ecl@ahuta.UUCP (ecl) (01/02/85)
THE GATES OF HELL (also known as CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD)
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
There was a time when Italian horror films were notorious for teasing
titles but little delivery. Titles like SCREAM OF THE DEMON LOVER would
promise supernatural horror, but the films themselves would have nothing
stranger than a psychotic killer. The country's horror filmmakers traded
off of a few interesting supernatural films, notably BLACK SUNDAY and BLACK
SABBATH (directed by Mario Bava), but dealt mostly in murder stories with
flat wooden performances. (For my part, I know, I never could get very
involved with any characters whose lips don't move in time with what they
are saying.)
This reticence actually to put the supernatural in films and the
somewhat less lamentable reticence to show visual horror was swept aside
when DAWN OF THE DEAD was released in Italy under the title ZOMBIE and did
phenomenally well at the boxoffice. Suddenly the formula was to throw
delicacy to the winds and make some all-out ghoul films. At the center of
this phenomenon is Lucio Fulci, who made ZOMBIE II to rip off DAWN OF THE
DEAD/ZOMBIE, though it has nothing to do with the Romero film. (To further
complicate matters, ZOMBIE II was released in this country as ZOMBIE.)
Fulci's motto seems to be "You're never more than three minutes or four from
stomach-churning gore."
December's cable offerings include a film called THE GATES OF HELL,
which on investigation turns out to be a re-titling of CITY OF THE LIVING
DEAD, released in this country in 1981. This is Fulci's second-best-known
film (at least it's the only Fulci gore-fest other than ZOMBIE II I'd heard
of).
My first comment is that if you dislike gore, stay away. In fact,
don't even read this paragraph. I neither like nor dislike gore; I consider
it just another special effect. If it did bother me, I would have found
this film unwatchable. THE GATES OF HELL really tries to outdo DAWN OF THE
DEAD for nauseating effects and manages quite nicely, thank you. Fulci
fills the film with worms devouring corpses, women vomiting up organs,
electric drills boring through people's heads, tops of people's heads being
ripped away, and other wonders of the magic of cinema.
The story, which won't be awarded any prizes for coherence or logic,
involves the gates of Hell being opened in some symbolic sense because a
priest hanged himself in the town of Dunwich (no, the one name is as far as
the film goes into Lovecraft territory). Dunwich is built on the ruins of
the real Salem, Massachusetts (that will come as a surprise to the current
residents of Salem), where they burned witches (that will come as a surprise
to historians). A New York woman has a vision of the evil that has been
released, dies from the shock, is buried, and comes back to life in the
coffin. (No way--that's one reason we embalm corpses.) In one of the
film's few nice--and almost subtle--horror sequences her screams are heard
by a reported who very nearly kills her trying to open her partially buried
coffin with a handy pickaxe. The two of them go off in search of the town
the woman saw in her vision.
THE GATES OF HELL is all too often sabotaged by the incompetence of the
filmmakers. Scenes that should be frightening are instead edited in ways
that make them merely confusing. Fulci's gore effects occasionally try for
interesting images but often fail. In one scene, a window shatters and the
fragments bury themselves in a wall. The wall then starts to bleed. Yes,
if it really happened it might frighten me, but it does not make much sense
in the context of the film. Fulci is just stringing together gory scenes
with a minimal plot. In a film where anything can happen as long as it's
gory, the viewer gives up trying to find a story in the chaos. THE GATES OF
HELL is really only for completists (like me) or fans of the splatter sub-
genre (and they are welcome to it). There is little point in seeing a film
for which the greatest talent behind the camera was the makeup man.
(Evelyn C. Leeper for)
Mark R. Leeper
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