5 REASONS TO WATCH: City of the Living Dead (1980)

5 REASONS TO WATCH CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD (1980)

1. HORROR PRIEST

Horror priests are always great! Especially when they are lit from beneath!

2. MAGGOT HORROR

An insane amount of live maggots are thrown at the actors. They are doing their best to keep their eyes and mouths closed. And the lady vomits.

3. THE LIVING DEAD ARE DEAD

Sure, some of the zombies appear from and vanish into thin air (this can be explained though), but the dead are dead. Emotionless. There are no rabid animalistic rage-filled living dead here. Only DEAD living dead. And one of the living deads walks so close to the camera that it goes a bit out of focus, but scares the hell out of some kid in the movie!

4. HUMAN AND PUPPET VOMIT GUTS

Part of the intestine vomiting scene is made with a puppet, but the actress does an honorable amount of that too. No CGI here!
Is it just me or does it look like the girl is eating a red frog in the first picture?

5. THE ENDING

It makes no sense. No-one understands it. This kid runs happily towards these two persons who've just killed the horror priest in some underground graveyard thing and saved the world. The couple suddenly freaks out, the screen freezes and dissolves with a stop motion effect.

Well, I'll force it to make sense!
NOTE: The following is only for the fans of the movie. Others can stop reading now as it might be too boring and nonsensical for you.

The original title of the movie is Paura nella città dei morti viventi. The direct English translation is Fear in the City of the Living Dead. Nearly every time something horrible happens, people become afraid of something before it actually happens. At one point a person sees a corpse, freaks out and someone appears (possibly the horror priest) and kills that person by shoving a handful of maggots on her face (and based on the sounds, she is fed to death with the maggots). In another scene people in a bar start to freak out. Then they start to see some ghost zombies outside of the bar. When the people freak out some more, the dead suddenly teleport in. One scene has a zombie girl spooking the hell out of a little boy, but disappears after confronting an adult who stays calm and closes his eyes. So, based on that, it seems that the real reason these horrors are around is the fact that people are scared. And even though they had just killed the horror priest and burned a mausoleum full of zombies to death, the horror isn't over because they are freaking out all over again.

So, in short:

A psychic has a séance with a group of people. As one of them seems to have a vision about a priest and some future horrors, people start to become scared. The more they become afraid, the more real all the horrors become. That fear even ends up changing this innocent kid and a happy situation into horrific terror. That's fear in the city of the living dead.