In one of the "Horror Etc." podcasts on zombie movies they pointed out an Italian zombie movie from 1980 called "Nightmare City". So I decided to check it out....
Nightmare City (1980)
![]()
Imdb link
One Line Synopsis: Blood drinking zombies emerge from a plane exposed to radiation and go on a rampage, slicing, dicing, and biting their way across the Italian countryside.
Genre: Italian zombie movie
It seems that Italian zombie movies count as a genre unto themselves with an emphasis on low budget gore and free reign on the zombie rules. Nightmare City is very low budget, but with that comes a certain charm. My copy of the film had the option of dubbed or nothing, but it doesn't look like the film would be any better acted in the original Italian and if the lines are correctly translated, the script is horrendous.
A journalist is going to interview an expert on nuclear physics and a mysterious plane lands at the airport. Out of the plane comes a horde of zombies who then proceed to kill those around them with whatever they can get their hands on. They are surrounded by armed police, some with machine guns, but it seems that so long as the bullets miss their head nothing can stop the zombies.
![]()
So the important question is: what do we mean by "zombies" in this movie? All credit to them for being original, but their explanation for how these zombies were created and what the rules for them are tries to be scientific but ends up absurd and unnecessarily convoluted. Why have a contrived explanation which is confidently asserted based on very limited data when you can just say "we don't know"? Well, it's more fun that way I guess. Let's not reveal the "science" of it just yet. First let's see what these zombies are capable of.
Well they can use weapons like knives and machetes. No surprise there. In "Night of the Living Dead" a zombie was able to pick up a large rock and raise it over his head specifically in order to smash a car window. Zombies using tools is not a big shift from Romero's first zombie movie. However, I have never seen this many zombies using tools this confidently. What's more there are quite a few zombies using guns. These guns would have to be reloaded of course. Let's not forget that in Romero's movie "Day of the Dead", zombies had to be trained to use guns and even then they needed to have learnt to use them when they were alive. What's more, while the zombies in "Nightmare City" cannot speak, they can gesture to one another. They also seem to be able to move tactically enough to target a military air base and various power stations.
So what's the "science" behind this then? Well, naturally the zombies are caused by radiation. This radiation has strengthened them, apparently making them "indestructible". Does the equivalent word in Italian mean something different perhaps? In any case, this means that the only way to kill them is to target the brain. However, it turns out being exposed to radiation isn't all good. (Imagine that.) It seems that while they are apparently made extra strong by exposure to radiation they need to replace their contaminated blood. What better way to do that than to drink it? *facepalm*
![]()
![]()
I presume that the zombie make up is not supposed to be showing rotting flesh, but rather radiation burns. If I'm wrong about that, then the zombie make-up is blooming awful. But if I'm right, then I guess it's not so bad. It seems that the radiation from the zombies can create more zombies, so that'll be their explanation for why a zombie bite will create zombies. That said, we never really see anyone turn into a zombie. We just see people who were ordinary humans earlier in the movie acting like zombies later on. Also, it must be said that the main action often seems to involve familiar faces. I can think of four possibilities to explain this. 1) These zombies can move extremely fast when they want to. 2) The zombies are coincidentally driving to the same places as our protagonists. (Did I mention, they can drive?) 3) We are expected to think that these are different zombies each time. 4) They are actually different actors with very similar radiation burn make-up caked all over their face.
![]()
Okay, I'm now going to relate a little mini-plot from the middle of the movie to give you a bit of a flavour of what this movie is like. A soldier turns up at a big house. He walks into the back garden (I guess the front door was open) and meets a couple at their swimming pool (a man and a woman). He has a message for the young woman from her father, a commander responsible for trying to deal with the zombie threat. The soldier's message is simply that he needs to take her to see her father on the base. He seems happy enough to take both of them, but he has no idea what the purpose of taking them actually is. The couple are unsure about this and tell the soldier to wait out front for them while they get dressed.
