Nightmare City is the first real fast zombie movie and came many years before the likes of 28 Days Later. George A. Romero's Night Of The Living Dead kicked off the modern-day zombie movie-, with the filmmaker himself taking inspiration from Richard Matheson's I Am Legend. Over the decades, zombies have come in all shapes and sizes on the big and small screen, from blockbuster thrills of World War Z, the comedy of Zombieland or the bleak post-apocalyptic thrills of AMC's The Walking Dead.
Fast zombies are a genre unto themselves, and somewhat controversial among those who prefer the slow, shuffling undead imagined by Romero. While 28 Days Later technically features people infected by the "Rage" virus as opposed to being truly undead, it's often labeled a zombie movie. 28 Days Later also popularized the fast zombie, with Zack Snyder's Dawn Of The Dead remake later using them to create a more kinetic movie. Some have linked the start of this subgenre to Return Of The Living Dead, but 1980's Nightmare City appears to be the real starting point.
Nightmare City - also known as City Of The Walking Dead - was helmed by Umberto Lenzi, and opens with a reporter (Hugo Stiglitz) being sent to an airport to interview a scientist about a nuclear accident. When the plane lands, a mob of irradiated ghouls emerge with weapons and start hacking people to death, and soon an outbreak overtakes the entire city. Once the action starts, Nightmare City doesn't pause and jumps from attacks on a TV station, a hospital, an amusement park - nothing to do with Romero's '70s lost horror - and many other locales as the reporter and his wife flee to safety. Again, Nightmare City's "zombies" are really contaminated humans - and in their drinking of blood to regenerate their cells, are more like vampires - but in essence, it's still a zombie film.
In fact, Lenzi himself would bristle when people, including Quentin Tarantino, would describe Nightmare City's ghouls as zombies. The film is said to have been an inspiration on Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror segment from Grindhouse, which also features fast-moving zombies who attack with guns and other weapons. Nightmare City suffers from a lack of story, fleshed out characters and a strange lack of overt gore - aside from a few nasty moments - but its relentless pacing and wild energy have seen it attain a cult following, with horror director Eli Roth proclaiming himself a major fan on Arrow's Blu-ray release.
Nightmare City often gets lost in the conversation around fast zombies, and it doesn't hold up nearly as well compared to movies like 28 Days Later. That said, as a wild, scrappy b-movie from a golden age of Italian horror cinema, it's a fun ride while it lasts and deserves credit for giving fast zombies their first race.
