Review of Nightmare City (1980) by R.john X — 15 Nov 2009

I would suggest watching the 13 minute interview extra with Lenzi before undertaking this movie. While there are spoilers - but seriously, you can't be concerned with that! - Lenzi is a hilarious crank. Complaining about the producers, who for some reason he needs to point out is a woman, tearing at Hugo Stiglitz, who he felt saddled with, and finally crediting himself for all the better parts of the production.

This picture is only notable for a few reasons all of them subtexts to the main action. For instance, the take no prisoners approach - meaning that no character is safe from death. And while there are some impossible escapes, especially, during the hospital attack. But main character's narrative arcs are abruptly ended by brutal death - the military men's families suffer the worse. If it were not for the second grade shocker ending - It was all a dream that could actually happen! - then Nightmare City could rank as the beginning of the desolate, realist, dystopian horror movement of the 80s.

Another notable aspect of the movie is that includes most of the cliches that would come to dominate genre movies of the 80s. The rogue truth teller (who isn't fired, because he quits!), the vigilante success where cautious bureaucracy fails, the monster unleashed by military-industrial-corporate greed/ arrogance, science is not to blame!

One of the strangest things about the movie is how it is edited or blocked. Whenever we see the mutants/ zombies they are standing or run to a dead stop so that the camera can linger on them. The close-ups of the meatball makeup meant to suggest radiation burns, I can understand, but not the other stuff. Its as if the editor of the movie kept in all the seconds when Lenzi shouted Action or Cut! Its a really strange thing and makes the movie feel a bit off center.

While I have seen other movies where the zombies shoot guns or learn to use weapons or ride horses, but I have never seen a movie where the zombies only use weapons. This might be the first.