City of the Living Dead

Following his success with the film Zombie, director Lucio Fulci decided to take another stab at the genre (no pun intended). In fact, in many ways, this may be the superior film. If nothing else, he creates and sustains a constant sense of dread -- one can almost feel the impending apocalypse. A priest hangs himself in a cemetery in an appropriately creepy small town, which sets in motion event that will soon lead to the opening of the gates of hell, where the dead shall walk the earth. Fortunately, a young psychic saw the priest's suicide and, along with a reporter, sets out to stop it. The touch of Fulci doesn't become apparent until about the half-hour point when a girl literally throws up her internal organs and then rips her boyfriend's brain out. By that point, there can be no mistaking the director of this film. Fortunately, besides the gore, the intensely creepy atmosphere holds the film together, and the cinematography has a dream-like quality to it that I would think was a fluke and unintentional if I hadn't been aware of it in the directors' other films. It also features a beautifully eerie synth score by Fabio Frizzi. I don't care what anyone says, I love an effective use of the synthesizer despite the fact that it's obviously... synthesized.