HackArtober #17 (Scanned At The Gates Of Hell, On All Saints Day)

Through the horror podcast I do with my friend, Paul Yellovich, I've learned to overcome my exasperation with Giallo and, to a lesser degree, my bewilderment with the films of Lucio Fulci. I've seen actual movies he's made that are more-or-less coherent and even satisfying. I've seen   and really enjoyed, to one degree or another, the Gates of Hell trilogy, especially The Beyond. 

City of The Living Dead (1980, aka The Gates of Hell) is the first of the "trilogy", which like Carpenter's apocalypse trilogy (The Thing-Prince of Darkness-In The Mouth of Madness) have no direct relationship to one another, other than being WTF-fests (The Beyond and House By The Cemetery). I first saw this in the late 90s at an Exhumed films screening in New Jersey at the late, lamented  Harwan Theatre (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harwan_Theatre)*. Exhumed would show double-features there with coming attractions and they had giveaways and special events. We'd drive from Staten Island out to the theater, it took about an hour and a half if traffic was agreeable. By the time we'd get home it would be close to five in the morning sometimes, if the movies were long nd/or the show got started late. We probably drove the longest to get there than most of the audience, who were mostly locals. It was worth it. I cherish those nights, even if the movies weren't great. It was seeing these nutty horror flicks with an appreciative audience, curated by folks who knew what they were talking about. There were no Alamo Drafthouses back then, or at least, they weren't anywhere near us and we didn't know about them. 

Anyway, it was great to pile into cars and have a long night of the horror, on a single big screen in a crumbling old movie theater. Paul and the other "apes" in our social group had been going a while before I started attending. I saw a number of Italian horror movies for the first time there at Exhumed, starting with the absolutely insane/ridiculous Hell of the Living Dead. And Lucio Fulci's City of the Living Dead, Zombie and House By The Cemetery. Mario Bava's Kill, Baby, Kill and Shock. Lamberto Bava's Demons and Demons 2 (and I'll throw in Pieces, which is a Spanish flick that's easy to mistake for an Italian production because of it featuring Christopher George, a super bonkers plot and way over the top gore). These movies were mostly made in the early 80s, so, I was a real latecomer to them. I'd skirted Italian horror on the whole because of not liking the little I'd seen on Wometco Home Theater back in the days of early cable. But that's a whole other essay, and we talked about it on the podcast (in the Giallo episodes if you're interested in my journey from hater to mostly-liker of Italian genre movies)**. 

Oh, I also first saw Dr. Butcher, M.D. at Exhumed (a U.S. re-edit/alteration of Zombie Holocaust, with maybe the funniest use of a mannequin-as-dead-body falling out of a window, because an arm breaks off on impact and skitters away. Seeing that live with an audience was one of the best laughs I've ever had). 

As entertaining and enjoyable as the Fulci films were, the sheer amount of ding-dong idiocy in them drove me pretty fucking nuts. Ridiculous plots. Ludicrous dialog. Poor acting. Lousy dubbing. Logic gaps tag-teaming with pure nightmare logic. Unreal gore, often done with sloppy unreal-looking special effects. I've since learned to accept and go with the flow, but at the time I was way more literal-minded and I was unable to accept the pure cinema aspects of many of these movies (or the pure inept movie-making, it's hard to tell the difference in a lot of cases).  They're unique slopfests, if nothing else.

The one thing I'll always give Fulci is the palpable sense of dread, decay and doom. The trilogy films are atmospheric as hell (pun sadly intended). Sometimes the seemingly random WTF choices make you laugh, undercutting the effect (fakey spiders, zombie versus shark, that Donald Duck voice in New York Ripper), and sometimes they add to the creep factor (the sound of babies crying in Dr Freudstein's lab is just super messed up). Sometimes you laugh while you're creeped out (hello, maggot storm). If you're going to watch these things you kind of have to stop worrying, and learn to let everything just be. Even the icky children like John-John and Bob. With all the gore and maggoty corpse shit going on, it's amazing how often little kids are the most horrifying things about these movies. Don't get me started on the "boy" in Burial Ground: The Nights of Terror. That little fuck.

 Was there a point to all this, other than me taking an extended break from drawing? I don't remember. The priest from City of the Living Dead was a request, and I ended up watching the entire goddamned thing again and shaking my head at the nuttiness. Then I watched House By the Cemetery while drawing. On my dinky computer monitor they don't consume your attention the same way as a movie or a big T.V., but it was the cleanest print I've seen, so there's that. There's still not a lot of solid images of the stupid priest with the unknown motivation, so, I did my best. 

*The Harwan folded in 1999 or so and Exhumed moved to a second-run concrete block that had more comfortable seats but zero personality. They then went to the Broadway Theater in Pitman, NJ for a while, which was pretty awesome. It hadn't been renovated fully, but it was really cool to see movies in an old vaudeville/movie theater (even if the old seats hurt your back after a while). I was really happy to look up the theater and see that the planned renovation took place. When the theater shut and Exhumed moved to a farther location, (and we stopped going), the restoration wasn't a sure thing. It's a beautiful theater, take a look: https://www.thebroadwaytheatre.org/virtual-tour

(I have a feeling they won't be screening Lucio Fulci films or the like anytime soon)

**You can listen to all 16 episodes of our podcast here:+ https://tearthemapartpodcast.home.blog

Because life got out of control, I wasn't able to record a new episode of the podcast with Paul for Halloween. We're going to do a live video hangout next Tuesday starting at 8:15 pm EST. I'll plug it again before then. Unless I forget to.