While the soldier waits outside, they decide to ring the base and find out from her father himself precisely what this is all about. At this point zombies are encroaching on the house. One of them cuts the phone line. Yes, that's right, these zombies are intelligent enough to find and cut phone lines. The couple decide that what the commander on the base wants to see them about cannot be terribly important. The man suggests they leave "that idiot" waiting for them at the front of the house, while they drive off (without him noticing?) to have their planned weekend away. Thankfully the poor soldier given this thankless task doesn't have to spend a long time waiting. The couple are barely away before he's being ripped apart for his blood by radiation zombies.
Later in the movie, they are out in the middle of nowhere (and to be frank, it looked more fun in the swimming pool in their back garden) and the man hears the news over the radio about the havoc the zombies are causing in the city. The woman says she's worried about why she can hear barking when there are no dogs around. (Always a worrying sign... Um, what?) So what's their conclusion? "Maybe we should go back to the city." What, you mean the city you just said was in chaos due to mad homicidal attacks? Oh of course.
![]()
While the effects aren't always great, there's plenty of interesting moments. There's a figure who slowly turns around, revealing the radiation burn betraying his identity as one of the radiation zombies. There's a surgical procedure interrupted by zombies. There's zombies being held at bay by machine guns and grenades. This certainly isn't a boring movie. However, one particularly bad bit of effects is where a bullet is fired at a model and the hair is knocked upwards, making it's fakeness far too obvious:
![]()
Our main protagonist in the movie (though it's difficult to be sure because he's absent from an awful lot of scenes) seems to be a journalist who wants to make sure everyone knows the truth. In the second half of the movie, the wife of this protagonist decides to tell us that really this is all mankind's fault. It's the whole "we brought it on ourselves" thing that is quite common to zombie movies. Still, after they've just narrowly escaped a zombie attack with their lives it seems odd for her to calmly say that these monsters were "created by monsters seeking power" i.e. created by human beings. It's especially daft when we remember that these aren't the more passive lumbering creatures from Romero's movies. They move tactically, cut phone lines, fire guns and show no mercy. To characterise that as the fault of misuse of technology is pretty dodgy reasoning. Guns being used to murder the innocent might be a misuse of technology, but an outbreak of blood-drinking radiation people is clearly a case of really bad luck.
Her attempts to draw morals from a zombie outbreak become even more laughable where she tries to point out the futility of technology. She notes that technology has provided us with coffee and coca cola, neither of which are terribly good for us. (Um... hang on, we've had coffee for a really long time now.) She says that we don't really need the advantages of technology and it's taken a zombie outbreak for us to realise that (presumably because technology is all being destroyed). The journalist ends up agreeing with her. Then he turns the radio on and they both listen for more news. *facepalm* BTW where do molotov cocktails fit into this "we don't really need technological advances" argument?
Oh and if you thought that Ben punching Barbara and knocking her out in "Night of the Living Dead" was a bit overboard, get a load of this. The main protagonist in "Nightmare City" punches his wife to stop her hysteria. Then the two of them to passionately kiss straight away afterwards.
![]()
The final thing is to give away the ending. There isn't really a plot, so don't worry too much about this. I had this ending spoiled (if that's the right word) for me too and I think it was helpful. Even knowing this was coming, I still couldn't quite believe they'd actually done it. So, here goes... At the end of the movie, the journalist and his wife.... wake up in bed. It was all a nightmare! This is then an opportunity for the director to reuse some of the footage from the beginning of the movie so we can watch the plane land all over again. Now the nightmare becomes reality! Roll credits.... Lol!
![]()
Nightmare City is badly made nonsense, but it's probably the closest thing I've ever seen to a "so bad it's good" movie. The characters have little reason behind their actions, the "scientific" premise of the movie is explained in detail after contrived detail and the actions of the bad guys follow no clear ordered pattern. There's some fun action, some shocking violence and cheesy fake gore aplenty, but you have to take what you can get from the movie because it isn't going to draw you in. I had thought that "Hellraiser" was a bit of a "so bad it's good" movie, but I think I was possibly a little harsh on it. "Hellraiser" had some pretty reasonable performances, a lot of fun ideas and a plot with a logical progression. That's not really true of "Nightmare City". If you decide to watch it don't expect it to be any good, but for snarking purposes you could do a lot worse.
