Nightmare City (1980)

Title: Nightmare City (1980)

Director: Umberto Lenzi

Cast: Hugo Stiglitz, Francisco Rabal

Nightmare City is one of those movies that I always passed by at the video store simply because it had a crappy cover. I guess I should’ve known not to judge a movie by its cover because this movie was fun as hell! I mean, it isn’t perfect, its got all those glitches that you can come to expect from practically every low budget Italian horror film, but the film remains fun and fast paced in spite of all its flaws.

The story starts in an airport, when an unidentified military plane lands on an airport. No one knows who’s piloting it, no one knows where it came from, but it lands. When the doors open, murderous infected people burst out and start stabbing and killing everyone in sight! Soon, the contagion begins to spread all through out the city, until the whole city is practically infested with the infected. In the mean time, Dean Miller, a journalist is trying to contact his wife so he can save her from the deadly killers! Meanwhile, the military is trying its best to control the ever spreading contagion! Will they succeed? Or will the infected take over the city?

Nightmare City comes to us from Umberto Lenzi, the director of two of the most recognized Italian cannibal movies from the 70’s Cannibal Ferox and Eaten Alive. I have not seen these two Cannibal movies yet, but from what I hear, they are pretty savage and gruesome, so maybe that explains why Nightmare City is filled with non stop acts of gruesome murder. The thing that got me about this movie is that it grabs you from the very beginning. The whole thing with the military plane landing mysteriously at the airport was a great way of opening the film, though I doubt a plane could just land like that on any airport today. Somebody would probably shoot it down or something, but, we gotta remember, this was the early 80s, before Sept. 11 came along. But the idea was awesome, then, hundreds of zombies poor out of the plane and start murdering people left and right.

The infected in this movie are a weird mix of zombies, vampires and vicious murderers. Why? Well, they look like zombies, with their skin having these ugly wart like growths that make them look like they got their faces burned in a George Foreman grill. The funny thing about the infected on this film is that they all carry knives around with which to stab everybody they come in contact with. I thought that was the weirdest thing about these creatures…but I was wrong! They also feed on their prey like vampires! Sucking the blood as it spurts out of their victims body! The infected on this film act like zombies, but in reality, they are closer to vampires. Murderous viscous vampires, without an ounce of humanity left in them. All they think about is killing! Another strange thing about these infected is that a lot of them wear turtle necks for some reason. And a lot of them wear suits. They aren’t dressed in rags like Fulci’s zombies. These zombies look like they just got out of a dinner party or something!

The movie delivers an overdose of violence! There’s a moment in the film, where there is one murder after another for minutes and minutes on end! An infected kills someone! Then they kill someone else! Then they kill someone else! And it goes on and on like that without any sort of story developing. To the films advantage I will say that some of the killings were pretty cool. For example: an infected cuts a girl in her breast and begins to suck the blood of off her breast! In another awesome sequence, an infected takes this girl and slowly begins to poke her eye out with a knife. That scene in particular reminded me of a Fulci film, because Fulci had an infatuation with eyes. So the movie delivers in the gore department. It’s also extremely fast paced. Situations develop rather quickly in this film, so we are never really bored with it, which was one of the best things this movie had going for it. It was always moving.

Of course, there are couple of things that will make you burst out laughing while watching this movie. For example, there’s this sequence that takes place inside of a television station which was obviously inspired by George Romero’s chaotic television station sequences in Dawn of the Dead (1979). But Nightmare City’s TV. station sequences aren’t chaotic at all. At least not at first. First we are treated to a bunch of dancers doing aerobics in some sort of dance show that’s hilarious because the girls obviously can’t dance for shit. The dances are not even choreographed well! All they do well is shake their ass in front of the camera and spread their legs wide for every young dude in the audience to see. It’s obvious that this sexy dance sequence was only thrown in there to make more money; because you know, T&A in a horror movie will get those young dudes in the theater seats! And trust me, there’s lots of nudity on this movie! But of course, this naturally goes with the territory, this is a low budget horror movie after all. Another thing that had me busting a gut is a scene in which Dean Miller hurls a TV set at an infected zombie, and for some reason, the TV. set explodes in flames and burns the infected to a crisp! T.V. sets are like grenades on this movie! As you can see, I was having fun with this flick.

There’s a moment in the film when the lights go out in the city and everything is suddenly dark, to me that’s when the movie lives up to its title. It literally becomes a nightmare city because not only is it dark, but almost everyone in the film is a freaking zombie! There’s this cool sequence where a helicopter flies over the city and we go over a field that’s filled with zombies and people running away from them. They even end up going into an amusement park, which led me to believe that maybe this year’s Zombieland, though awesome, wasn’t really all that original.

Umberto Lenzi was imitating in some ways the films of Lucio Fulci. Actually, the producers wanted him to make a film that resembled a Fulci film, so maybe that’s why sometimes while watching this movie; you’ll feel like you’re watching something that old Lucio might have cooked up. But at times, you’ll also get this George Romero vibe going for it, with the whole television station sequence, or the social commentary that the film tries to squeeze in there at the last minute. I’m talking about a scene in which a character starts talking about how humanity is getting what they deserved, that humanity is self destructive. That the way we are living is only going to end up destroying us all. So at least it tries to throw in some social commentary in there as well.

I’ll never understand why I had not watched this movie before. It’s so zany, that its fun. It’s fast paced, and goes at a relentless pace! There are killings every five seconds, T&A galore, and we got Hugo Stiglitz hurling exploding TV sets! It was a fun ride, and a very underrated Italian film. I recommend this movie if you want to watch a dumb, fast paced, unintentionally funny zombie film.

