The Greatest Moment in Film
A lot of what the pros refer to as “creative nonfiction” will often have a headline that will be pure hyperbole and sometimes, clickbait. In this instance however, I’m not kidding. I’m actually writing about what can only be considered as perhaps the singular greatest visual piece of art ever captured on film.
It is a 1980 Italian film, directed by the late Lucio Fulci. It has gone through several title changes; The City of the Living Dead, and The Gates of Hell being the two that you may have the most luck with should you choose to seek this film out (and you should).
The City of The Living Dead, Image via IMDB
It is a supernatural zombie film and you must be very aware of that before watching this—most zombie films, both before and after this, attribute the rising of the dead as a scientific happenstance. The big clue usually is when several people die and come back as odd, kinky looking zombies. However, this one is kinda special…
Also, the special effects tread between brilliant and 5th grade—sometimes in the very same scene.
I will not divulge any of the details of the plot other than a suicidal priest has caused the dead to rise up and seriously fuck shit up somewhere in upstate New York. A psychic faints and apparently dies when the aforementioned priest hangs himself, causing a veritable fracas of the dead. (Hmmm…that’s pretty cool. Don’t steal that—it’s mine!) Seeing that it is New York in the early '80s of course, they pop her in a coffin without even embalming her. Before she can be buried, the clock strikes 5 p.m. and the two union gravediggers leave their shovels and stop lowering the coffin; shift is over, time to go home—fuck overtime.
A reporter (randomly in the cemetery) hears the girl wake up and start screaming inside of the casket. He does what any chain-smoking reporter would do and tries to break the coffin open with a pickaxe. Repeatedly. Right up by the girls screaming face.
Awesome!
That is not the scene. No, as awesome as that scene is, it’s got nothing on THE scene.
About halfway through the movie, another woman (read: future victim) is painting quietly in her studio. It’s a nice looking studio with a bay window to the ocean. The artist is concentrating on painting her next masterpiece. She makes a phone call (where our "hero" takes his sweet goddamn time answering). The dialogue is unimportant as the camera swivels and exposes her “work.”
The “painting” is a pretty ocean beach scene, which of course makes sense as she can look out of the window and hey, there’s a beach! Let’s ignore the fact that it’s night during the scene, and think, “Well, maybe she’s been working on it since the afternoon.”
Hovering over the beach, however, is something that made me pause the movie for about five minutes. It’s a head. No body, just a head. The head of a fucking rhinoceros. Seriously. It looks like one of those things you had to draw to get into that correspondence school in the back of your TV guide in the mid-70s. You know, either a turtle, a happy frog or a fucking rhino head? Yeah, it looks like that.
At this point, I’m totally distracted for the rest of the scene and subsequently, the entire rest of the film. Who the fuck has that running around their head, begging an artist to bring it to canvas? Where does this come from? Even better, as the scene progresses and the camera changes angle, you see for a fleeting moment, that right in front of the window facing the ocean, there is a rather large model of a rhinoceros head on a stand. Holy living awesome!
It’s brilliant. It’s a goddamned movie in a movie as far as I’m concerned. It’s as if the art department and Fulci had an argument and this was the compromise.
“Hey check out this cool model of the head of a rhino! We should totally use this in the movie.”
“Wait, what movie?”
Sandra paints a floating rhinoceros head over a beach. City of the Living Dead (1980).
“The one we’re making right now.”
“It’s not in the script. I say no.”
“But, what am I supposed to do with this rhino head?”
“It’s not going on my set!”
“Well, she has to be painting something for Christ’s sake!”
A small pause.
“Good point.”
I no longer cared about anything else that happened in the movie, even when the artist dies in a really stupid way a few minutes later. I wanted to know two things; who is going to finish this amazing rhino head floating on the beach and what the hell is this painting called? “Floating Rhino Head Over Beach'' is too obvious. These are Italian filmmakers for crying out loud! It’s probably something like “Bella Cosa Rinoceronte Amore Galleggiante,” (or, Beautiful Rhinoceros Floating Love Thing. At least, that’s what I would call it.)
I wish every movie had a scene like this. It made up for the amount of sucking that the rest of the movie had shot all over it.
It’s hypnotic.
It’s avant.
It’s sheer genius.
And boom, the greatest moment in film.
Article written by nelson W. Pyles
Nelson W. Pyles is an author, musician, podcast creator and voice actor living in Pittsburgh. He has written two novels and is currently working on his third. His second collection of short stories, essays and articles All These Steps Lead Down will be released in March 2024 from Cold War Radio Press. He is a member of the HWA. You can find Nelson at https://whatnelsonwrites.com/
