Review for Nightmare City

‘Nightmare City’ is a long way from being the best Zombie movie you’ll ever see. Unless you just see this one of course. It’s very much a feature of its age – very early eighties, badly dubbed, poorly acted and featuring a fairly obtuse synth-fuelled soundtrack. So to some, a disaster but to lovers of cult-cheese, it probably sounds like the fun it sort of turns out to be. Tarantino is on record as being a fan of the film, along with Eli Roth so maybe you’ll enjoy it too. Me? I can’t make up my mind whether it’s so bad it’s good or whether it’s just bad. Created by Umberto Lenzi (Cannibal Ferox) this does seem to have a reasonable cult pedigree at least.

Whatever the case, it’s great that Arrow have put their normal Herculean efforts into its release, despite being faced with either a worn and slightly soft print or with a negative that is chemically damaged. So rather than combine the best of both (like Eureka did recently for a more complete version of ‘Metropolis’) they’ve simply offered up both versions. In other words, you get to choose the lesser of two evils.

The film opens with a plane landing at an airport. A camera crew are standing by to film the arrival of a renowned doctor who might have answers to a global medical problem. In the event, it’s clear from the landing tower than all is not right on board. No crew are responding so they prepare for a crash-landing. The plane manages to land safely but when the doors open, a stream of zombiefied humans run from the plane, some brandishing knives and all intent on destroying everything in their path. Not that the reporter looks too surprised. Despite axes being hurried into skulls, throats being split and people being eaten, he merely raises an eyebrow and suggests to his camera wielding cohort that they move on. Which they do.

But the landing is bad news for all sorts of reasons. Not least because once bitten by a Zombie, you become one yourself. A macabre game of tag.
Soon the zombie horde are running loose throughout the city. Even the army don’t seem able to stop them. There’s plenty of ‘get in the house and shut all the doors. Don’t argue’ dialogue as our reporter hero tries to figure out how to get himself and his family out of the city alive.

Being faced with two versions of the film, one softer and less definition or one crisper and genuinely 2K but with chemical damage, I opted for the latter but regretted it. The chemical damage is quite bad, particularly in the first 15 minutes and the quality really isn’t particularly fantastic.

As this in Arrow release, even as slight a film as this gets a reasonable array of extra features. There’s a piece about the film’s restoration and 2K transfer (itself in HD) which goes into detail about why the damaged print was so tough to fix as well as highlighting all the work that had been done to get it looking as good as it does. It’s under 5 minutes so worth a look if you like that techy stuff.

There’s a lengthy, contemporary interview with Umberto Lenzi running for some 30 minutes which is interesting enough and a shorter one with Maria Rosario Omaggio, one of the film’s stars, also presented in HD.
If you need convincing that the film is better than it actually is then you could do worse than watch the ‘Zombies gone wild!’ featurette which is a ten minute fan piece on the movie(and Lenzi in general) which is really infectious and made me question my own view on the film. Maybe you should watch this before you watch the movie!

In truth, the commentary by Chris Alazander (Fangoria editor) is a bit like that too – he’s as keen as mustard, so whilst it is informative enough, it’s actually more like sitting with an enthusiastic fan than an academic.
Finally, there’s a 'Trailer' and an 'Alternative Opening Titles'.

The sleeve art looks typically fantastic (much better than the movie) and is reversible although I haven’t actually seen final packaging. There’s also a collectors booklet featuring new writing on the film by John Martin, author of Seduction of the Gullible: The Truth Behind the Video Nasty Scandal, illustrated with original archive stills and posters – again I can’t comment as I haven’t seen.

So all in all, a great package of an OK movie – a five out of ten for the movie with an extra point for the package. It won’t be for everybody but if you like eighties low-budget horror, you may like this.