey with the women but begs the question why isn’t there a single woman zombie? I guess it’s the pervy Italians behind the film, there is literally breasts being ripped out of women’s bodies. The film has a mild anti-military message and anti-nuclear message but lacks the sharp political satire of George A. Romero’s films so it becomes basically an action film which is evident in Italian zombie films so much so the Argento cut of Dawn of the Dead cuts out a lot of the political satire. The film also has one of the all-time worst endings that feels like such a cop-out or simply they couldn’t figure out how to finish the film, probably a mixture of both but it’s an enjoyable gore romp.

Arrow’s release is obviously packed with features, it includes two different restorations of the film where the differences are discussed in a featurette. Fangoria editor Chris Alexander does an audio commentary and there are interviews with super-fan Eli Roth who comes off as a budget Quentin Tarantino wannabe, director Umberto Lenzi and actress Maria Rosaria Omaggio. Writer John Martin contributes to the supplementary booklet which is a trademark of Arrow’s releases.