Incubo Sulla Citta Contaminata, or Nightmare City & City of the Walking Dead as it's more commonly known amongst English speaking audiences, starts with a news report on Channel 5 informing us that the Department of Health has announced a radiation leak from a nuclear power station. Mr. Desmond (Ugo Bologna) the boss man at Channel 5 sends one of his journalists Dean Miller (Hugo Stiglitz) & a cameraman (Antonio Mayans) to interview nuclear power expert who is flying into the local airport. Once there Dean becomes aware of a situation on one of the runways as various police & officials rush over there, apparently an unauthorised plane has mysteriously landed. As airport police surround the plane a door opens & a horde of radiation contaminated zombies pour out & systematically slaughter everyone in sight! Dean & his cameraman capture some footage of this & leg it back to Channel 5 headquarters for an emergency news broadcast, however before he can warn the public top ranking army official General Murchison (Mel Ferrer) pulls the plug & says the situation needs to be kept top secret. In disgust Dean quits & sets out to find his wife Anna (Laura Trotter) while General Murchison, Major Warren Holmes (Francisco Rabal) & Colonel Donahue (Manuel Zarzo) are the men responsible for trying to sort this mess out before the entire Earth becomes contaminated by blood drinking zombies
This Italian, Mexican & Spanish co-production was directed by Umberto Lenzi & I hated this piece of Euro crap, simple as that. The script by Antonio Cesare Corti, Luis Maria Delgado & Piero Regnoli is conceptually awful, it explains nothing, it almost seems to contradict itself, no thought or effort is given to anything that happens & is basically a complete mess. First how can these zombies (technically their not zombies but for lack of a better word that's what I will call them) operate & land a plane? It's mentioned that those who come into contact & are bitten become contaminated but there is not one single scene in the entire film which show a corpse or body becoming contaminated & getting back up as a zombie, so where are all these zombies coming from? Why do people constantly ignore the General's orders to 'aim for the brain'? Why not use tanks & rocket launchers, machine guns, the police are all but invisible I mean where are they? There are so many things wrong with this film it's difficult to know where to start, I could go on all day about the plot holes & the fact that it never makes any sort of reasonable sense. I know it's only a film but it needs to have some sort of basis in reality for it to work, for the viewer to care & become involved. The notorious ending is the final insult as it's just plain awful & soul destroying. Director Lenzi again proves he is second only to Jesus Franco in the uselessness stakes, he introduces character's for no reason other than to stretch the running time out with General Murchison's daughter Jessica (Stefania D'Amario) & her husband Bob (Pierangelo Civera) being prime examples of this. Incubo Sulla Citta Contaminata contains continuity & logic problems & mistakes aplenty with character's knowing other character's names even though they have never been introduced, poorly thought out & executed action scenes with zombies sometimes being able to run while at other times (usually when one of the main character's need to escape) they can barely walk & why don't the public just fight back? There is one terrible scene that sums up the sloppiness & amateurishness when a woman named Liz (Sara Franchetti) just stands there as a zombie pokes her eyeball out with a poker, I mean she doesn't put her hands up to protect herself, she doesn't grab the poker to try & push it away, she doesn't turn around & run, she doesn't even take a step backwards as the zombie gouges her eye out, no she just stands there like a statue & lets him do it because you know that's what someone would do isn't it? The violence & gore was disappointing, there is a scene when a zombie slices a woman's breast off, someone gets an axe in the back of their head, the aforementioned poker in the eye, a few gory head shots & a zombie without an arm is all we get, each of these scenes are brief & have little impact & the special effects are absolutely awful. The zombies themselves are the worst looking zombies I've ever seen, they look like they have mud plastered over their faces & that's it. The rest of the so-called gore consists of fake blood covered actors, nothing that would worry anyone these days. Technically the only good thing about Incubo Sulla Citta Contaminata is the half decent widescreen cinematography by Hans Burman, the music however is some of the worst I've ever had the misfortune to hear from the hideous main theme that accompanies the opening credits to the intensely annoying music during the aerobics TV programme! The editing is choppy as there are plenty of mistakes to look out for & as a whole it's a shabby cheap production throughout it's overlong 92 minute duration. The acting as you would expect is awful with Stiglitz making for one of the most bland & forgettable heroes in Euro exploitation film history, the only recognisable cast member Ferrer spends the entire film in a single room trying to act seriously & look concerned... Basically I hated Incubo Sulla Citta Contaminata, it's total complete & utter crap of the highest order. Simple as that really, there are lots of other reasons why I hate this as well but I'm running out of space. Absolutely worthless, moronic, senseless & a complete waste of 90 odd minutes of my life.