Rating: 3 out of 5

Sorcerer (1977)

Title: Sorcerer (1977)

Director: William Friedkin

Cast: Roy Scheider, Francisco Rabal

Review:

William Friedkin was having the time of his directorial life back in the late 70s. He had just made two back to back hits, The French Connection (1971) and The Exorcist (1973). What would his next project be about? Well, he decided to go with the remake of a French film called The Wages of Fear (1953). He decided to call it “Sorcerer”. Audiences were pumped to see this film because they thought that since this film came from the same director who made The Exorcist, and it was called Sorcerer, everyone thought the film was going to be about the supernatural. Audiences were expecting to be as shocked as they were when they saw The Exorcist. Unfortunately, Sorcerer was the furthest thing away from being about the supernatural. Friedkin said the title refers to fate; fate as the ultimate Sorcerer in our lives. According to Friedkin, he was referring to the fact that we have no real control about what happens in our lives. We don’t control where we are born, or when we die. Also, one of the trucks in the film is called 'Sorcerer'. But what was the film really about?

 Wages of Fear was the french film that Friedkin was remaking

Sorcerer is about these four low life scumbags who for different reasons, end up running away from their respective countries and hiding out in a small town in the middle of a rainforest, in a remote village in Venezuela. While there, they try to survive getting low paying jobs, but pretty soon they realize that life on this country is not worth it, so they want out. Unfortunately, nobody has enough money to get out of the country, the jobs don’t pay that well, and what little money you do get, the dirty police force takes part of it. So in essence, these four strangers are stuck in this country out in the middle of nowhere. As fate would have it, a gas leak has sprung 300 miles from their town, and a constant column of fire is emerging from the ground, threatening to destroy the village and cost substantial amounts of money to an American oil company that has set up shop there. So the company decides that the best way to get the raging fire to go out is by exploding it with some dynamite.  Problem is the only dynamite sticks that are available sit 300 miles away in some other town, and these dynamite sticks are so old they have begun to leak nitroglycerine! So the company decides to do a search for the best drivers in town. Whoever can demonstrate some ability behind a steering wheel gets chosen. Lucky the four foreigners get chosen to go across the jungle to transport the dynamite, they must get there before the raging fire destroys the town! Problem is, if the nitro shakes too much or if even a drop of it falls on the floor, they will be blown to smithereens. Will they make it in time to stop the fire and get their payday of 10,000 dollars each? Can they drive the truck across the jungle without it blowing up?

The first thing I noticed about this movie was how simple it was. Basically, the film is just about four desperate guys trying to make it across the jungle in two trucks, without blowing up the nitro. That’s it. They movie expands a bit when we get to see the back stories of each of the characters in the first half of the movie. We get to see who they were and why they are running away to Venezuela. The first half of the movie let's us see how all these stories connect. The second half of the film concerns itself with the trek these four strangers have to go through across the Venezuelan jungle. Once these guys begin their trek, that’s when the film really turns interesting.

Sorcerer is all about getting you worked up about the dynamite blowing up. Will these guys make it across the dense jungle? When we see where they have to travel through with these trucks, it becomes evident early on that this trek is going to be a seemingly impossible one. But these guys are desperate, they need the reward money, they need the permanent citizenship, so they go through with it. In this way, the film reminded me a whole lot of Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo. First, because like Herzog, Friedkin shot this film on location in various different countries to get everything to look authentic. He shot in Jerusalem, France, Mexico, New Mexico, New Jersey, and Dominican Republic. Second, the gargantuan task these guys have to complete is similar to that of Fizcarraldo wanting to pass his boat through a mountain in Herzog’s film. These similarities are evident in the scene where they have to pass the trucks through an unstable bridge which feels like its about to collapse. In fact, even the poster for Sorcerer is similar in nature to Fitzcarraldo’s poster. And just like Fitzcarraldo in Herzog’s film, these guys won’t give up no matter what. So if you ask me, there’s a possibility that Friedkin’s Sorcerer might have influenced Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo.

One of the best things this film has going for it is its atmosphere. Once the trucks get going down the forest, the film offers us impenetrable forests, raging thunderstorms, hard rain, mud and dirt! The scene in which the truck is crossing the bridge is awesome, because its raining literally buckets of rain! The river is overflowing, the bridge is about to collapse, the truck is swinging left and right, it’s an awesome sequence. A level of surrealism nearing the end of the film took me by surprise. When Roy Scheider sort of goes crazy and begins to hallucinate and see things. That scene was a nice surprise. All in all, this movie has lots of style, lots of atmosphere, laced with a simple yet effectively told story.

The one negative point I have about the film is that it has some loopholes. For example, it is never explained why they need to use these specific sticks of dynamite. I mean, couldn’t they just buy other cases of dynamite somewhere else and just fly them there by plane or something? Why do they have to go through such lengths to use these specific sticks? It didn’t make sense to me at all that these guys were risking their lives in such a way for a couple of cases of dynamite that could have been bought somewhere else. I mean, was this American Oil Company so cheap that they couldn’t do that? Especially when their fuel is burning so profusely? But whatever, if they had done that, we wouldn’t have a movie. I just wish they had explained, or given some sort of excuse as to why they had to risk their lives to do this, when they could have just as easily solved the problem in a more simple fashion. It seems like lazy storytelling to me.

But all in all, this film is excellent. It’s got Friedkin’s excellent direction. He really wanted us to feel the griminess these guys were living in. He wanted us to feel the blood, sweat and tears that these guys spent while trying to achieve their task. But most of all, I liked that spirit of not giving up against the tough situations that life hurls at us along the way. It’s all about finding a way to go around the problems, solving the situation instead of lingering in despair and giving up. No matter how impossible things may seem. Though in the end, our fates are unpredictable and disaster could strike at any given moment, what matters is that for as long as we can and while we are alive, we must never give up in the face of disaster.

Rating: 4 out of 5