Aka: The Gates of Hell
Blu-ray / DVD review (region 2)
Directed by Lucio Fulci
Starring Christopher George, Catriona MacColl, Giovanni Lombardo Radice
Release date 24 May 2010

A preacher’s suicide opens up the seven gates of hell. Oops…

Leave it to the Italians to make a nauseatingly awesome horror flick. I made the mistake of eating lunch while watching this and I think it’ll be a year before I can eat French bread pizza again. Believe it or not, that’s a compliment.

Every frame of this atmospheric early ‘80s chiller drips with a sense of unease. It makes for a deeply uncomfortable but ultimately very satisfying watch. As you’d expect from Lucio Fulci (Zombie Flesh Eaters, The House by the Cemetery), it’s choc-full of graphic scenes of bloodletting, with eyes bleeding and vomit pouring from mouths. It’s genuinely horrid stuff, but near operatic in its intensity.

The special effects occasionally look ridiculous, and the acting isn’t always wonderful, but the real object here is to create a stylish and disgusting exercise in terror, and on those levels it definitely succeeds.

As well as a transfer that is far better than fans could ever have hoped for, this release boasts an exhaustive amount of extras. There’s a lengthy biog of Giovanni Lombardo Radice and an interview with Catriona MacColl, with alternative commentaries by both stars. You also get two accounts of Fulci’s career (one by his pal, Starcrash director Luigi Cozzi, and another by Fulci’s daughter), postcards, posters and frankly so much other stuff I could spend hours just listing it. Jonathan Wilkins

VERDICT: 8/10
A stylish and horrible gore flick, accompanied by a staggering amount of extras. Fans of Italian horror couldn’t ask for more.