Nightmare City/Incubo sulla città contaminata - I said some bad things recently about Lenzi so I thought why not give him one more try, and I am very glad I did. It's not that he is a bad director, he's not, it's just that everything he does is just wrong, like some kind of autistic vision of everything only weirder and with more boobs. Everything is deeply wrong here and at the same time hugely charming and entertaining, it's dumbness taken to such an absurd degree that it extrapolates it's own definition and reaches for the sublime. The lines, the acting, the situations, the plot, reactions and scenarios, set ups and jump scares or even killings, they are so alien yet so familiar, like a very wicked child is running it all, with gusto.
I think this movie may be endlessly rewatchable because it seems like the sublime stupidity has so many layers in each frame, you can just watch it paying attention only to the background... The philosophical talking FFS. The city that is perhaps world capital of machetes and axes. The military uniforms. All the military city complex. The main actor everything. Big and little things exploding stupidly before your eyes and you try to catch it all... Fun fun fun.
I kinda disliked the so called zombies at first (OG undead runners?) but their thuggish inconsistent portrayal had me at the end. Their make up is stupid and great because Lenzi doesn't seem to grasp anatomy and all that bs or he just don't care so we have a lot of rotten meatheads and bodies reacting to abuse in a way that is playful and headscratching. I would not call they intelligent because nothing in this movie can be called that with a straight face but they shoot guns, drive cars, act normally, steal blood from ambulances and a lot of other fun pranks that you don't see everyday, and then sometimes they just act like a normal zombie and that feels even weirder.
The thing just starts blasting off and never stops, not a dull moment, crazy bang for your buck (or their very humble buck). It's all so good that seems like you stumbled in a supreme masterpiece and then comes THAT FUCKING ending and yeah, you got why this is not regarded higher. But then maybe it all makes perfect sense if you SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER see it as some kind of cyclical absurd reality and these people just don't care anymore and everything is permitted, idk.
All that being said and done I highly recommend this one, you can call Lenzi anything but don't call him boring and that's the highest compliment in his field.
And to top it all he's like a mf boob academic or something: they will pop out frequently and the level of variety and quality is high.
Still, all his movies I saw are bad. 8/10
