76) City of the Living Dead (1980)

76) City of the Living Dead (1980) Dir: Lucio Fulci Date Released: May 1983 Date Seen: March 21^st, 2009 Rating: 1.75/5

Lucio Fulci’s City of the Living Dead (1980) may be conceptually an interesting stab at visualizing Lovecraftian terrors but never pulls itself together long enough to be much more than a curious precursor to his equally clunky but infinitely more ambitious The Beyond (1981), which he made two films later. The idea of “zombies” appearing out of a hyper-unreal empty, pitch-black nowhere to pull chicken and pig organs out of the scalps of unsuspecting Dunwich residents is kinda cool, but it’s not so fun to watch when it’s this inexpertly filmed, paced, written, visualized, acted, etc. Fabio Frizzi’s soundtrack is neat at times but is ultimately just a weak rehash of his recent earlier Fulci collob, Zombi 2 (1979).