Nearly a year ago, I was searching YouTube for the trailer to Umberto Lenzi’s 1980 zombie film Nightmare City and I ended up coming across a tribute to the film’s main character, the virile and bearded TV news anchorman Dean Miller (played, with a notable lack of enthusiasm, by Hugo Stiglitz.)

The video artfully takes Lenzi’s overlong film and reduces it down to 3 and a half minutes of Dean Miller killing people.  Interestingly, not a hint of nuance or plot is lost in the process.  Anyway, the video has always made me smile so I figured why not share it?  I should clarify that I have no idea who actually put this together beyond the fact that I had nothing to do with it.

Actually, I’m being a little bit too hard on Nightmare City.  For a Lenzi film, its actually fairly entertaining and it does feature one of the abosolute worst endings in the history of cinema.  If a hurricane ever hits North Texas and I find myself having to stay inside for a few days, my survival plan is to pass the time writing up a review of Nightmare City.

As previously stated, Miller was played by actor Hugo Stiglitz.  Quentin Tarantino, of course, later borrowed Stiglitz’s name for Inglorious Basterds.  Tarantino’s Stiglitz, it must be said, was a bit more interesting than the actual Stiglitz.