When a radioactive spill causes thousands of citizens to be turned in flesh eating super-zombies, the military do everything they can to stop the ever increasing threat to humanity, and failing horribly. The film opens with a great scene when a unidentified plane lands at the airport. Authorities surround the plane with no idea who is on board. The door is lowered and a hundred zombies come running out stabbing, biting, beating and shooting everyone in sight in an unbelievable sequence. So right off the bat we realize these are not the traditional Ramero or Fulci zombies we are used to, in fact they are like nothing you have ever seen before. Soon the insanely energetic zombies raid a TV station raising all kinds off hell including one woman getting her boob cut off. It becomes quite apparent that these zombies mean business, their true plan is complete domination, and these contaminated mutants do not slowly roam the streets, these bastards run fast as hell and will go to any extreme to get their victim. During all this madness we follow a local reporter Dean Miller and wife who is a doctor as they try to find their own ways to escape the atomic zombies, and many die along the way.
Nightmare City, aka Incubo sulla città contaminata , was released in 1980 and was directed by legendary Italian exploitation film marker Umberto Lenzi, who directed some sleazy flicks such as Cannibal Ferox, Eaten Alive and Nightmare Beach. Nightmare made it on the Video Nasties list in 1982 almost the same time as Lenzi's other film Eaten Alive! It was finally passed uncut on January 13, 2003.
The great DVD company Blue Underground released a superb DVD of Nightmare City in 2008 including an interview with Umberto Lenzi named Tales of the contaminated city. During the commentary, Lenzi states that this film is based around events that could really happen. He compares the contamination in the film to the AIDS epidemic.
Nightmare City is like nothing else you have ever seen. It feels more like an action movie than a zombie film, and at the heart of the film it truly is. It really feels like Lenzi was just trying to cash in on the latest trend which happened to be zombies, so he made an all out crazy non stop action flick and decided to throw some contaminated mutants. The film is a roller coaster ride of madness from beginning to end including automatic weapons, knives, exploding heads, limb tearing, and just about anything else you can imagine making it a really fun movie. The zombies don't look anything like traditional zombies, most of them look the same with melted faces, but the special effects crew make up for that with all the other effects that take place through out the film. Lenzi really went all out on this film creating scene after scene of zombie action and never letting up. You get more bullet flying action in this zombie film than you do from straight action films released around the same time. Although not very scary, I love this film for what it is, a straight up zombie action gore fest that is completely entertaining and a lot of fun.
Rating: B-
Review by Jason
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