THE GATES OF HELL Review On "Violent Maniac's Cage"

GATES OF HELL, THE

ALSO KNOWN AS: City Of The Living Dead, The Fear, Fear In The City Of The Living Dead, Twilight Of the Dead.

(1983, Italy)

DIRECTED BY: Lucio Fulci.

The late great Lucio Fulci delivers another piece of Italian spaghetti gore. What a fine slab of cinema it is. Story of the film borrows a bit from HP Love craft. The premise of the film is in Dunwich. A priest hangs himself and all hell breaks loose! Regular 70's genre horror star Chris George along with Fulci film regular Kathy Macoll star. Lets not forget wacked out Johnny Morghen who meets stern justice from a father by head drilling. The head drilling is very realistic thanx to effects wizard Rossi. the funny thing is the father killing Morghen is in his right mind and he's killing Morghen because he thinks Morghen raped and killed his daughter.

There's eye bleeding, gut barfing, slime eating, a maggot rainstorm and head rippings galore. The gore is definitely the highlight in this. Like HBTC this has a moment of superb suspence as C. George tries to free a buried alive girl by using a pick axe. The unfortunate thing is that he almost hits the girl. My only objection is the ending which makes absolutely no sense in the version I seen. I heard the Jap laserdisc has got one that makes sense. Still ya gotta love this.

Rating: 4 Skulls

Review by: Richard J. Taylor

Email: rtaylor@roadrunner.nf.net

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