Lucio Fulci

Some call it The Gates of Hell. Others know it as City of the Living Dead. The Italians know it as Paura nella città dei morti viventi, which translated literally is Fear in the City of the Living Dead. My mom (and probably yours) knows it as "a disgusting zombie flick I've never heard of and will definitely never see."

It was one of those "badge of courage" horror flicks among my youthful friends and myself. Along with titles like I Spit On Your Grave, Bloodsucking Freaks, and Snuff, The Gates of Hell (as it was originally released here in the States) was one of the horror movies you had to make it all the way through if you wanted to hang with the big boys. And by big boys I mean brave 14-year-old horror nerds. Obviously.

Enough blather. Catalog polisher Blue Underground has just announced a City of the Living Dead Blu-ray, and I for one cannot wait to see what a woman vomiting high-definition intestines looks like on my television. To be released on May 25, the COTLD / TGOH blu-ray will provide three new featurettes, in addition to some previously-released marketing stuff and gory treats. Full details and cover art are available at DVDActive, which, by the way, is a fantastic resource for new DVD announcements. Just saying.

And yes, you're probably right: Zombie is most likely Fulci's finest fright flick. And then The Beyond. Or House By the Cemetery. This one just holds some nostalgia value for me. Plus it's really gross. Not even a particularly good movie, opinion be told, but lots of fun for the gorehounds.

Every religion needs its place of worship, but most religions also subscribe to the idea of a holy land. The holy land is a place of immeasurable reverence where the God (or gods) of their people can be honored in a more communal, and more dedicated fashion. Jews go to synagogues, Christians to church, and Muslims to mosques ... and inconveniently all have their holy land in the same place. For horrorphiles like me, the holy land is Austin, TX and our temple is Terror Tuesday at the Alamo Drafthouse.

Every Tuesday night for the past several years, the Alamo Drafthouse has been witness to some of the greatest, the cheesiest, and the schlockiest horror films ever made. In this hallowed theater, these late night forays into madness find joyous purchase no matter what textbook definition of quality they may lack. The high priest of horror in this temple is one Zack Carlson who introduces each movie with the enthusiasm of a carnival barker and an unmatched encyclopedic knowledge. He warms up the crowd with wit and excitement to the point that the crowd can be quite frenzied by the time the reels start spinning. I feel entirely at home in this Mecca of genre love and I have decided to make it my charge to attend as many Terror Tuesdays this year as humanly possible.

Each week I will break down both the film featured and the subsequent audience reaction. For this, the first Terror Tuesday of the year, Zack has chosen Lucio Fulci's Gates of Hell

Whenever people find out I write about horror films for a living, I always get the same question: "why do you like that stuff?"

Depending on my mood, the answer can be philosophical, snarky, or just plain honest. The honest answer is that I take a perverse glee in watching people die horribly in pretend circumstances. I admire the ingenuity of the screenwriters who come up with awful ways to send people to the afterlife, the FX technicians who bring these horrible visions to the screen, and the actors and directors who work so hard to give them emotional impact (or in some cases, just gross us out). There are no shortage of fantastic death scenes out there, and I'm going to be shining the spotlight on them in the weeks and months ahead. Hopefully some of these will pique your interest in seeing the films they came from--or if you've already viewed them, give you a fond trip down memory lane.

Jump past the break for my first clip, a segment from Lucio Fulci's classic 1980 Italian horror flick, City of the Living Dead.

The golden age of Italian horror was in the 70's but directors like Dario Argento (Giallo), Lamberto Bava (Demons), Michele Soavi (Cemetery Man) and Ruggero Deodato (Cannibal Holocaust) carry on the tradition of this ever-shifting genre today. Its influence can be felt in many American slasher films of the 80's--a time when giallo had a renaissance. John Carpenter has often cited Argento's early work as an influence on Halloween. This influence can also be felt by many contemporary Asian horror directors like Kiyoshi Kurosawa.

The roots of Italian horror go back to 1929 when the Mondadori publishing house introduced a series of books in yellow covers. These novels were created to promote detective stories that were influenced by British and American mystery fiction. The paperbacks were synonymous with their distinctive color and became known as giallo novels--giallo meaning 'yellow' in Italian.

From the 1940's to the early 1950's, Italian cinema was deeply rooted in a neorealist style, reflecting life post-World War II. At the dawn of giallo cinema in the 1960's, the fantastical elements associated with American film were foreign to Italian audiences. But soon the giallo genre developed a distinct Italian style like its literary counterpart. The films were associated with intense color, fashionable style and theatrical visual elements. Italian cinema became more experimental in the 60's leading into the 70's. Though the mystery component was maintained, eventually giallo focused more on Gothic horror and psychological thrills, steeped in healthy doses of eroticism and graphic violence. Themes like exoticism, alienation and identity emerged and became the earmark of the genre, made famous by favorites like Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci and Mario Bava.