This Italian, Mexican & Spanish co-production was directed by Umberto Lenzi & I hated this piece of Euro crap, simple as that. The script by Antonio Cesare Corti, Luis Maria Delgado & Piero Regnoli is conceptually awful, it explains nothing, it almost seems to contradict itself, no thought or effort is given to anything that happens & is basically a complete mess. First how can these zombies (technically their not zombies but for lack of a better word that's what I will call them) operate & land a plane? It's mentioned that those who come into contact & are bitten become contaminated but there is not one single scene in the entire film which show a corpse or body becoming contaminated & getting back up as a zombie, so where are all these zombies coming from? Why do people constantly ignore the General's orders to 'aim for the brain'? Why not use tanks & rocket launchers, machine guns, the police are all but invisible I mean where are they? There are so many things wrong with this film it's difficult to know where to start, I could go on all day about the plot holes & the fact that it never makes any sort of reasonable sense. I know it's only a film but it needs to have some sort of basis in reality for it to work, for the viewer to care & become involved. The notorious ending is the final insult as it's just plain awful & soul destroying. Director Lenzi again proves he is second only to Jesus Franco in the uselessness stakes, he introduces character's for no reason other than to stretch the running time out with General Murchison's daughter Jessica (Stefania D'Amario) & her husband Bob (Pierangelo Civera) being prime examples of this. Incubo Sulla Citta Contaminata contains continuity & logic problems & mistakes aplenty with character's knowing other character's names even though they have never been introduced, poorly thought out & executed action scenes with zombies sometimes being able to run while at other times (usually when one of the main character's need to escape) they can barely walk & why don't the public just fight back? There is one terrible scene that sums up the sloppiness & amateurishness when a woman named Liz (Sara Franchetti) just stands there as a zombie pokes her eyeball out with a poker, I mean she doesn't put her hands up to protect herself, she doesn't grab the poker to try & push it away, she doesn't turn around & run, she doesn't even take a step backwards as the zombie gouges her eye out, no she just stands there like a statue & lets him do it because you know that's what someone would do isn't it? The violence & gore was disappointing, there is a scene when a zombie slices a woman's breast off, someone gets an axe in the back of their head, the aforementioned poker in the eye, a few gory head shots & a zombie without an arm is all we get, each of these scenes are brief & have little impact & the special effects are absolutely awful. The zombies themselves are the worst looking zombies I've ever seen, they look like they have mud plastered over their faces & that's it. The rest of the so-called gore consists of fake blood covered actors, nothing that would worry anyone these days. Technically the only good thing about Incubo Sulla Citta Contaminata is the half decent widescreen cinematography by Hans Burman, the music however is some of the worst I've ever had the misfortune to hear from the hideous main theme that accompanies the opening credits to the intensely annoying music during the aerobics TV programme! The editing is choppy as there are plenty of mistakes to look out for & as a whole it's a shabby cheap production throughout it's overlong 92 minute duration. The acting as you would expect is awful with Stiglitz making for one of the most bland & forgettable heroes in Euro exploitation film history, the only recognisable cast member Ferrer spends the entire film in a single room trying to act seriously & look concerned... Basically I hated Incubo Sulla Citta Contaminata, it's total complete & utter crap of the highest order. Simple as that really, there are lots of other reasons why I hate this as well but I'm running out of space. Absolutely worthless, moronic, senseless & a complete waste of 90 odd minutes of my life.