ROMERO RENAISSANCE

Having celebrated my birthday earlier in the month, I find myself in the welcome position of having some extra cash to spend on my beloved DVD collection.

So taking advantage of being able to spend some cash without feeling too guilty I have ordered copies of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968) (R0 USA - Elite Entertainment/Millennium Edition), DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978) (R1 USA - Anchor Bay/The Ultimate Edition) and DAY OF THE DEAD (1985) (R1 USA - Anchor Bay Divimax special edition).

All three come courtesy of my preferred US DVD importer DVD Pacific.

My upgrade of George A. Romero’s definitive zombie trilogy from VHS to DVD has been a long time coming. Perturbed at the abundance of releases – all ranging from substandard to awful – that flooded the market early on I only ventured to pick up a budget version of the classic NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD.

Thinking about it, I even had to buy a cheap release of this groundbreaking horror twice as a mate proceeded to lose my first copy. Needless to say both these failed to do justice to Romero’s masterpiece suffering from terrible transfers and clumsy sound design on bare bones discs.

At last this situation has been largely rectified with both NIGHT and DAWN getting something to approaching definitive DVD releases from the United States based Elite Entertainment and Anchor Bay respectively. I am especially keen to get my hands on the 4-disc DAWN release as it includes the European version of the film re-titled ZOMBI and edited by no other than Italian horror legend Dario Argento.

The jury is still somewhat out on the best release of DAY. Looking through DVD comparison sites and various forums on the Internet it would appear that the recent Region 1 and Region 2 special editions of the film suffer from some rather baffling soundtrack tampering.

See: http://www.istherefood.com/2006/04/09/day-of-the-dead-arrow-uk-release/

To round out my ‘Romero Renaissance’ I also picked up LAND OF THE DEAD (R2 UK – Universal/Director’s Cut) at the HMV sale.

I’ll be posting my thoughts on revisiting these great films and passing judgement on their treatment on DVD in these releases in the near future.