AKA: Invasion by the Atomic Zombies, City of the Walking Dead, Incubo sulla città Contaminata.
Director: Umberto Lenzi
Starring: Hugo Stiglitz, Laura Trotter, Maria Rosaria Omaggio and Francisco Rabal.
Region 0, EC Entertainment release, uncut.
Out Now
Hugo Stiglitz plays Dean Miller, reporter and beard grower extraordinaire, who is sent to meet a prominent nuclear scientist at an airport to conduct an interview. Miller and his cameraman witness the scientist’s plane make an emergency landing, as hordes of deformed maniacs empty out of it and kill the surrounding police. The military are soon on the case, led by General Murchison, as the zombified maniacs start to take over the city. Miller rescues his wife, Anna, and heads out of town to avoid becoming ‘infected’ by the radiation borne scourge.
Nightmare City requires considerable dedication on the part of the viewer. Only those who want to see all of the movies the UK censors took offence too, or fanatical zombie movie fans will sit through the movie without at least once pressing the fast forward button on their remote. It’s not that Nightmare City is slow, it’s just not very good. All of the things that make some Italian horrors so enjoyable, such as a wooly plot, dodgy dubbing and hammy acting are here, but this time serve only to make it bad-bad, instead of the more preferable good-bad.
The first act introduces us to the ‘zombies’, whose make-up is terrible, and to some blue lycra-clad dancers back at Miller’s TV studio. Millar interrupts the dancers broadcast before, inexplicably, the zombie hordes turn up ready to munch some dancer. Cue some rushing around and some very serious looks from Miller, before the military start to plan their operations from a drab bunker of some sort. The budget does not allow us to see too much of their exploits, but we will assume that they are fighting a growing army of zombies
Only these guys aren’t zombies. They are ordinary people who have been affected by radiation and turned into crazed, blood-lusting maniacs. This means they can run fast and use weapons, but cannot be killed except by a shot to the brain. Although this is all pretty obvious from the start, the military still bring on an incapacitated crazy and state ‘an autopsy has confirmed that they are not extra-terrestrial’s as we suspected, but humans like us’. Thanks for clearing that up!
Director Lenzi does have some inspired moments though, such as Anna running through the hospital as all around her falls apart and a sequence with Sheila (a military man’s wife) in her house being stalked by a zombie. Both these are tense and creepy and build a good atmosphere. But even with these, one cannot forgive such transparently lazy plot devices as Miller and Anna stopping for a nice cup of coffee whilst escaping from bedlam, only for the zombies to turn up before they finish. Yawn.
The Disc:
Presented in a widescreen, non-anamorphic format, Nightmare City varies in picture quality throughout. Some sections seem OK, but in others there is noticeable grain and some odd colouration. Sound is stereo and seems to get louder three-quarters of the way through the film. There are also several typo-like mistakes on the English subtitle track.
There are no extra features, except for a couple of trailers, meaning you will only buy the package for the film and nothing else. This all makes a package that doesn’t seem as polished as one would expect from EC Entertainment. The movie itself is presented in its uncut form, which is good, but really the effects aren’t impressive and besides a few shots that may have worried the censor, it’s hard to see why this movie caused many problems at all.
Conclusion:
Those who forgive the bad film/dubbing/plot/script/transfer will find something’s to enjoy in Nightmare City, even if it’s Millar’s improbable beard or the occasionally catchy music. But most of will turn to other Italian-made zombie fun for our kicks. Nightmare City is one for the Lenzi completists out there.
