City of the Living Dead (1980)
Directed by Lucio Fulci
A psychic seemingly dies of fright during a séance where she sees a vision of a Dunwich priest hanging himself in a church cemetery. New York City reporter Peter Bell investigates and learns that the priest's suicide has somehow opened a portal to Hell that must be sealed by All Saints Day, or else the dead will overtake humanity.
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What critics compared City of the Living Dead to
And Father Burke's unfortunate experience of being buried alive comes to an end when his rescuer's shovel cracks through a coffin lid and nearly splits his skull (a la 1980's City of the Living Dead).
It seems to be a rule of the Conjuring universe that each film should have a homage to a classic Italian horror film — Annabelle reprised one of the best scares in Mario Bava’s filmography, and this revisits a memorable buried-alive shock from Lucio Fulci’s City Of The Living Dead.
"The Lonely Grave of Paula Schultz", in which our heroine is placed in a seemingly inescapable situation by Budd, comes off as a nod to the works of legendary Italian director Lucio Fulci in the way it deploys sadism, obsessive close-ups of eyeballs and shots that uncannily echo the key scene of "City of the Living Dead".
At about this point, were we watching a Lucio Fulci film, City of the Living Dead for instance, we might conclude "and now all hell breaks loose…" with complete confidence.
After Lionel�s mum is bitten at the zoo by a Sumatran rat-monkey, family life becomes Night of the Living Dead.
Also notable are Lucio Fulci's Italian exports, Zombie and City of the Living Dead.
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Instead, they play mind games on Ash, and in this, the best part of a very good movie, The Evil Dead becomes the closest thing English-language cinema has produced to the nuttier, supernatural strains of Italian horror, though it's unlikely that Raimi was thinking in these terms: the films his debut most resembles, Lucio Fulci's Hell Trilogy beginning with City of the Living Dead , weren't available in the U.S. until after The Evil Dead has finished shooting.
The film is intelligent, scary, and funny, never underestimating or belittling its audience and providing what is possibly the most influential American independent since George Romero's Night of the Living Dead.
It's equal parts Three Stooges and Night of the Living Dead .