Nightmare City (Italy, 1980)

I always try to fit some classic ’70s or ’80s Italian horror into my OHMC list. These low-budget nasties made up a large part of the horror that formed me, and I still have real fondness for them. Sure, a lot of them are awful, but even the worst are often deliriously weird. And that’s enough for me. I don’t remember hearing much about Nightmare City back when it came out, but it popped up on Prime Video, so on my list it went.

As I mentioned in my review of The Sadness, I’m cautiously watching zombie films again to see if I’ve finally recovered from Walking Dead burnout. The jury is still out, but I’m hopeful.

Nightmare City is currently streaming on Prime Video in the UK.

Synopsis

Shortly after an unspecified nuclear incident, an unmarked military transport arrives at a civilian airport without authorisation. When the authorities investigate, a mob of badly burned men burst out of the plane and go on a murder spree.

This is witnessed by intrepid TV reporter Dean Miller, but his attempt to warn the populace is cut short by military interference. Zombies then attack the TV station, although no one really seems to notice this at first. Also, why do all the crew at this TV station wear lab coats? It’s such a weird costuming decision that I’d love to know how it came about.

Fighting his way to freedom, Miller heads to the hospital, where his wife works as a doctor. Reunited, the Millers flee again when the hospital also comes under attack in the strongest scenes of the film.

Society crumbles as the zombies take out key targets, operating as a well-organised invasion force. The military try to contain them, but with little success. The Millers wander through their dying world like the protagonists of a second-rate John Wyndham novel.

Is there any hope for humanity? Will our heroes survive this apocalypse? Or will the film go for the stupidest fucking resolution imaginable?

(It’s that last one, in case you were guessing.)

General Thoughts

At no point could I work out where Nightmare City is supposed to take place. Everyone speaks Italian, and the surroundings are very obviously Italy, but the signage is all in English and the main characters have names like “Miller” or “Holmes”. This is far from the most confusing thing about the film, but it added to the overall delirium.

By 1980, it was pretty anachronistic for a male lead to slap sense into a hysterical woman. Airplane, released in the same year, parodied this mercilessly. But here we see Miller do so unironically. This does fit the paternalistic attitude of his character, but it also echoes the awful attitudes towards women in the rest of the film. There some some extreme age differences between male leads and their female love interests, but those pale compared to some of the sexualised kills. Having multiple scenes of zombies mutilating their victims’ breasts begins to feel fetishistic.

There is some good, gory horror when the zombies attack the hospital. While the action is often clunky, the set pieces are solid. The scene with zombies feasting on a patient in the operating theatre, guzzling the blood from his drip, is especially memorable.

A lot of the other violence in Nightmare City is pretty goofy. This isn’t helped by the number of bloodthirsty zombies who look like doughy middle-aged men in cardigans and cheap Halloween makeup. The daftest scene, however, comes when a surgeon defends himself by using his scalpel as a throwing knife. I don’t think it’s supposed to be funny, but it feels like something from Braindead. In another scene, we see someone’s head literally shot off, only for it to instantly reappear when we see their body on the floor. The regenerative powers of radiation are not to be underestimated!

The Zombies

When we did our recent episode about zombies, I credited Return of the Living Dead with being the first film with fast zombies. Nightmare City has proved me wrong, pre-dating Return by five years. While you could potentially argue that the radiation monsters here aren’t really zombies, they’re close enough in my opinion.

These are unusual zombies, however. While they don’t speak, they scream when injured. They are clearly intelligent, able to use weapons, cut phone lines, and even fly a plane. It’s fun to see shootout where the zombies fire back. In one scene, a group of zombies work together to operate the manual winch on a lift so they can free and then feast on the passengers trapped inside.

As we learn throughout the film, these zombies were created by radiation, and they drink blood to offset the damage caused by this. It took me a long time to realise that the lumpy masses on their faces and bodies are supposed to be radiation burns. Some of them look more like rubber werewolf masks.

While we don’t see anyone transform after being bitten, a military briefing confirms that the condition is contagious. This does explain why their numbers keep growing. And the recently infected have fewer burns, which leads to a couple of nice scenes where people only realise too late that they’re dealing with a zombie and not another survivor.

Verdict

Nightmare City gets points for presenting a zombie apocalypse unlike any other I’ve seen. It’s nothing like the lurching, inexorable doom of the Romero films. This is a more kinetic, organised destruction. It has a very 1950s rationale, but with eighties style gore and sex. Sadly, none of this makes it a good film.

The editing is just plain awful and there is too much clumsy handheld camera work. The story is disjointed and the characters are ciphers, which is not helped by some spectacularly stilted acting. The makeup is largely amateurish, relying heavily on prosthetics that look like spray-painted packing foam, with the occasional splash of fake blood. While there are some standout moments, it feels like these budgeted for at the expense of everything else.

In summary, Nightmare City is a messy film. It’s barely coherent, and the scant story is padded with needless diversions and random titillation. Even so, it has enough of the unhinged chaos I enjoy in classic Italian horror that I’m willing accept its many, many flaws.

If you like this sort of nonsense the way I do, you may have fun. Otherwise, you’ll probably want to stick to something with a budget and a modicum of polish.

The October Horror Movie Challenge

Please do join in and share your own thoughts with us about this or any other films as the month goes on. You can usually find us on BlueSky, Reddit, Discord, or lurking in the dark corners of your home.

If you would like to play along at home, my provisional selections are:

Heretic (USA, 2024)
The Sadness (Taiwan, 2021)
The Uninvited (USA, 1944)
The Lodge (UK/USA, 2019)
WolfCop (Canada, 2014)
Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (Czechoslovakia, 1970)
The Monkey (USA, 2025)
Sister Midnight (India/UK, 2024)
Roadgames (Australia, 1981)
Nightmare City (Italy, 1985)
Dangerous Animals (Australia, 2025)
Dead Talents Society (Taiwan, 2024)
Winterbeast (USA, 1992)
Byzantium (UK/Ireland, 2013)
The Ugly Stepsister (Norway, 2025)
A Page of Madness (Japan, 1926)
Heart Eyes (USA, 2025)
Grafted (New Zealand, 2024)
Arrebato (Spain, 1979)
Hatching (Finland, 2022)
Abigail (USA, 2024)
Ganja & Hess (USA, 1973)
The Devil’s Bath (Austria, 2025)
Pieces (Spain, 1982)
Infested (France, 2023)
Best Wishes to All (Japan, 2022)
A Cat in the Brain (Italy, 1990)
Enys Men (UK, 2022)
Creature From the Black Lagoon (USA, 1954)
Perewangan (Indonesia, 2024)
Bring Her Back (Australia, 2025)

A Final Note

If you have been enticed here by these posts, please do look around at some of our other film reviews. We also have a podcast, called The Good Friends of Jackson Elias, which occasionally covers horror films. If this appeals, you might want to check out some of the following episodes.