A large transport plane lands at the airport. A television reporter, Dean Miller (Hugo Stiglitz) and his photographer are at the airport waiting to interview a famous scientist concerning a recent radioactive spill at a nearby nuclear power plant when the unidentified plane comes in. They watch as the plane makes an emergency landing. Communication between the plane and the tower is nonexistent. The police are on hand to order the door be opened and demanding that everyone exit the plane. The door opens and zombies spill out, killing everyone they see.
Dean manages to escape and returns to the station to make his report. The station is under strict orders from General Murchison (Mel Ferrer) and the station manager, Mr. Desmond (Ugo Bologna), to kill the story for fear of widespread panic. Unfortunately, the zombies decide to invade the television station and start eating everyone, on camera.
Dean tries to call his wife, Anna (Laura Trotter), but finds that she left for the hospital. Anna is a doctor and is expected in surgery. When the zombies attack the station, Dean flees to the hospital to find his wife. When the hospital is attacked by the zombies, Dean and Anna flee, in an ambulance, to the countryside.
In the meantime, the zombies have overrun the city. The military is still trying to keep a lid on things, but everything is so out of control and people in the city are being slaughtered. The zombies have pushed out into the countryside. It appears that no one is safe from either being killed or being turned into a zombie themselves.
“Nightmare City” AKA “Incubo sulla città contaminate” or “Nightmare over the Contaminated City” AKA “La invasión de los zombies atómicos” or “Invasion of the Atomic Zombies” AKA “City of the Walking Dead” was released in 1980 and was directed by Umberto Lenzi. It is an Italian Spanish and Mexican science fiction horror thriller and a zombie movie.
These are not your normal everyday zombies. These guys look like they’ve been in a fire and their faces are burnt. They’re agile, can run and use weapons. I have concerns about regarding them as zombies at all. From my understanding zombies are dead people that have come back to life. In this case they appear to have been living people turned into zombies due to radiation poisoning, not reanimated dead people. The zombies also don’t go for brains but suck the blood from people, similar to vampires. In essence, they are atomic vampires suffering from radiation poisoning and not zombies. They can still only be killed by a blow to the head, but other than that, there’s very little zombie about them. Despite all this, the film is recognized as the first to have fast moving zombies.
Most of the movie is rampaging zombies with very little in the form of plot. It’s good if all you’re looking for is blood, but even then much of the gore is within budget. The lack of a hefty budget also interferes with the ending making it ambiguous and slightly infuriating. It’s not a great movie and it goes on longer than needed. In the end it was OK but not exactly the best of the genre.