Stars:
Clu Gulager, James Karen, and Don Calfa
Writer:
Dan O’Bannon
Based
On A Story By: Rudolph J. Ricci, John Russo, and Russ Streiner
Director:
Dan O’Bannon
Feature
length: 91 minutes
Extras:
Feature Length Audio Commentary By Writer And Director Dan O’Bannon and
Production Designer William Stout, Designing The Dead Featurette, Conceptual Art
Gallery By William Stout, TV Spots, and Trailers
Languages:
English and French Monaural Sound
Subtitles:
English Captions and Closed Captions and French and Spanish Language Subtitles
Packaging:
Keep Case
Chapter
Stops: 16
Sound:
Monaural Sound
Year
of Theatrical Release: 1985/DVD Release: 2002
Theatrical
Distributor: Orion Pictures
Home
Video Distributor: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Home Entertainment
MPAA
Rating: R
Reviewer:
Mark A. Rivera
After
“Night Of The Living Dead” George Romero and John Russo went their separate
ways, each with the right to produce sequels to their 1968 zombie classic.
Romero would write and direct “Dawn Of The Dead” and “Day Of The Dead”
and pen a 1990 remake of “Night Of The Living Dead” while Russo wrote a
screenplay for his own sequel, “The Return Of The Living Dead.” No stranger
to zombie horror from having his “B-17” short animated in the Ivan Rietman
produced big screen adaptation of “Heavy Metal,” Dan O’Bannon eventually
read Russo’s script and felt it was too much of a serious sequel to “Night
Of The Living Dead” and did not want to tread over Romero’s trilogy. George
Romero’s “Day Of The Dead” was released during the same summer as “The
Return Of the Living Dead” so I agree with O’Bannon’s decision.
O’Bannon rewrote the screenplay and with a low budget produced one of
the best non-Romero zombie films ever made and also one of the few mixtures of
horror and dark comedy that actually works. I am not stating that the film is
incredibly scary or drop dead hilarious. (No pun intended.) It is just
that very few films that try to mix horror and dark comedy really ever work so
well and I find that most non-Romero zombies films pale when compared to
Romero’s work.
The
premise is simple. “Night Of The Living Dead” was actually based on a real
incident with facts changed to the fiction. The real zombies are for more agile,
can think and reason as well as talk, and have an appetite for brains, which is
the only thing that briefly takes the pain of their being reanimated corpses
away. The film is very much a time capsule of the time with the post punk and
new wave fashions being exploited to add to the film’s visual style. An
inferior remake/pseudo sequel was produced without O’Bannon’s involvement
and then Brian Yuzna produced and directed a more serious third entry in the
series.
The
fans spoke out and MGM delivers a better than average standard DVD release
complete with an anamorphic widescreen (1.85:1) presentation and a modified
(1.33:1) version for standard televisions. The transfer is uneven with some
scenes containing a lot of visible grain that appears to be from the source
materials used and not an effect from the digital compression process. Though
some may disagree, I think the standard version actually looks better than the
widescreen version on this DVD. The grain exists in both versions, but somehow I
just think the full-framed presentation just hides the grain more. A sharp
English Two-Channel Monaural Soundtrack is provided along with a French Language
Two-Channel Monaural Soundtrack and English Captions and Closed Captions for the
hearing impaired as well as French and Spanish Language Subtitles encoded on to
both single layered sides of the DVD as options.
Writer
and Director Dan O’Bannon and Production Designer William Stout provide a
lively screen specific audio commentary track and also participate in a
13-minute featurette made exclusively for this DVD release. A gallery of
storyboards and conceptual art by William Stout and ten TV spots and two
theatrical trailers wrap up the extra features on this DVD. The features are
also available for both presentations of the film on either side of the DVD. The
menus are standard interactive still frames that are easy to navigate.
“The
Return Of The Living Dead” will debut on DVD-Video from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Home Entertainment on Tuesday, August 27, 2002.
©
Copyright 2002 By Mark A. Rivera
All Rights Reserved.