City of the Living Dead

Discuss releases from Arrow and the films on them.

Moderator: yoloswegmaster

Post Reply
Message
Author
User avatar
domino harvey
Dot Com Dom
Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 2:42 pm

City of the Living Dead

#1 Post by domino harvey » Fri Jul 27, 2018 11:56 am

Image

Presented here in an exclusive 4K restoration with a wealth of extras, Fulci’s gore-drenched classic can now be devoured as never before!

Pre-order in the UK via Arrow: https://arrowfilms.com/product-detai...lu-ray/FCD1816
Release date: 8 October

WOE BE UNTO HIM WHO OPENS ONE OF THE SEVEN GATEWAYS TO HELL, BECAUSE THROUGH THAT GATEWAY, EVIL WILL INVADE THE WORLD!

From the Italian godfather of gore, Lucio Fulci, comes City of the Living Dead, a notoriously nauseating, compellingly corporeal masterpiece of apocalyptic zombie horror!

A medium has a mysterious vision of a priest hanging himself... A seemingly dead woman awakes screaming in her coffin... And in the sleepy New England town of Dunwich, a local girl vomits up her intestines and a town misfit has a drill-bit ploughed into his cranium... These hallucinogenic, often grotesque visions punctuate a skeletal story telling of a reporter (Christopher George, The Exterminator, Pieces) and a psychic (Catriona MacColl, The House by the Cemetery, The Beyond) who must race against time to prevent hordes of rotting corpses spewing forth from the gates of hell...

Stridently going beyond the classical stylings of his horror hit Zombie Flesh Eaters, City of the Living Dead sees Fulci eschew conventional narrative logic in favour of a delirious, oneiric mode of storytelling which stresses style, surrealism and atmosphere (as well as offering up bucket-loads of brains, blood and guts!) Presented here in an exclusive 4K restoration with a wealth of extras, Fulci’s gore-drenched classic can now be devoured as never before!

LIMTED EDITION CONTENTS
• Brand new restoration from a 4K scan of the original negative by Arrow Films
• High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation
• Original uncompressed 1.0 mono and optional 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio
• Original English and Italian soundtracks
• Newly translated, optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing for the English soundtrack
• Newly translated English subtitles for the Italian soundtrack
• Audio commentary with star Catriona MacColl and journalist Jay Slater
• Audio commentary with star Giovanni Lombardo Radice and writer Calum Waddell
• We Are the Apocalypse, new interview with writer Dardano Sacchetti
• Through Your Eyes, new interview with Catriona MacColl
• Dust in the Wind, new interview with cameraman Roberto Forges Davanzati
• The Art of Dreaming, new interview with production designer Massimo Antonello Geleng
• Tales of Friendship, new interview with cinematographer Sergio Salvati
• I Walked with a Zombie, new interview with actor Giovanni Lombardo Radice
• They Call Him "Bombardone", new interview with special effects artist Gino De Rossi
• The Horror Family, new interview with father and son actors Venantino and Luca Venantini
• Previously unseen interview with composer Fabio Frizzi
• Archival interview with actor Carlo De Mejo
• Building Fulci’s City, a new video interview with Stephen Thrower, author of the definitive tome, Beyond Terror: The Films of Lucio Fulci
• Reflections on Fulci, a new appraisal of Fulci’s Gothic period by actor, writer and director Andy Nyman (Ghost Stories)
• The Dead Are Alive!, a new video essay by Kat Ellinger on Lucio Fulci and the Italian zombie cycle
• Behind the scenes 8mm footage with Roberto Forges Davanzati audio commentary
• Alternative US Gates of Hell opening credits
• Original trailers and radio spots
• Extensive image gallery featuring over 150 stills, posters and other ephemera from the FAB Press and Mike Siegel archives
• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Wes Benscoter
• Double-sided fold-out poster
• 6 lobby card reproductions

User avatar
Mr Sausage
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 9:02 pm
Location: Canada

Re: City of the Living Dead

#2 Post by Mr Sausage » Fri Jul 27, 2018 12:30 pm

Have you seen this one domino?

User avatar
domino harvey
Dot Com Dom
Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 2:42 pm

Re: City of the Living Dead

#3 Post by domino harvey » Fri Jul 27, 2018 1:25 pm

I thought I had, but I can't find any record of me having seen it in my viewing logs, so I guess not. All those Fulcis that aren't Zombi run together for me in my mind, but I could have sworn I saw all of the "big" Fulci movies-- maybe I'm just remembering it from one of those trailer compilations?

User avatar
Big Ben
Joined: Mon Feb 08, 2016 12:54 pm
Location: Great Falls, Montana

Re: City of the Living Dead

#4 Post by Big Ben » Fri Jul 27, 2018 1:58 pm

I remember that cover art on that poster from a VHS catalogue my dad had when I was like five or so. I very much wanted to see it but alas could not. I imagine it's the usual Fulci film? Nonsensical and incoherent yet somehow very watchable?

