City of the Living Dead

Paura nella città dei morti viventi (1980)

Timing: 1:33 (93 min)

6.44/10
431

6.507/10
3891

6.2/10
21000

All about film

Video 6

Photo 52

Actors and characters

Release date

1980-08-11

Country

Italy

Production

Dania Film, National Cinematografica, Medusa Distribuzione

Genre

Horror

Budget

$0

Revenue

$0

Website

Director

Lucio Fulci

Actors

Christopher George, Catriona MacColl, Carlo De Mejo, Giovanni Lombardo Radice, Janet Ågren, Antonella Interlenghi, Daniela Doria, Fabrizio Jovine, Luca Venantini, Michele Soavi
All actors and roles (10)

Scenario

Producer

Lucio Fulci, Robert E. Warner

Operator

Sergio Salvati

Composer

Fabio Frizzi

Artist

Audition

Editing

Vincenzo Tomassi, Edo Brizio
All team (17)

• Danwich is a fictional location invented by Howard Phillips Lovecraft.
• The film footage depicting the action in Danwich is rendered in a dark blue tone.
• The film was shot in the city of Savannah, Georgia.
• To film the scene where blood flows from the heroine's eyes, blunted syringe needles were used, glued to the actress's lower eyelid and connected to tubes hidden in her hair. An assistant off-camera pumped blood through these tubes.
• A drill bit with a blunt end was used during the filming of the skull-drilling scene. It was made from a type of special "soft" plastic and was made to shine with electroplating. The drill was hollow inside, and fake blood flowed from it at the visible moment of entry into the scalp.
• For the scenes depicting a woman vomiting her own entrails, the raw rumen of a freshly slaughtered lamb was used. The actress had to stuff it into her mouth and vomit it out before each take. The rumen dried out every 10 minutes and had to be constantly rehydrated before use. A prosthetic mouth with a pump was used for close-up shots.
• Franco Rufini was the special effects artist.
• The premiere screening of the film shocked most of the audience, with some fainting and others running out of the cinema.
• Danwich is mentioned in the computer game Fallout 3. The so-called Danwich Building, associated with mystical phenomena, and in the "Point Lookout" add-on, there was a "Black Book" that could be destroyed on an altar in the Danwich Building's dungeon as part of a quest.
• The scene where the window is thrown open and hundreds of larvae fly in was filmed using two wind generators and 10 kg of real larvae.
• Initially, Bob, played by Giovanni Lombardo Radice, was supposed to be a hunchback. However, the actor refused to wear a fake hump and instead portrayed the character with a distinctive gait.
• When the film was released in the US in 1983, it was titled «Twilight of the Dead». Given that the title and posters had a noticeable resemblance to George A. Romero's horror film «Dawn of the Dead» (1978), «United Film Distribution Company» filed a lawsuit against «Motion Picture Marketing». The posters for «Twilight of the Dead» were changed to «The Gates of Hell».
• Almost all of the scenes at the Dunwich cemetery were filmed at the Midway Cemetery in Georgia. The cemetery was already overcrowded in the 1860s, and many of the graves were simply marked with wooden crosses. When General William Sherman's troops passed through there in 1864, the walled cemetery was used as a corral for animals. When the animals became hungry, they gnawed on the wooden crosses on most of the graves. So, when a zombie rises from the ground in the film, it is very likely that they are indeed rising from someone's grave.
• The temperature during filming was over 40 degrees Celsius.
• A drill with a blunt end, made of a kind of 'soft' plastic, was used for filming the skull-drilling scene. The drill glittered due to a galvanization coating. The drill was hollow inside, and during the visible moment of the drill entering the scalp, fake blood flowed from it.
• When the film was released in the United States in 1983, it was titled "Twilight of the Dead." Given that the title and posters had a noticeable resemblance to George A. Romero's horror film "Dawn of the Dead" (1978), United Film Distribution Company filed a lawsuit against Motion Picture Marketing. The posters for "Twilight of the Dead" were changed to "The Gates of Hell."