City of the Living Dead: Limited Edition (EC1005-LD)

Lucio Fulci's City of the Living Dead.... what a fuckin movie! City of the Living Dead (also known as The Gates of Hell) is an incredibly surreal and intriguing horror film about a woman who dies in the midst of a seance and comes back to life in order to join up with a reporter to search down the corpse of a priest, whose suicide was believed to have opened the gates of hell. It’s hard for me to really rank Fulci’s films’ but I’d have to consider City in my top two or three, and this LD is an awesome way to watch it!

First off, I’d recommend checking out the trailer for ‘City of the Living Dead’ (as sourced from the laserDisc by yours truly!).

This edition of City of the Living Dead was released by EC Entertainment, a short lived label from the Netherlands that specialized in Italian horror cinema of the early 1980's (and despite being a European label, all their releases were in fact NTSC, not PAL!). All of EC Entertainment's titles were limited to 500 or 750 copies, and my copy of City is number 083 of 500!

As previously mentioned, E.C Entertainment was a Dutch company, but these discs were (at least to some extent) imported to the U.S. back in the day (the gentleman I purchased my copy from bought it in a video store in California), and the disc was even manufactured by Pioneer USA.

I've heard people refer to some of these obscure European NTSC horror releases (see: Dragon Film Entertainment, E.C Entertainment, Cult Epics) as 'gray market releases', and that seems to be a fair assessment to me. Releases like this are exactly why I love the format so god damn much, I can only describe this as an 'officially licensed *borderline* bootleg put together by people who were incredibly passionate about these sorts of films, and fortunate enough to acquire and distribute them with the treatment they truly deserved'.

One of my favorite things about EC Entertainment’s releases is their balls to the wall gatefolds, this one featuring a few great stills from the film, a HUGE money shot, and a write up about Lucio Fulci’s life, career, and his filmography. Seeing famed Italian horror actor Giovanni Lombardo Radice getting that drill through his head in this fantastic printing gives you an idea of what you’re in for with this sick flick.

Lastly, I figured I should mention that City of the Living Dead is the first in an unofficial trilogy known as ‘Fulci’s Gates of Hell Trilogy’, three films linked due to the fact they all have horrifying supernatural elements, star Catriona MacColl as their leads (and share multiple other actors and behind the scenes crew such as screenwriter Dardano Sacchetti), and were all filmed back to back. All three of these films were released under EC’s ‘The Lucio Fulci Collection’, so do check out my write ups of ‘The Beyond’ and ‘The House by the Cemetery’ !!!