I would like to start off my new blog with a quick review of The ates of Hell by Lucio Fulci. This movie is a Zombie/Satanic movie made in 1980. It's the story of a group of heroes, Mary, Gary, Sandra and the Reporter (whose name I don't remember), who discover that the gates of hell have been opened and they have two days to get them closed before all of the dead rise and take over the earth. They discover this when Mary apparently dies of fright from having a vision of "The Living Dead. Well she's not really dead and The Reporter saves her from being buried alive. Anywho, a lot of weird stuff has been happening in the villiage of Dunwich and creepy Bob, the local sex fiend, has been blamed. That's neither here nor there as people in the town begin dying and disappearing, all the while seeing a dead priest who had hanged himself in the cemetery and opened the gates of hell. Well I'd tell the rest but the recap is boring me so I'll go on to what I liked and didn't about the film.
To start off I had issues with the dubbing and accents of the dubbers. The movie's Italian, which means that the actors are mostly Italian with laughable dubbed accents. The sync never quite works right and that does a lot to distract the viewer and it tends to completely derail the horror on screen. Also, the editing doesn't do the horror any favors, the scenes are jarring. One moment you're in a creepy cemetery with moody music, the next you're in a brightly lit kitchen. There is no subtle shift, and this can cause an unobservant viewer to wonder where they are and which subplot is being explored.
On a positive front the music is excellent and even when the images on screen were dull and boring the music allowed this viewer to feel the appropriate vibe. I must say that the music was the best part, followed by the gore with the gorgeous actresses rounding out the list.
In true Fulci fashion we got extravagant gore. My favorite scene was when a young woman, parking with her boyfriend, locked eyes with the lead baddie and began to vomit up her insides while tears of blood streaked down her face. The intestines were obviously fake, but the look of pain on the girls face seemed to be genuine. It makes me wonder what Fulci made his actresses do and if he was as charismatic as everyone says. The next big gore scene involved a drill being forced through the head of a poor unlikeable fellow. This scene should have been more effective but I kept thinking the drills trajectory was off. It went through his cheek and out his temple, yet an overhead shot showed it going through both temples, that one shot took away all belief from me.
The women in this film are GORGEOUS, Mary, Emily and Sandra were absolute stunners. I didn't care whether they could act or not, I just wanted to look at them. I read in another review that Mary was a Fulci regular. Now I have more reason to watch his films.
I feel that I can't end this "review" without mentioning the ending. The ending is the worst that I have seen in a long time, I won't go into depth but the end undoes everything the last 15 minutes had set into motion. Also, I feel that the "good conquers evil" vibe was a bit heavy handed. At one point Mary, the gorgeous psychic and Gary,one of the male leads, are surrounded by zombies and face to face with Father Noose. They. Are. Fucked. Until Gary picks up a convenient cross and stabs the priest in the nads, thus ending his reign of terror. That's not right, Gary should have been zombie chow and Mary should have been crying tears of blood while getting her insides to the outside. All in all the ending blows, then sucks, then blows some more.
If I were to rate this on a 1-5 scale for watchability I'd rate it a 3.5 but for actual quality most likely a 1.5-2. I'm not ashamed I watched it but I doubt I'd recommend it to anyone, except for a chance to watch Mary. That woman was amazing and well worth the 93 minutes spent on this flick.
-AMS
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