Wednesday gets weird when Late Shift at the Grindhouse hosts Ross Meyer and Joe Derderian dig up low-budget b-movies, horror and gore-fests, and camp classics for your viewing pleasure. Buy your ticket and take a ride in our Time Machine! Punch in and earn a bonus! $3 Pabst Blue Ribbon tallboys and $2 small popcorn! PLUS -- special custom trash trailer reel curated by Ross with cheap swag and prize giveaways!

Nightmare City (1980)

a.k.a. City of the Walking Dead

Directed by Umberto Lenzi (The Tough Ones)

We celebrate the release of The Living and the Dead, the new novel from Late Shift at the Grindhouse author-in-residence, Scott Jones with the original fast zombie flick.  

"Another movie I like very much is Nightmare City, because I had no money because it was a very small production, and I shoot the movie with three bad actors but the material was good.  The two protagonists are very bad... But the movie is good, I like the action, the special effects." - Umberto Lenzi, director

"Just sit back and let the gut-muching begin!" - Ken Kish, Video Wasteland: Rental, Reference and Review Guide

"The antagonists of zombie flicks are dead, which takes away a lot of their oomph.  The exception being Giallo master Umberto Lenzi's City of the Walking Dead from 1983, in which the zombies run instead of plod along, feed on blood rather than flesh, and in their livelier moments rip off breasts and cut throats." - Bill Landis and Michelle Clifford, Sleazoid Express: A Mind-Twisting Tour Through the Grindhouse Cinema of Times Square!

"A wildly incoherent Italo Dawn of the Dead rip-off, but it does have a cheapjack nightmare quality, plus blood and gore galore." - The Phantom of the Movies, The Phantom's Ultimate Video Guide

"Director Umberto Lenzi's take on the zombie thing was way ahead of its time.  The zombies, unlike Romero's undead, are lightning fast and use all kinds of weapons (including machine guns).  Two of them even drive." - Nick Cato, Suburban Grindhouse: From Staten Island to Times Square and All the Sleaze Between

"Bloody and brainless, with lots of peculiarly frisky and resourceful zombie types." - Chas. Balun, The Gore Score

Umberto Lenzi's zombie shocker Nightmare City stars actor Hugo Stiglitz as a reporter caught in a living, breathing zombie hell.  When an airplane comes into contact with radiation from a nuclear disaster it causes the passengers to mutate into scabby-faced humanoids with a compulsion to kill and drink the blood of their victims.  As the zombies move into the city and beyond, will anyone or anything be able to stop the wave of bloody death and disease that threatens to decimate mankind?  

About Scott Jones:

Scott Jones is a graduate of the University of Iowa in Iowa City, IA, where he still resides to this day. When he's not busy writing scary stories, he enjoys reading, listening to music, and watching movies.

and The Living and the Dead:

The zombie outbreak happened quickly, almost too quickly for anyone in Evans City to survive. Now, the survivors from the story Dead of the Night (from the collection Before the Dawn) have to find their way in this harrowing new world. They have to find shelter. They have to find a way to escape the living dead. Most importantly, they have to find a way to fend off the living who act like the dead. In this new world, sometimes there is no difference between the living and the dead, and the survivors have to learn if there is any difference between living and just surviving.

Late Shift at the Grindhouse author-in-residence Scott Jones will be signing and have books for sale in the lobby before the screening.