Nightmare City 4K 1980 Ultra HD 2160p

Storyline
In a nameless European city, a local reporter and his doctor wife try to escape from hordes of blood thirsty zombies, undead people exposed to nuclear radioactivity, while the military leaders fight a losing war of attrition against the relentless atomic zombies.

User Review

As someone who doesn't speak Italian at all, I can't really judge the title of this film. However, I didn't see the word “zombie” or anything similar in the title. And the English title, “Nightmare City,” doesn't in any way suggest that the viewer will encounter these very zombies while watching. As you have probably already understood, I was not preparing to watch this film as a film about Italian zombies, but as an apocalyptic cinematic presentation by Umberto Lenci.

And I must say that Lenci surpassed himself in this film. Compared to his cannibalistic lampoons, ‘City of the Living Dead’ (working title) looks several times better. Of course, while noting (once again!) the poor work of the makeup artists, who turned the infected people into some kind of rednecks rolling around in shit and mud, Lenci still managed to create an atmosphere characteristic of films that are in one way or another connected with the beginning of the end of world civilization. The main feeling that everything is so bad that it is almost impossible to return everything to normal is the general panic that gradually engulfs the entire city, which is the main setting. Hard-to-kill mutants, panic that has engulfed all law enforcement agencies, numerous murders - all this creates a rather oppressive atmosphere that not every director is capable of creating.
However, not every director is capable of offering even the slightest hope of salvation. In Lenz's film, everything is so gloomy that it resembles a requiem for the era of the so-called “peaceful atom” rather than a film about some zombies who, in the best traditions of trash cinema, cut and eat human flesh. Even the main characters in their reasoning already argue as if 1980 was the end of the world and all that remains is to wait for it all to end and the earth to become so uninhabitable that no extraterrestrial civilization will want to populate it. And the final credits plunge you into such depression that you just want to cry.

The people in this film serve solely as food for the mutants, who are just as doomed as everyone else without fresh blood. And the main characters' survival is primarily due to the fact that there must be main characters in the film. They are in no way capable of stopping this whole nightmare.

Even with all the flaws typical of both trashy movies and Lenz's directing style, he managed to make a pretty interesting picture. Even though it's not perfect technically and the atmosphere is terrifyingly gloomy, this movie deserves...

Info Video

Codec: HEVC / H.265 (64.0 Mb/s)
Resolution: 4K (2160p)
HDR: Dolby Vision, HDR10
Aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1

Info Audio

#Italian: FLAC 2.0
#Italian: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 (48kHz, 24-bit)
#English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 (48kHz, 24-bit)

Info Subtitles