Nightmare City
Nightmare City
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Nightmare City

Nightmare City (Italian: Incubo sulla città contaminata; released in the US as City of the Walking Dead) is a 1980 science-fiction horror film directed by Umberto Lenzi. It stars Hugo Stiglitz as a TV news reporter who witnesses the collapse of order in a city overrun by irradiated blood-drinking ghouls. Victims rise from the dead to join the host, adding to the chaos. The film was an international co-production film between Italy, Spain and Mexico.

American television reporter Dean Miller waits at a small European airport to interview a scientist about a recent nuclear accident, when an unmarked Lockheed C-130 Hercules military plane makes an emergency landing. The plane doors open and dozens of armed, deformed men, the scientist among them, burst out and attack the military personnel on the runway; they are impervious to most injuries and bullet wounds and are relentless in their assault, stopping only to consume the blood of their victims. Miller flees the airport for the TV station where he works and tries to alert the public, but a corrupt General Murchison of Civil Defense will not allow it, shutting down the news station and locking the news crew inside with bombs ready to detonate in order to keep them quiet. Miller then tries to find his wife Anna, a doctor at the local hospital, as the crazed assailants overrun the city, their ranks swollen by their former victims.

Several zombies attack the TV station, forcing Miller to flee to the hospital. That evening, a group of fiends attack the city's power station, destroying it and plunging the city into darkness. Miller arrives at the hospital as it is being attacked and manages to rescue Anna. They then flee in a stolen ambulance.

Meanwhile, General Murchison meets with military officers and scientists at a hidden bunker where they find the attackers are contaminated humans who have been mutated by radiation. They speculate that the scientist investigating the leak at the state nuclear power plant was apparently infected with radiation and, in turn, infected others aboard the military transport plane, leading to the outbreak. The infected humans are incredibly strong, very fast and have lightning reflexes. However, they are unable to regenerate red blood cells, leading to their appetite for blood, because their lack of drinking blood would result in dehydration, causing their ultimate death by starvation. The only way to kill the infected is by destroying their brain.

Murchison's daughter Jessica and her husband, Bob, are on a holiday getaway in the country, oblivious to the carnage overtaking the city. Murchison sends a pair of officers to locate Jessica and Bob and take them to safety. When they arrive at the couple's campsite, however, they have already been infected and kill Jessica and Bob.

Major Warren Holmes, Murchison's official aide, telephones his wife Sheila, staying at their country house, where he tells her about the crisis and warning her not to leave the house. Sheila is then visited by Cindy, who is oblivious to what is going on. Two infected men break into the house and kill Cindy. Sheila then manages to kill them before they can fully attack her.

The next day, Miller and Anna get out of the city and have to stop at a filling station. There they are attacked by a small group of infected. Miller makes a Molotov cocktail and blows up the zombies, along with the ambulance. The couple continue on foot, trying to evade the zombies who are now roaming the countryside. They take shelter in a local church, only to find an infected priest, who Miller is forced to kill.

Meanwhile, Major Holmes arrives at a local airbase only to find it overrun, the pilots all dead and the only survivor mad with paranoia (a sign of airborne zombification), leaving the military with no air support. Another soldier is forced to kill the lone survivor at the airbase, after the survivor holds Major Holmes at gun point thinking the Major is also infected. Major Holmes then abandons the base after a brief radio communication with General Murchison in which he tells the General the base is abandoned and the jets have been sabotaged, and the General tells him not to engage the zombies but just return to the base or save himself, as he oversees the overthrowing of the city's mayor as part of his plan to let the zombie virus spread all over town. Major Holmes then flies to his house to rescue his wife, only to discover that Sheila is also infected, forcing him to kill her.

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