The Gates of Hell trilogy from horror legend Lucio Fulci is unique in that it isn’t an actual trilogy at all…it is just a series of three movies that share a similar storyline.
City of the Living Dead
The first entry in the Gates of Hell trilogy is City of the Living Dead. Originally released in 1980 (1983 in the USA), City of the Living Dead marked the first film after Fulci’s magnum opus, Zombie (aka Zombi 2.) It follows the story of the aftermath from a priest hanging himself in a cemetery, thus opening one of the many gates to hell that are scattered across the Earth. A reporter and a psychic investigate mysterious happenings in the small town of Dunwich., in which the dead have begun to arise, with more than a passing resemblance to the zombies in Zombie. Using the Book of Eibon as a point of reference, they determine that they must close the gate before All Saint’s Day.
City of the Living Dead has numerous classic scenes in it, from a girl “vomiting” her guts out of her mouth to a young guy getting an industrial drill put through his head. The similarities between City and Zombie don’t stop with the “zombies” looking the same or the type of violence…the music and camera angles are very similar as well, although the editing is quite different. City of the Living Dead is considered by many to be the most brutal entry in the unofficial trilogy, although out of the three films it is my least favorite.
The Beyond
The Beyond (aka in its cut form Seven Doors of Death) is the second part of the trilogy. Back in 1927, a lynch mob nails and lymes someone to the basement wall of a hotel, thus opening a gate to hell. Decades later, a young lady inherits the hotel, and soon finds herself neck-deep in undead things. The Beyond feels like it has the highest production values out of the trilogy, and also has the best looking/nastiest gore scenes. The scene in the autopsy room is my personal favourite, as it ratchets up the tension and undead things just start coming out of the woodwork (some literally). The film itself is fairly fast paced, and feels like it is over before it should have been. Even though the old VHS version of “Seven Doors of Death” was heavily edited, the Diamond Entertainment and Anchor Bay DVD versions of “Seven Doors of Death” are based on the original print. If the R-rated version of Peter Jackson’s film Dead Alive taught us anything, it’s that a great horror movie can be made into a terrible horror movie through censorship.
The House by the Cemetery
The final film in the Gates of Hell trilogy, this one is by far my favorite. A young woman and her boyfriend are brutally murdered in a house in New England, where years later a family moves in. Unknown to them, the house is the site of an open gate to hell, with a horrendous creature lurking in the basement. This is by far the slowest paced Fulci film I have ever seen, and it isn’t even all that gory, but I love it. The suspense and tension slowly build throughout the film, culminating in one of the most tense and “holy crap MOVE” endings ever seen in a horror film.
Fulci obviously got a hold of some better cameras for this film, as the video quality and stability of the framing are much improved over the first two entries of the trilogy. Also, the camera angles feel a bit more refined than previous films from the famous director, although I have known a couple of people who didn’t pick up on the fact that it was a Fulci film until part of the way through. This one is, in my opinion, best saved for a rainy day; the slow pace and unfolding of events are conducive to sitting around and being lazy. There are a couple of genuinely scary scenes in this film, particularly a scene involving a mannequin towards the beginning.
There you have it folks, Fulci’s unofficial Gates of Hell trilogy. I highly recommend that you find all three films and watch them one after another, if possible. They are all classic horror films, and each one brings something different to the table. Enjoy!