D- (Bad movie that's not particularly entertaining. - The same rating I gave "Twilight".)
x-posted to![[info]]()
candycorncomm
Nightmare City (1980)
Imdb link
One Line Synopsis: Blood drinking zombies emerge from a plane exposed to radiation and go on a rampage, slicing, dicing, and biting their way across the Italian countryside.
Genre: Italian zombie movie
It seems that Italian zombie movies count as a genre unto themselves with an emphasis on low budget gore and free reign on the zombie rules. Nightmare City is very low budget, but with that comes a certain charm. My copy of the film had the option of dubbed or nothing, but it doesn't look like the film would be any better acted in the original Italian and if the lines are correctly translated, the script is horrendous.
A journalist is going to interview an expert on nuclear physics and a mysterious plane lands at the airport. Out of the plane comes a horde of zombies who then proceed to kill those around them with whatever they can get their hands on. They are surrounded by armed police, some with machine guns, but it seems that so long as the bullets miss their head nothing can stop the zombies.
So the important question is: what do we mean by "zombies" in this movie? All credit to them for being original, but their explanation for how these zombies were created and what the rules for them are tries to be scientific but ends up absurd and unnecessarily convoluted. Why have a contrived explanation which is confidently asserted based on very limited data when you can just say "we don't know"? Well, it's more fun that way I guess. Let's not reveal the "science" of it just yet. First let's see what these zombies are capable of.
Well they can use weapons like knives and machetes. No surprise there. In "Night of the Living Dead" a zombie was able to pick up a large rock and raise it over his head specifically in order to smash a car window. Zombies using tools is not a big shift from Romero's first zombie movie. However, I have never seen this many zombies using tools this confidently. What's more there are quite a few zombies using guns. These guns would have to be reloaded of course. Let's not forget that in Romero's movie "Day of the Dead", zombies had to be trained to use guns and even then they needed to have learnt to use them when they were alive. What's more, while the zombies in "Nightmare City" cannot speak, they can gesture to one another. They also seem to be able to move tactically enough to target a military air base and various power stations.
So what's the "science" behind this then? Well, naturally the zombies are caused by radiation. This radiation has strengthened them, apparently making them "indestructible". Does the equivalent word in Italian mean something different perhaps? In any case, this means that the only way to kill them is to target the brain. However, it turns out being exposed to radiation isn't all good. (Imagine that.) It seems that while they are apparently made extra strong by exposure to radiation they need to replace their contaminated blood. What better way to do that than to drink it? *facepalm*
I presume that the zombie make up is not supposed to be showing rotting flesh, but rather radiation burns. If I'm wrong about that, then the zombie make-up is blooming awful. But if I'm right, then I guess it's not so bad. It seems that the radiation from the zombies can create more zombies, so that'll be their explanation for why a zombie bite will create zombies. That said, we never really see anyone turn into a zombie. We just see people who were ordinary humans earlier in the movie acting like zombies later on. Also, it must be said that the main action often seems to involve familiar faces. I can think of four possibilities to explain this. 1) These zombies can move extremely fast when they want to. 2) The zombies are coincidentally driving to the same places as our protagonists. (Did I mention, they can drive?) 3) We are expected to think that these are different zombies each time. 4) They are actually different actors with very similar radiation burn make-up caked all over their face.
Okay, I'm now going to relate a little mini-plot from the middle of the movie to give you a bit of a flavour of what this movie is like. A soldier turns up at a big house. He walks into the back garden (I guess the front door was open) and meets a couple at their swimming pool (a man and a woman). He has a message for the young woman from her father, a commander responsible for trying to deal with the zombie threat. The soldier's message is simply that he needs to take her to see her father on the base. He seems happy enough to take both of them, but he has no idea what the purpose of taking them actually is. The couple are unsure about this and tell the soldier to wait out front for them while they get dressed.
While the soldier waits outside, they decide to ring the base and find out from her father himself precisely what this is all about. At this point zombies are encroaching on the house. One of them cuts the phone line. Yes, that's right, these zombies are intelligent enough to find and cut phone lines. The couple decide that what the commander on the base wants to see them about cannot be terribly important. The man suggests they leave "that idiot" waiting for them at the front of the house, while they drive off (without him noticing?) to have their planned weekend away. Thankfully the poor soldier given this thankless task doesn't have to spend a long time waiting. The couple are barely away before he's being ripped apart for his blood by radiation zombies.
