A fun horror movie from director Umberto Lenzi ("Eaten Alive!", "Cannibal Ferox"), "Nightmare City", a.k.a. "City of the Walking Dead", doesn't have a lot of story, it just has a lot of lively, gory mayhem for those Italian horror fans looking for some undemanding thrills.
The set up is simple enough: sadistic fiends, contaminated due to atomic radiation, run amok in a city, brutally slaughtering some victims and contaminating others. Even if not technically zombies, they do exhibit a certain tenacity (and CAN be killed by shots or blows to the head) and also are vampire like in that they enjoy drinking the blood of victims. They don't just use their bare hands, either, still being able to employ various lethal weapons. The army is content not to let too many details get out, while the body count rises, and a reporter (Hugo Stiglitz) and his doctor wife (Laura Trotter) try to make a trek to safety.
A nice amount of cheese (for one thing, one major set piece has the fiends cause havoc during the taping of a TV dance show) adds to the entertainment value, as does the music score by Stelvio Cipriani and the kind of gore we as fans come to expect from this sort of thing, and pleasurable doses of female skin.
Now, some viewers can take issue with the way the movie ends, but personally I don't feel it really hurts the movie at all, even if it has the air of familiarity. Lenzi keeps the action flowing for much of the running time, only slowing down somewhat for an interlude with our two main characters as they attempt to take a breather at a remote location.
The acting may not be exactly Oscar calibre stuff, but it gets the job done, with Mexican star Stiglitz definitely creating a real take-charge kind of guy, and entertaining performances by Francisco Rabal and special guest star Mel Ferrer as two of the Army guys. Other cast members include Eduardo Fajardo ("Django", "Lisa and the Devil") and Stefania D'Amario ("Zombi 2"). The ladies here sure provide fine eye candy.
Mostly, this movie is enjoyable for seeing our antagonists on the attack, no matter what they're doing, and "Nightmare City" amounts to 92 solid minutes of action, gore and sexiness that's never ever boring. It's highly recommended to lovers of Italian genre cinema.
Seven out of 10.
The set up is simple enough: sadistic fiends, contaminated due to atomic radiation, run amok in a city, brutally slaughtering some victims and contaminating others. Even if not technically zombies, they do exhibit a certain tenacity (and CAN be killed by shots or blows to the head) and also are vampire like in that they enjoy drinking the blood of victims. They don't just use their bare hands, either, still being able to employ various lethal weapons. The army is content not to let too many details get out, while the body count rises, and a reporter (Hugo Stiglitz) and his doctor wife (Laura Trotter) try to make a trek to safety.
A nice amount of cheese (for one thing, one major set piece has the fiends cause havoc during the taping of a TV dance show) adds to the entertainment value, as does the music score by Stelvio Cipriani and the kind of gore we as fans come to expect from this sort of thing, and pleasurable doses of female skin.
Now, some viewers can take issue with the way the movie ends, but personally I don't feel it really hurts the movie at all, even if it has the air of familiarity. Lenzi keeps the action flowing for much of the running time, only slowing down somewhat for an interlude with our two main characters as they attempt to take a breather at a remote location.
The acting may not be exactly Oscar calibre stuff, but it gets the job done, with Mexican star Stiglitz definitely creating a real take-charge kind of guy, and entertaining performances by Francisco Rabal and special guest star Mel Ferrer as two of the Army guys. Other cast members include Eduardo Fajardo ("Django", "Lisa and the Devil") and Stefania D'Amario ("Zombi 2"). The ladies here sure provide fine eye candy.
Mostly, this movie is enjoyable for seeing our antagonists on the attack, no matter what they're doing, and "Nightmare City" amounts to 92 solid minutes of action, gore and sexiness that's never ever boring. It's highly recommended to lovers of Italian genre cinema.
Seven out of 10.