User avatar
Mr Sausage
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 9:02 pm
Location: Canada

Re: City of the Living Dead

#5 Post by Mr Sausage » Fri Jul 27, 2018 2:25 pm

domino harvey wrote:I thought I had, but I can't find any record of me having seen it in my viewing logs, so I guess not. All those Fulcis that aren't Zombi run together for me in my mind, but I could have sworn I saw all of the "big" Fulci movies-- maybe I'm just remembering it from one of those trailer compilations?
It’s a mash up of The Beyond and Zombie, so really you have seen it. Though I like it more than those two (and House by the Cemetery), it shares all of their flaws and does little to improve on their small set of good points.

User avatar
colinr0380
Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2004 4:30 pm
Location: Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, UK

Re: City of the Living Dead

#6 Post by colinr0380 » Fri Jul 27, 2018 2:43 pm

It is the kind of film that has the effect of drilling itself into your memory once you have seen it!

User avatar
Mr Sausage
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 9:02 pm
Location: Canada

Re: City of the Living Dead

#7 Post by Mr Sausage » Fri Jul 27, 2018 4:23 pm

colinr0380 wrote:It is the kind of film that has the effect of drilling itself into your memory once you have seen it!
You must’ve gotten your sense of humour at the same place as my dad.

M Sanderson
Joined: Sat Oct 22, 2016 3:43 am

Re: City of the Living Dead

#8 Post by M Sanderson » Mon Jul 30, 2018 3:08 pm

Very cruel and surreal - including deliberate non-sequitur dialogue - with much spatial disorientation and I’d argue its case as a genuine artistic achievement.

Orlac
Joined: Tue Apr 14, 2009 4:29 am

Re: City of the Living Dead

#9 Post by Orlac » Mon Jul 30, 2018 5:26 pm

I do think it had a bit of an influence on James Herbert's The Ghosts of Sleath.

M Sanderson
Joined: Sat Oct 22, 2016 3:43 am

Re: City of the Living Dead

#10 Post by M Sanderson » Thu Aug 02, 2018 3:16 am

Was that the sequel to Haunted, with ghosts able to physically attack people in a variety of gory ways? With a small village setting, I vaguely recall...

User avatar
colinr0380
Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2004 4:30 pm
Location: Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, UK

Re: City of the Living Dead

#11 Post by colinr0380 » Thu Aug 02, 2018 11:42 am

Yes. I think it was a bit better, certainly on a wider scale, than Haunted (and definitely had a few gory setpieces, which is probably why Orlac made that great connection! Although I would suggest maybe the structure of hapless newcomer to a quaint small town with dark secrets means Ghosts of Sleath is City of the Living Dead meets Hot Fuzz?) but still has one of the more unlucky (especially in love) main protagonists of all of James Herbert's books. And James Herbert wrote The Jonah!

Its actually a loose trilogy featuring the character of David Ash, comprising 1988's Haunted (which was made into a film directed by Lewis Gilbert in 1995), The Ghosts of Sleath from 1994 and Herbert's final book, Ash, from 2012.

Orlac
Joined: Tue Apr 14, 2009 4:29 am

Re: City of the Living Dead

#12 Post by Orlac » Fri Aug 03, 2018 2:28 pm

My memory of Ghosts is that it has a character getting a similar treatment to John Morghen in City, but it has been at least five years since I encountered either.

User avatar
colinr0380
Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2004 4:30 pm
Location: Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, UK

Re: City of the Living Dead

#13 Post by colinr0380 » Fri Aug 03, 2018 5:58 pm

Spoiler for The Ghosts of SleathShow
I guess that you mean that early scene in the book in which a character suspected of molesting a child gets his head bashed in with a mallet in the middle of the village green by the girl's father, before his assailant gets a planing tool and "began to plane away the skin and bone from _____'s face" in front of an either ironic or blackly comic (Either way unfortunately timed!) busload of curious schoolchildren!

Orlac
Joined: Tue Apr 14, 2009 4:29 am

Re: City of the Living Dead

#14 Post by Orlac » Fri Aug 03, 2018 7:47 pm

Yes, that's the one. Doesn't sound that much like City now I think about it!

M Sanderson
Joined: Sat Oct 22, 2016 3:43 am

Re: City of the Living Dead

#15 Post by M Sanderson » Fri Nov 09, 2018 3:42 am

Finally a superb Blu ray release of COTLD. Not the most aesthetic of Fulci’s horrors, and of course feels cheap and rushed, yet the cold blues of MacColl’s coffin, and the Thomas family crypt, look appropriately icy. Far better grain than the old (hugely flawed) Arrow release. This is a proper restoration job, I’d argue.

Although Fulci’s roughest film from his peak of zombie mayhem, this is still genuinely - and absolutely deliberately, I will argue all night - disruptive in terms of time, space and also cause and effect. That, combined with its sickening gore scenes, contribute to making a genuine work of surrealism.

Post Reply