La invasión de los zombies atómicos

¡Atención! Esta vez no se trata de una película barata de clase B, sino de una ambiciosa coproducción internacional con escenas multitudinarias, helicópteros y muchos disparos de ametralladora. E incluso con un desenlace sorpresa al final, ¡subrayando la idea de la película! El guión está bien: siempre pasa algo, el escenario en el que se mueven los protagonistas cambia constantemente, y la violencia -por cierto, desenfrenadamente brutal y se inflige sobre todo a mujeres- es audazmente sádica. Pero los elogios acaban ahí. Umberto Lenzi es de clase ultra B, lo que se nota en la falta de miedo y atmósfera, en las interpretaciones de los actores y en la lógica terriblemente agujereada (disparas a las criaturas con una ametralladora y no pasa nada, pero cuando les metes los dedos en las puertas, gritan como si estuvieran pariendo). Y las máscaras de látex son ridículas. (03.10.2003)

Una nube de mistificación flota sobre esta película, ya que todo tipo de variaciones de su título traducido contienen las palabras «zombies» o «walking dead», y sin embargo no se trata de los muertos reanimados en el sentido de George A. Romero. Son humanos mutados por la radiación que chupan sangre como vampiros y van en grupo, degollando con machetes y disparando ametralladoras. Sin embargo, el título original en italiano no menciona para nada a los muertos vivientes (por otra parte, el título italiano revela en parte la sorpresa final de la trama). Estas palabras solo son una previa a mi decepción, ahora pasemos a la película en sí. Es basura. Un parásito mal escrito y filmado sobre el éxito de Zombi con pésimas actuaciones, pésimos diálogos, una absoluta falta de lógica y la mencionada sorpresa al final que entierra toda la trama anterior. Los ojos saltones de los «infectados» y las máscaras de látex horrorosamente mal hechas son ridículos. (05.05.2019)

It was even dumber than I expected. Bad actors, among which stands out the unbelievably crappy acting of Hugo Stiglitz, which could be boldly classified as the performance of a porn actor. The good thing is that there is always something going on in the film and boring speeches are kept to a minimum. The viewer gets to enjoy the zombies a lot, or rather the infected and mutated creatures. They're always running around, always murdering someone and, like vampires, sucking blood like maniacs with their eyes bulging. In short, a proper B-movie that constantly tempted my diaphragm with its stupidity. And the unintentionally funny twist at the very end is just the icing on the cake. (07.08.2004)

Umberto Lenzi repeatedly asserted that his film is not about zombies and one can only agree with him in principle when considering the behaviour of the mutant killers in Nightmare City. Nevertheless, it’s impossible to deny that this film piggy-backs on the popularity of zombies at the time, particularly the boom in Italian zombie productions kick-started by Fulci’s Zombie, which itself was made as on the back of the international box-office success of Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (which was released in Europe under the title Zombi). Nightmare City persistently gives one the impression that its makers saw Fulci’s breakthrough Zombie and decided to give viewers a sort of direct sequel of that film. The main attraction is thus the spread of an apocalyptic contagion to modern metropolises, while a handful of characters strive to survive in the chaos that has arisen and stay with their loved ones. Though the resulting film radiates the filmmakers’ ambition to shoot a spectacular vision of the apocalypse with the scope of Hollywood disaster movies, it’s impossible to overlook the cack-handedness of everyone involved and their roots in exploitation cinema. What good is it to have a magnificent narrative scope when the greatest emphasis is placed on piling up the cheapest and most straightforward attractions, which make the planned epic just another in a long line of misogynistic trash flicks that revel in sequences of close-up nudity and brutal destruction of women’s bodies. (19.07.2013)

Tarantino's favourite zombie film, where the zombies are not actually zombies, but irradiated people with mud on their faces, axes and machine guns in their hands, driving around in cars, cutting telephone cables and ripping off the shirts of extras. Said to be the first zombie film where zombies run around and show signs of intelligence, but this was far more playfully or cleverly sketched out by other, later zombie films (Return of the Living Dead, 28 Days Later and Land of the Dead). Still, there are a few memorable scenes, such as the zombies invading a live broadcast of a typical 80s dance show or their visit to a surgery room. (18.03.2018)