City of the Living Dead - Limited Edition [Blu-ray]

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NEW A Trip Through Bonaventure Cemetery (1080i; 4:49) – a newly-filmed drone exploration of Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah, Georgia taking the viewer through the various sights from the film. The rest of the extras consist primarily of interviews and Q&A sessions. Zombie Kings is an interview with production designer Massimo Antonello Geleng, who worked with a remarkable collection of directors throughout his career including Fulci, Dario Argento, Ruggero Deodato, Sergio Martino, Umberto Lenzi, Luigi Cozzi, Antonio Margheriti, Lamberto Bava, Michele Soavi, and many more. Needless to say, he has an abundance of stories to tell, and he also offers some interesting thoughts about why zombies have proven so fascinating throughout the years. Requiem for Bob is an interview with Giovanni Lombardo Radice, who says that despite having watched City of the Living Dead countless times, the most gruesome moments still affect him. He talks about both his career and his personal life, including working with Fulci, and his struggles with addiction. (He also has some very sweet dogs!) The Meat Munching Movies of Gino De Rossi features the late special effects artist talking about his work on various Fulci films. He also shows off some of the props from his workshop, including the rig that he designed for the drill scene in City of the Living Dead, and some of the infamous hooks from Cannibal Ferox. He admits to some discomfort with having participated in the animal killings in the latter film. Carlo of the Living Dead is an interview with actor Carlo De Mejo, focusing on his work with Fulci. He speculates that the bizarre ending was a matter of the producers wanting to leave the door open for a sequel. Reflections on Fulci, a new appraisal of Fulci’s Gothic period by actor, writer and director Andy Nyman (Ghost Stories)

Seamless branching – watch in English Language w/ English credit sequences and watch Italian language w/ Italian credit sequences. Regardless of whether or not Fulci and Sacchetti drew any inspiration from Lovecraft, there’s nothing especially Lovecraftian about City of the Living Dead. There aren’t necessarily any dreams in the Witch House of Dunwich horror that they conceived for the film, though that’s obviously open to interpretation. With or without Lovecraft’s influence, the atmosphere of Fulci’s supernatural horror films frequently has been referred to as “dreamlike,” and City of the Living Dead is no exception. Yet that’s arguably a rather facile and superficial description that doesn’t quite do justice to the uncanny ways in which Fulci was able to get under the skin of viewers (or into their eyeballs, as the case may be). In City of the Living Dead, the spatial discontinuity of Lovecraft’s dream worlds has been replaced by a kind of temporal discontinuity instead. As a result, trying to connect the dots of the genuinely incomprehensible narrative is an exercise in futility. Any attempt to understand or interpret the plot of the film is the equivalent of tilting at windmills: an endeavor doomed to failure from the start. It’s all beside the point, anyway. City of the Living Dead is really about mood, not story, and the best way to experience it is to let go of the need to rationalize everything and just to let that mood work its magic. There’s no rationalizing the inherently irrational nature of the supernatural anyway. In addition to the exotic MacColl and boisterous George, several genre regulars populate the cast: Giovanni Lombardo Radice ( Cannibal Ferox) as Dunwich’s ill-fated scapegoat, Carlo De Mejo ( The House by the Cemetery) as a therapist, Janet Ågren ( Red Sonja) as his neurotic patient, Daniela Doria ( The New York Ripper) as the aforementioned gut-puking girl, Michele Soavi ( Demons) as her lover, Robert Sampson ( Re-Animator) as the local sheriff, Venantino Venantini ( Cannibal Ferox) as a father with anger management issues, Perry Pirkanen ( Cannibal Holocaust) as a gravedigger, and Fulci himself as a doctor. Regardless of whether or not Fulci and Sacchetti drew any inspiration from Lovecraft, there’s nothing especially Lovecraftian about City of the Living Dead. There aren’t necessarily any dreams in the Witch House of Dunwich horror that they conceived for the film, though that’s obviously open to interpretation. With or without Lovecraft’s influence, the atmosphere of Fulci’s supernatural horror films frequently has been referred to as “dreamlike,” and City of the Living Dead is no exception. Yet that’s arguably a rather facile and superficial description that doesn’t quite do justice to the uncanny ways in which Fulci was able to get under the skin of viewers (or into their eyeballs, as the case may be). In City of the Living Dead, the spatial discontinuity of Lovecraft’s dream worlds has been replaced by a kind of temporal discontinuity instead. As a result, trying to connect the dots of the genuinely incomprehensible narrative is an exercise in futility. Any attempt to understand or interpret the plot of the film is the equivalent of tilting at windmills: it’s an endeavor doomed to failure from the start. That’s all beside the point, anyway. City of the Living Dead is really about mood, not story, and the best way to experience it is to let go of the need to rationalize everything and just to let that mood work its magic. There’s no rationalizing the inherently irrational nature of the supernatural anyway. Bonus features all around are incredibly robust, with a fine mixture of new and archival materials. Interviews tend to be candid and informative: production designer Massimo Antonello Geleng sits, axe in hand, on the front stoop of his woodshed, explaining how he went from working with Fellini and Visconti to Deodato and Fulci; Giovanni Radice (Bob) humorously dishes on his distaste for the horror genre before going into how he came to work for Il Maestro. There are archival featurettes with SFX artist Gino De Rossi, actors Catriona MacColl, Venantino Venantini (paired with filmmaker Ruggero Deodato), and Carlo De Mejo, as well as composer Fabio Frizzi. We also get an image gallery, trailers, and a drone-shot tour of the Georgia cemetery used to stand in for New England in the film, which is set to some atmospheric music. There’s far more than what was just listed here, as well as four audio commentaries, including one newly-commissioned from Samm Deighan. All in all, it’s more than you’ll be able to get through in a single weekend.City of the Living Dead has several classic Fulci gross-out scenes. We’ve got twenty-two pounds of live maggots loaded into a wind machine; a teenager’s head being fed into a lathe; poor Michele Soavi being forced to watch as his girlfriend vomits up the entire length of her intestines in excruciating anatomical detail. The fact that these effects hold up without losing their gut-churning effectiveness under the scrutiny of 4K resolution is a testament to Gino De Rossi’s SFX genius—with some scenes being even grosser than I remember, thanks to the ability to see, say, the maggots wriggling individually thanks to the crisp restoration on Cauldron’s UHD restoration. Cauldron offers "seamless branching" in which you can watch the film in the English language with English credit sequences, and also watch the Italian language version with Italian credit sequences. The BD-66 (feature size: 53.0 GB) delivers a mean video bitrate of 79.3 Mbps along with an overall bitrate of 81.7 Mbps for the full disc. The Blu-ray is given an MPEG-4 AVC-encode on a BD-50 (disc size: 31.64 GB), which carries an average video bitrate of 37138 kbps. Three Q&As are included — Venantini and Cannibal Holocaust filmmaker Ruggero Deodato (who doesn’t speak much) from a 2017 event in Rome, MacColl from a 2010 screening of The Beyond in Scotland, and Frizzi from a 2012 screening of Zombie in Scotland — along with 42 minutes of interviews with MacColl, De Mejo, Jovine, Venantini, Soavi, Sacchetti, Geleng, Rossi, Salvati, Rizzi, actors Antonella Interlenghi and Luca Venantini, and assistant makeup artist Rosario Prestopino from the 2008 documentary Paura: Lucio Fulci Remembered. A medium has a mysterious vision of a priest hanging himself... A seemingly dead woman awakes screaming in her coffin... And in the sleepy New England town of Dunwich, a girl vomits up her intestines and a local misfit has a drill bit ploughed into his cranium... These hallucinogenic, often grotesque visions punctuate a skeletal story telling of a reporter (Christopher George, The Exterminator, Pieces) and a psychic (Catriona MacColl, The House by the Cemetary, The Beyond) who must race agaisnt time to prevent hordes of rotting corpses spewing forth from the gates of hell... City of the Living Dead offers a whole grab bag of usual Fulci nastiness, including an infamous scene where a large drill slowly enters the skull of a victim. And in classic Italian horror fashion, these zombies are much more than your usual dumb undead. The creatures here have a proclivity for ripping body parts right off victims, including but not limited to scalps, faces, intestines, etc. Things get grizzly after the gates of hell open, and Fulci leaves it all open to interpretation. There’s something really engaging about much of Italian horror’s refusal to draw conclusions, and that effort works remarkably well here between all the bloodletting.

