Hey, does anyone remember that bombastic remake of Umberto Lenzi’s NIGHTMARE CITY? You remember, don’t you? A hoard of starving undead threatening to take over the world with only the stoic might of LOU FERRIGNO (The Incredible Hulk), NOAH HATHAWAY (Neverending Story) and JUDITH O’DEA (Night of the Living Dead) to stop them? Throw in the Director of Photography DEAN CUNDEY (John Carpenter’s Halloween, Escape from New York) and Director TOM “Sex Machine” SAVINI (SFX - Dawn of the Dead, Friday the 13th, Creepshow)! Sill not ringing any bells??
If the answer was a resounding “NO”, you’re in good company ‘cause neither did we, or the rest of the universe. And it’s a shame too, because among the lower budgeted indie films that are produced, this one had an inspired conceit and a bullseye of a pop culture cast and crew ta’ boot! This BLOOD CLOT episode serves as a cautionary tale about how a movie is never officially greenlit unless you’re actually seeing it on the silver screen (or streaming service). So what was the fate of this feature film and our involvement with it?
Buckle up kids, we’re going for a ride.
Before we begin I would like to state that the information expressed in this article is for journalistic purposes only. The opinions expressed in this article are those of Derek Rook and may not be otherwise associated with the views and/or opinions of Rough House Publishing, LLC and/or staff. All information associated with the film project “Nightmare City” is sourced from publicly released promotional articles. All artwork, photography and/or video clips are property of their respected copyright holders and are intended for review purposes only. No infringement is intended.
So the paint was barely dry on the brick shithouse that was yet to be known as ROUGH HOUSE PUBLISHING LLC, and already we’re hopping on planes to Chicago and driving to New York to fortify publishing deals with our favorite independent publishers, and bringing their defunct properties, THE DEAD and GORE SHRIEK back to bloody life.
During this time, I had worked on some art pages that would eventually end up as the impetus for our “HOSPICE” story in GORE SHRIEK® RESURRECTUS VOLUME ONE. I had posted them online in color (the published work ended up in black & white) and thus caught the eye of a producer working for the company that was spearheading the remake and asked me if we were interested in producing and publishing a comic book that would serve as the PREQUEL to the film, and would effectively explain how the zombie outbreak began before leading right into the film. Hmm, lemme think about this…
UM, …FUCK YEAH WE DO!
And just like that, we were off to the races! The prequel book would eventually be titled, NIGHTMARE CITY - HAITI and it took zero time for us to slate this in as our third and most ambitious effort to date.
For the uninitiated, the original movie NIGHTMARE CITY (AKA - CITY OF THE WALKING DEAD) was part of a massive, but relatively short lived onslaught of Italian zombie/cannibal films that followed in the shambling footsteps of George A. Romero’s DAWN OF THE DEAD upon its stateside release in 1978. Eventually the craze would return to the grave for about two decades (although you’d never know it now), but not before delivering to us, some of the most wacky-ass, over-the-top brand of low-budget exploitation that only the Italians would have the brass balls and audacity to commit to celluloid.
The plot was simple enough:
A rogue military plane makes an emergency landing after flying through some type of nuclear radiation with no one able to be contacted aboard. News of this planes landing catches the attention of air traffic control, the police, the military and local news reporter, DEAN MILLER, played in painful rigidity by Mexican actor, HUGO STIGLITZ, doing his very best impression of a body snatcher from space doing an impression of Ron Burgundy.
The plane doors finally open and a flood of zombified humans emerge to wreak havoc across the countryside. The movie even has a Shyamalan-style twist ending that suggests that the horrors of the film were all just a horrible Stiglitz nightmare ….OR IS IT?!!!
Ironically, the original NIGHTMARE CITY has MUCH more in common with 28 DAYS LATER than the garden variety zombie fare, despite being released a full 22 years earlier. The “zombies” were less living dead and more “infected” humans decomposing from being dosed in toxic radiation and needing fresh BLOOD to regenerate their dying cells …and they RAN like hell! These zany fuckers do just about anything to get a splash of warm red viscera, including cutting women’s areolas off and “breastfeeding” like bosses, to wielding garden tools, axes, scalpels, knives, fire pokers and even guns, all while looking like they jumped out of a 1970’s Sears Fall Catalog after being blasted in the face with horse shit.
2014 arrived and it’s announced that an Indiegogo campaign has been launched to raise money for the remake with original Director, Umberto Lenzi attached as Associate Producer, to deliver the goods in a much more traditional “Romero Style” zombie fashion with it’s own feel. The campaign would go on to raise $138,857 dollars over several months with several donation levels, incentives and stretch goals, that continued to raise the bar, even so far as to offer higher level donors an opportunity to act in the feature film itself. HEY NOW!!!
They say that art imitates life and what more inspiration does one need for a tale like this than a gnarly flesh eating virus that threatened to take over the world? At this same time in history, there was an actual Ebola virus outbreak that eventually killed over 30,000 people and shook the population of West Africa to its very foundation. As the virus furiously spread throughout Haiti and surrounding areas, there was a mounting fear that we were facing what could become a global pandemic (how interesting of what pandemic would come six years later).
Mike “Corpse Monger” Wasion, Rough House’s then resident Scribe, crafted what we thought would be the perfect jumping off point for our woe-ridden tale.
