By Ben Bussey
Once again, our old pals Arrow Video have brought another Italian VHS era hit kicking and screaming into the digital age, and in so doing have brought to light yet more gaps in my own horror education. Time for a pretty significant confession: this is only the second Umberto Lenzi film I’ve ever seen, the other being not one of his notorious cannibal movies (I’ve really never been drawn to that genre) but his 1974 crime movie Almost Human. Prior to this review I had once before started watching Nightmare City, late at night whilst drunk and nodding off after barely half an hour; many would no doubt suggest this would be the ideal conditions under which to watch the film. In common with a lot of Italian output of the era, sophisticated storytelling and characterisation are not exactly at the forefront here. This is one of those delirious fever dream movies where the action is piled on thick and fast, and real world logic is put firmly to one side in favour of what-the-fuck logic, and all of it realised in that unmistakably Italian, cut-price fashion.
Hugo Stiglitz and his charismatic beard take the lead as a TV producer who finds himself present at the outbreak of a national crisis when a military plane unexpectedly lands at the airport, its passengers all in the grip of some kind of degenerative disease caused by atomic radiation which has turned them all into homicidal maniacs. So anxious to get the truth out that he forcibly interrupts the afternoon broadcast of dancing women in lycra, Stiglitz is enraged to find the higher-ups cutting him off for fear of spreading panic. Alas, it won’t take long for the panic to spread all on its own, as the homicidal madness proves infectious, and soon the only option is to run and/or fight.
In common with another 1980 Italian exploitation movie which Arrow released earlier this year, Contamination, Nightmare City is also one of those curious instances in which that which initially appears to be a basic rip-off of a much better known American movie is in fact a curious hodge-podge of different films, mixed up in such a way that it winds up feeling like something genuinely new and different – and, in its own way, influential. The thing is, Nightmare City would at a glance appear to be a fairly standard zombie movie in the Dawn of the Dead style, but on closer inspection plays pretty fast and loose with that format. These are zombies of a kind, but they’re pretty far removed from the Romero or Fulci model as they’re fast-moving, they use weapons, and they display clear evidence of intelligence. Because of this, Nightmare City is sometimes classed as being a long way ahead of its time – and Lenzi himself baldly declares in the extras that Danny Boyle ripped him off completely with 28 Days Later. I daresay he’s giving himself just a smidgen too much credit there, but even so there’s no denying the faster-paced, larger scale action movie vibe of Nightmare City is a refreshing break from the norm for the era.
Still, the use of the word ‘city’ in the title is just a wee bit disingenuous (I know, Italian horror misleading us, whatever next eh?) given that only the early portion of the action takes place in urban areas, spreading into the countryside pretty quickly. Guess it’s easier to shoot in such places. Anyway, it’s of little concern given that Nightmare City piles on all the stuff you hope for from VHS era horror: loads of lengthy attack sequences loaded with a variety of excessive and cartoonish deaths, with plenty of heads going splat, eyeballs getting impaled and even a bit of breast-slashing. And, as that last example should make apparent, there’s a bit of old gratuitous nudity as well. It all leads up to a magnificently grandiose final showdown at a fairground, working in machine guns, a helicopter and a rollercoaster (we might ponder whether the makers of Zombieland have seen this one too) – followed by a downright stupid conclusion which manages to leave you both furious they went out on such a dumb note, yet also unable to imagine it ending any other way.
Among the extras we have an interview with Eli Roth, in which the director extols the virtues of Lenzi in his usual fratboy-ish idiom: all-out action, insane violence, cute girls, all of it set to a great soundtrack. Nightmare City does a fine job delivering all of these, and, as ever, Arrow Video have done a fine job bringing it all onto disc, even going so far as to offer two different transfers of the film, a new 2K restoration of the film from the original camera negative and an alternative HD transfer from the 35mm reversal dupe negative, as the original negative suffered some irreversible chemical damage (obviously I have no idea what any of that really means; basically there’s some discolouration in a few scenes, nothing that in any way spoils the film – hell, plenty of neo-grindhouse filmmakers today would gladly add the exact same effect on purpose). Go ahead and give it a spin; being drunk and/or half-asleep is optional.
Nightmare City is available now dual format DVD and Blu-ray from Arrow Video.