I have had this film sitting on my shelf, teasing me, for some time now. It is one of those notorious Lucio Fulci gore-fests that I have been wanting to watch, but for one reason or another kept putting it off. I explained it to myself as a title I had to be "in the right mood" for. Having recently watched Cat in the Brain where Fulci deconstructed the relationship between the horror auteur and his art in between sequences of bloody death, I felt it was the right time to pull it down from the shelf, dust it off, and give it a spin. I am happy for the experience, as it is one interesting film, but as has happened with other films, I chose the wrong time to do it.
The experience of watching City of the Living Dead is not one I will soon forget. It has taught me a very important lesson: Chinese food for dinner, followed by late '70s/early '80s Italian horror, followed immediately by bed is a potentially deadly combination. At the very least this volatile concoction can cause some damage to a person's psyche. This evening I enjoyed a delightful dinner of Chinese food followed shortly thereafter by a dimming of lights and a press of play. The next 90-minutes provided a steady stream-of-consciousness flow of atmospheric horror, dread, and gore. Then no sooner did the credits roll, I shut everything down and went to bed. Rather, I tried to go to bed.
I lay there in the darkness trying to fall asleep. I need it or I am completely unable to function the next day. I was legitimately tired, I lay there tossing and turning under the sheets, then it happened. You know how your mind wanders when your senses are deprived? Mine kept wandering to the gore-iffic visions created by Fulci. Visions of melting faces, maggot storms, ripped out brains, and intestine vomit danced through my mind. In the quiet of night these images took on an entirely new level of realism. Watching them in the film was a disturbing experience as it is, but much of it, as convincing as it was, still had a certain "fakeness" to it.
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