Later in the movie, they are out in the middle of nowhere (and to be frank, it looked more fun in the swimming pool in their back garden) and the man hears the news over the radio about the havoc the zombies are causing in the city. The woman says she's worried about why she can hear barking when there are no dogs around. (Always a worrying sign... Um, what?) So what's their conclusion? "Maybe we should go back to the city." What, you mean the city you just said was in chaos due to mad homicidal attacks? Oh of course.
While the effects aren't always great, there's plenty of interesting moments. There's a figure who slowly turns around, revealing the radiation burn betraying his identity as one of the radiation zombies. There's a surgical procedure interrupted by zombies. There's zombies being held at bay by machine guns and grenades. This certainly isn't a boring movie. However, one particularly bad bit of effects is where a bullet is fired at a model and the hair is knocked upwards, making it's fakeness far too obvious:
Our main protagonist in the movie (though it's difficult to be sure because he's absent from an awful lot of scenes) seems to be a journalist who wants to make sure everyone knows the truth. In the second half of the movie, the wife of this protagonist decides to tell us that really this is all mankind's fault. It's the whole "we brought it on ourselves" thing that is quite common to zombie movies. Still, after they've just narrowly escaped a zombie attack with their lives it seems odd for her to calmly say that these monsters were "created by monsters seeking power" i.e. created by human beings. It's especially daft when we remember that these aren't the more passive lumbering creatures from Romero's movies. They move tactically, cut phone lines, fire guns and show no mercy. To characterise that as the fault of misuse of technology is pretty dodgy reasoning. Guns being used to murder the innocent might be a misuse of technology, but an outbreak of blood-drinking radiation people is clearly a case of really bad luck.
Her attempts to draw morals from a zombie outbreak become even more laughable where she tries to point out the futility of technology. She notes that technology has provided us with coffee and coca cola, neither of which are terribly good for us. (Um... hang on, we've had coffee for a really long time now.) She says that we don't really need the advantages of technology and it's taken a zombie outbreak for us to realise that (presumably because technology is all being destroyed). The journalist ends up agreeing with her. Then he turns the radio on and they both listen for more news. *facepalm* BTW where do molotov cocktails fit into this "we don't really need technological advances" argument?
Oh and if you thought that Ben punching Barbara and knocking her out in "Night of the Living Dead" was a bit overboard, get a load of this. The main protagonist in "Nightmare City" punches his wife to stop her hysteria. Then the two of them to passionately kiss straight away afterwards.
The final thing is to give away the ending. There isn't really a plot, so don't worry too much about this. I had this ending spoiled (if that's the right word) for me too and I think it was helpful. Even knowing this was coming, I still couldn't quite believe they'd actually done it. So, here goes... At the end of the movie, the journalist and his wife.... wake up in bed. It was all a nightmare! This is then an opportunity for the director to reuse some of the footage from the beginning of the movie so we can watch the plane land all over again. Now the nightmare becomes reality! Roll credits.... Lol!
Nightmare City is badly made nonsense, but it's probably the closest thing I've ever seen to a "so bad it's good" movie. The characters have little reason behind their actions, the "scientific" premise of the movie is explained in detail after contrived detail and the actions of the bad guys follow no clear ordered pattern. There's some fun action, some shocking violence and cheesy fake gore aplenty, but you have to take what you can get from the movie because it isn't going to draw you in. I had thought that "Hellraiser" was a bit of a "so bad it's good" movie, but I think I was possibly a little harsh on it. "Hellraiser" had some pretty reasonable performances, a lot of fun ideas and a plot with a logical progression. That's not really true of "Nightmare City". If you decide to watch it don't expect it to be any good, but for snarking purposes you could do a lot worse.
D- (Bad movie that's not particularly entertaining. - The same rating I gave "Twilight".)
x-posted to
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif?v=87.2)
candycorncomm