Nightmare City
Director: Umberto Lenzi
Release year: 1980
A radiation incident is reported in an anonymous Italian city moments before a military plane lands at the civilian airport. Mutant humans pour out and begin a city-wide massacre, killing indiscriminately, drinking victims blood, and infecting everyone who manages to survive.
The most surprising and entertaining part of this film is the frenzy with which the mutants go at innocent bystanders, using whatever implements are to hand, seemingly impervious to bullets, leaping and mauling—if you told me the mutants were from a musical or dance company, I would believe you. It’s fun!
The “radiation” spreads like the rage virus in Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later. Lenzi’s cameras are constantly moving around the action, zooming and panning, and he loves to end a kill with a shot of a mutant wiping his mouth with satisfaction, or rolling his eyes as he looks for his next victim.
The standout scene is the mutant takeover of a TV station where dancers in aerobics outfits are murdered with ridiculous gusto, although there are several other set pieces just like it. The pace is relentless. When things do slow down, ideas are touted about why this is happening, and even in 1980 they knew mankind couldn’t be trusted with the increasing powers of technology.
At the beginning of the film, Jessica, the artist girlfriend of General Warren, unveils a bust she’s working on that makes him look like a mutant. People in the late seventies were frightened of nuclear power and nuclear war. Her work is a premonition of what is to come. Jessica’s studio is full of strange sculptures and paintings. Dario Argento would have approved.