Our pitch went something like this:
“In a small village in Haiti, a new strain of the Ebola virus had taken hold and was rapidly wiping out the local population. The virus had mutated and become impervious to any forms of treatment or cure. With the virus aggressively claiming victims at wholesale, the fear of an airborne strain was slowly becoming a reality.
A military quarantine was erected along the boarders of the isle and in desperation, a team of doctors were assembled from around the globe specializing in unorthodox experimental medicine. The idea here was that we would subtly pay homage to the MAD doctor’s of Italian Zombie cinema by naming them DR. MENARD (Zombi2), DR. OBERTO (Zombie Holocaust/Dr. Butcher MD) and DR. BARRETT (Hell of the Living Dead/Night of the Zombies). Italian Cinematic Horror Universe anyone?
The Doctor’s Three, develop a serum that when injected into the infected patient, decreases the heart rate slowly to the point of essentially “killing” them, at least long enough for the Ebola strain to die without a living host. The serum then infuses the cells with a self-sustaining antibody that effectively “kickstarts” the patient back to life, assuredly virus free.
At first the experimental drug seems to be a success, but like any good dystopian terror tale, things don’t stay very awesome for very long, and eventually the patients come back to life, but not as originally intended. Hell ensues, and it becomes an all-out war between the living and the living dead as the military desperately fight to maintain the perimeter and eliminate the threat before the dead flood into neighboring villages, and eventually the planet.
End Pitch.
Mike had a very particular “death-cycle” designed for this particular brand of Zombie, beginning as traditional living rotted corpses, but then mutating in stages into walking versions of the Ebola virus itself. So without further ado, here’s the CORPSE MONGER himself, and what he had to say of his experience with writing the treatment for the fated, NIGHTMARE CITY – HAITI:
“Alright, so...the thing I remember most from my ill-fated time in the NCH salt mines, was my self-imposed mandate of reinventing the zombie, and without supernatural means at that. So how exactly was I to do that, whilst ALSO making it seem ‘CLASSIC’? Always a tall order. I had a visual hook in my head that kind of kicked off all the ideas and tied it all together like the dropping of so many fetid dominoes.
That hook - an immediate knee-jerk memory of ONE zombie in particular from the original NIGHTMARE CITY, a crusty, pan-blackened ghoul who resembled nothing so much as a bug-eyed burnt marshmallow in a tailored suit. I thought, ‘This fucker looks like a straight up blood blister after Sunday services.’ “
“So I thought alright...let's push that to the Nth degree...how far can I take that look/idea? And from THERE, my mind instantly went to the final form of BRUCE WILLIS from the GRINDHOUSE film’s (superior segment- sorry, QT) PLANET TERROR (which on its own could have been a remake of Nightmare City). A postulate abomination so over-the-top, that it seemed like a boss monster from a video game. But there were also shades of the vampire, with all the blood drinking, the slasher, with all the stabbing, and even the CLASSIC zombie, with our shift to Haiti...so how in the ACTUAL HELL do I blend such dissonant yet vitally important motifs? “
“Welp, …our zombies had to CHANGE, like ever-worsening stages of a beyond-terminal illness. So I thought, they'd start off as wide-eyed, weapon-wielding, blood-guzzling killers ...then devolve into brain-addled, throat-ripping, flat-lined, undead killers ...and finally, arrive at a living embodiment of the disease itself, barely humanoid berserkers, and more tumor than human. These creatures could kill not only with brutality, but also by proximity. Fucked no matter what.”
“I pitched all of this, only to be met with feverish enthusiasm from Derek...and general confusion from the Powers-That-Be. We asked for specifics as to what to change, or do differently...and were met with ‘directives’ vaguer than the MPAA handing notes on HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER.”
“It simply was not to be.”
In many ways, Mike was dead on. Our pitch was in radical contrast to the film that I think they were trying to make, which sounded much closer in tone to the Ford Brothers’ film, THE DEAD (2010) and not to be confused with the comic book of the same name by Arrow Comics. Eventually though, …the wheels of that puss fueled, Ebola-ridden husk were about to rot right the fuck off …and seemingly, no one survived the crash.
It’s now almost a decade later. The production companies Facebook page hasn’t been updated since 2016. The companies website is now defunct. That Indiegogo campaign has long since closed and the once flourishing news has yielded to radio silence. Many a financial backer was left with unanswered questions and empty pockets with nothing to show for it. “Production Hell” is NOT always a death sentence for would-be films, but it does have it’s own department on the Hollywood walk of shame.
In retrospect, NIGHTMARE CITY - HAITI, became the first “dead body” of a project to lay at our then, unscathed foundation. This happens more often than documented (especially with licensed IP’s) and is generally accepted as the price of doing business. Thicker skins have prevailed.
So what ever became of those "ULTRA-ZOMBIES" we planned to unleash? I don't think they're quite done feeding quite yet. ROUGH HOUSE PUBLISHING has a strict policy that absolutely NOTHING awesome will remain on the cutting room floor, so keep watching the trash cans, kids. We CAN say that it was an honor having been asked to the party in the first place and if the ghouls in golden corduroy rear their stove-topped, scabby faces again, we’ll be ready to give THE ROUGHIANS something to dismember!
Until the next BLOOD CLOT, don’t forget to keep your cardigan tucked into your plaid, bell bottomed pants! It’s going to be a cold one this season.
D. Rook
06DEC2023
The great Umberto Lenzi passed away on Thursday October 19th 2017 at the age of 86.