Paura nella città dei morti viventi (1980)

After the roaring success of Zombi 2 (1979), Fulci was bitten by the horror bug and in 1980, he co-scripted this bizarre follow-up, an altogether darker, more gothic and almost entirely incomprehensible film. Its disjointed narrative boasts a number of stunning set pieces and the overall atmosphere is commendably claustrophobic, but the film is a rather disappointing first step towards the destruction of the narrative that Fulci claimed to striving for, his move towards the cinema of the "absolute" that would be more successfully realised in L'aldila (1981).

Thematic coherence was never one of Fulci's strong points and in Paura nella città dei morti viventi, his penchant for obscure narratives is taken to almost ludicrous extremes. The plot - such that it is - consists only of Mary and Peter traveling s-l-o-w-l-y towards Dunwich, interspersed with the violent deaths of various Dunwichians. A trio of inebriated barflys pop up now and again to mutter grim platitudes while the ever wonderful Giovanni Lombardo Radice makes the most of his few scenes, hanging out in a dilapidated shack with a self inflating sex doll and the rotting remains of a mutilated child.

Fulci's "...radical denial of conventional narrative techniques" (to quote Anthony Jackson in Samhain) is never more in evidence than in the incomprehensible closing sequence. Having disposed of Father Thomas, Mary and the shrink - the only survivors of the sortie into the crypt - emerge from the tomb to face the daylight. As an ecstatic John-John, the young boy they've rescued along the way, runs towards them, the soundtrack rumbles ominously, the movement of the image slows and creaks to a halt before a spiders web effect erupts across the freeze frame. There has been much discussion as to quite what's going on here. A clue might lie in Mary's warning: "Guess what... It's All Saint's Day!" As the fateful day dawns, the forces of evil are determined to do their wicked thing no matter what. With the zombified Father Thomas destroyed and the gate closed, the evil simply batters its way into our reality. Chances are, though, that Fulci and Sacchetti simply ran out of ideas. Whatever the reason, it reinforces Fulci's love for the pessimistic, apocalyptic ending.

Fulci's unique vision is aided by Sergio Salvati's excellent photography, the power of which is dramatically diminished by the ludicrously poor prints - there seems to have never been a good quality print of this film on tape, disc or at the cinema. Even so, Salvati's remarkable work shines through the murk - his cameras prowl through the action, making full use of colour, light and movement. His camerawork has an eerie elegance about it that makes the sudden outbursts of gruesome violence seem all the more incongruous and effective. Key scenes would have to include the superb climax in the clammy interior of the priest's crypt, the moody opening sequence and the harrowing scene featuring MacColl, the coffin and the axe. Moments like these, with their bleached out colour bordering on the monochromatic (though of course that may be the dodgy print again...), prove just how powerful the Fulci-Salvati partnership was, justifying the claims for them to be the driving forces behind 80s Italian gothic cinema.

The combination of the spare, minimalist screenplay and the ravishing cinematography gives Paura nella città dei morti viventi a decidedly otherworldly feel - Dunwich seems not to exist in the world we know but in some strange hinterland, a place where logic has broken down and things simply happen with no reference to cause and effect. Nothing in Dunwich makes any sense - the topography seems all wrong, the inhabitants are an unnerving collection of neurotics, child killers and psychotics and the entire town is shunned by outsiders and wreathed in a perpetual bank of fog. Maggot storms subside as quickly and unexpectedly as they start, windows shatter, embedding glass in walls that start to bleed and dead bodies seem to move about apparently at will. One suspects that all roads to Dunwich are travelled via some obscure corner of The Twilight Zone. The very strangeness of the town and its inhabitants helps to immerse the viewer in a milieu that is almost entirely detached from the real world.

While this has the desired effect of creating an uneasy, dreamlike ambience that sees the film through its more ridiculous moments - and there are plenty of those on offer - it does tend to undermine other aspects of the film. One never expects much in the way of characterisation in Italian gore movies, but here Fulci seems disinterested in the characters to the point of ignoring them until they need to be killed off to keep the plot moving. Everyone in the film is strictly stereotyped which allows Fulci and co-writer Dardano Sacchetti to concentrate on the films catalogue of oddities and surreal mayhem instead.

And mayhem is certainly the key here. Fulci's films became increasingly visceral as he ventured further and further into the world of horror, culminating in the gore drenched Un gatto nel cervello (1990) and the violence of Paura nella città dei morti viventi is a marked step up from the comparatively restrained blood-letting of Zombi 2. Crowd pleasing set pieces like the infamous gut puking scene and Radice's notorious power drill to the head helped to consolidate Fulci as the undisputed master of the Italian gore film and, in the context of the film's apparent detachment from reality, they fit in remarkably well.

Paura nella città dei morti viventi is the least effective of Fulci's early 80s horror films but it remains interesting enough and there's barely a dull moment. The attempt to create a nightmare world where even cause and effect can no longer be relied on was more effectively realised in the subsequent L'aldila, but Paura nella città dei morti viventi is still a moody, atmospheric and suitably disgusting relic of the days when the Italian horror industry could still deliver the goods.
KEVIN LYONS

Last Updated: 1 January, 2009