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Puke Your Guts Out at The Hi-Pointe – GATES OF HELL Midnights This Weekend!

By Tom Stockman | December 28, 2014

“This morning she was inside a coffin at the funeral home, and now she’s here in my kitchen!”

GATES OF HELL screens midnights this Friday and Saturday (January 2nd and 3rd) at The Hi-Pointe Theater (1005 McCausland Ave., St. Louis, MO 63117)

Man, Italian director Lucio Fulci made some great gory zombie horror films and GATES OF HELL is certainly one of them! This marks the fourth Fulci film, after ZOMBIE, THE BEYOND, and HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY to play at Destroy the Brain’s Late Night Grindhouse midnight series (and, after PIECES, the second to star Christopher George!). GATES OF HELL is (perhaps) better known under its DVD title CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD, but it will always be GATES OF HELL to me! I saw GATES OF HELL several times at the drive-ins back in the early 80s but don’t think it ever played in St. Louis at a hard-top, so this weekend’s screening at the Hi-Pointe (a 35mm print no less!!) will be a real treat.

The plot concerns something about a reporter and a psychic who race to close the Gates of Hell after the suicide of a clergyman causes them to open, allowing the dead to rise from the grave. But with Fulci, it’s always all about the red stuff, something the director has never been one to shy away from, and GATES OF HELL features some truly grotesque gore set pieces… most notably a scene in which young Rosie Kelvin (Daniela Doria) vomits all her internal organs. Gnarly business indeed! In another moment of Neapolitan nastiness, the town weirdo, Bob (John Morghen – the same actor who had his weenie cut off and eaten in MAKE THEM DIE SLOWLY!), has his head forced into a furiously whirring drill by his girlfriend’s furious father (a scene that made the cover of Fangoria #29!)

Another reason to like GATES OF HELL is the splendid music score by Fabio Frizzi – slow and ominous as hell! Also, this movie has great atmosphere – lots of shots of fog-shrouded streets, dust-blown parking lots, and creepy catacombs. I also like how the zombies disappear and reappear at a whim, and that genuinely weird ending. GATES OF HELL is a pure nightmare film; very suspenseful, technically well accomplished, decently acted and quite the nerve jolter on occasion.