The final commentary is with actor Giovanni Lombardo Radice, moderated by Calum Waddell. Radice is a lot of fun and knows how to tell a great story. He talks about his co-stars and his support of censorship, but only when geared toward younger viewers. He has fond memories of the crew and great stories about the special effects and his death scene. He also shares his thoughts on American society. NEW Requiem for Bob: An Interview with Giovanni Lombardo Radice (28:00, 1080p) - another featurette produced by Eugenio Ercolani. In this 2017 interview in Rome, Radice appears relaxed at home with his dogs. He immediately got my attention when he brought up how Deep Red (1975) and Alien (1979) made a big impression on him. Radice discusses his familial roots and details his career in the theatre. He also goes into his positive relationship with Lucio Fulci and friendship with Michele Soavi. Radice recounts an unforgettable episode Fulci had with the girl who portrayed Venantino Venantini's daugther in City of the Living Dead. Radice also spends time explaining how the crew pulled off his famous scene. In addition, Radice discusses collaborating with Ruggero Deodato, other filmmakers, and several Italian actors. In Italian, with optional English subtitles.

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On Stage: Q&A with Venantino Venantini & Ruggero Deodato (1080p; 46:03) – A lengthy interview with Venantini and Deodato filmed in Rome in 2017. Cauldron has hidden a couple of easter eggs on the extras disc, too, including the videotape version of The Gates of Hell presented in SD. Just press left from the Image Gallery on the extras disc, press enter and you’ll get it! And if you press right from the Image Gallery, you’ll be presented with Italian actor Christopher George’s Playgirl spread from 1974. A couple of very fun easter eggs that I’m sure fans will love. While Zombie before it and the latter two Gates of Hell installments that followed were presented in scope, Fulci and frequent cinematographer Sergio Salvati opted to shoot City of the Living Dead in flat 1.85:1. Although ostensibly less “cinematic,” the conventional aspect ratio lends itself to a classic horror atmosphere, emphasized by increasingly lingering plumes of fog and a melodious yet eerie score by Fabio Frizzi ( Zombie, The Beyond). Archival Interviews with Cast and Crew from Paura, Lucio Fulci Remembered Vol. 1 (Upscaled SD – 42:42)