Nightmare City | 1980 | Italy | Umberto Lenzi

Lenzi’s grand-scale splatter epic was unleashed during a time in Italian filmmaking where the zombie theme was extremely lucrative and popular. Following the success of Dawn of the Dead and Zombie Flesh Eaters, Nightmare City is noticeably lighter on story and character development, tenuously following reporter Dean as he heads to the airport to catch a potential story about a strange aircraft. As the unresponsive plane lands on the runway, it suddenly bursts open, allowing a flurry of strange passengers to exit and begin mowing down everyone living that they see with improvised weapons and gunfire. The creatures are eventually determined to be highly irradiated human beings, driven mad by their conditions and compelled to replenish their damaged plasma by drinking the blood of unaffected victims. The info comes too late however as even the military are unable to stop the marauding crowds from taking over the entire city, potentially making a literal nightmare never-ending. This was an unsurprising candidate for the nasty list, considering the huge amount of splatter and nudity, including an eye being gouged out with a poker and a breast being sliced off.