Night Of The Living Dead DVD Retrospective

[JohnIan101]

PART I: THE 1968 CLASSIC - Q P1

Somewhere in the far distance, feral dogs are barking; smart enough to avoid the dead, but hungry enough to feed on the living - who or whatever that may be, ravenous bastards.

These small beasts have become a nightmare - another solid reason to avoid the cities and large townships. Dogs are not longer, man's best friend.

Worse yet are the pit bulls. They were bad enough when the world wasn't infected, now their rage is magnified. Can't tell if it's a matter of bitterness, no longer fed.

You had been sick for a couple of day, a fever. Not so bad to have a total loss of lucidity, but you have a cloud over the head. Hard to focus at times, a daze. And here, that could be your doom. At one of your moments of clarity, you damn well better find some aspirins. The backpack you wear has none remaining, only an empty bottle.

The hope was going to a bigger locale, rummaging in some undisturbed homes - find some pain killers and ride the illness out. The plan worked, but not without nearly getting bitten by the lady of the house. Lady since the teen was a girl and the only occupant. A quick jab in the face with your ice pick had put her down without much noise.

The main bathroom had the aspirins and even some vitamins, that's good. Hoping for further luck - the kitchen. The cupboard was mostly bare, whoever lived her hadn't gone shopping before The End. Did find a jar of Vegemite. Man, this went bad - the smell is atrocious, this... expires in two months.

Not that hungry.

The bottom shelf did have a one open case of fruit punch juice boxes, four of them. And a single, mini bag of nondescript chips.

You had enough thoughts not to become infected by various places "Lady" had come in contact with or even bleed on. Don't know for sure - why take chances?

Looking about you had found a large walk-in closet. Various stuff on the floor and normal hanging spacing on the rod tells you, nobody has touched this closet since the apocalypse. It's 'clean'. More searches uncovers a cabinet; some pillows, a blanket and a folded comforter.

You take your solar panel gadget and place it next to the window to recharge your flashlight batteries for later. The comforter is placed in the now cleared closet floor. The pillow and blanket are added to this makeshift bed.

The floor items were kicked and toss under the master bed, out of sight.

The house doors had been closed, locked and even barricaded. One last security; you get inside your 'bed' after taking two aspirins and a juice box, closing the venetian blinds doors. Nobody would know you were inside.

Sleep.

Unsure how much time had passed, it's dark now. But a noise hits you. A growling, not one of them - the canine variety. Loud enough and not muffled that it's coming from outside. Was there an open window somewhere you had missed?

The growling has turned into an audible light bark.

Darkness. No flashlight within reach. And still sick. Can a dog get inside? The closet has no real lock. Will the barking become a ghoulish beacon?

This has all the makings of being a lousy day. Nothing to do than wait until dawn so you can see your attacker and use that ice pick once more. But the bark chanced pitch.

Two of them?

Crap.

- - -

No matter how much you try, you keep getting pulled back to Turd City. Once again, another public domain DVD copy. The last one was from BCI Eclipse (THE 1968 CLASSIC - J). And is exactly in execution to that.



This streeted on February 14th, 2017 for $12.95 from Dub3 LLC, a DVD only release (UPC # 9 191127 363725). This came in a standard DVD case. Catalog number is D31003.

This streeted against "The Edge Of Seventeen", "Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk" and "Arrival".

No slipcover or insert issued.

The DVD has five chapters.

The motion picture is ninety-six minutes long.

- - -

Extras:

* Theatrical Trailer (full screen)

- - -

Audio:

* Digital 2.0 (mono)

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NOTES/REVIEW

There are no subtitles

The DVD is not dubbed in any language(s).

It is presented in anamorphic widescreen - yes, you read correctly.

No sense putting lipstick on a pig. All the images for this review, minus covers have not been worked on.

This has two graces, but does not save it. The first being the cover art by Ariel Medel, quite sway, too bad this is on garbage. Defiantly feels like a comic book and would make an excellent poster. It was number three of this notion presented by Comics PriceGuide dot com. I'll cover the other two in a few.

As far as I can tell only three titles came out this way and man, there is contradictions. Sorry, getting ahead of myself.



The second is the motion menu. There have been others who have done the very same thing. The menu is folks at a movie theater. But this effort was successful. The menu clip is a 40 seconds loop; the red curtains close and restarts. The people there behave like in a movie house; eating popcorn and getting close to their dates. And not just the folks near the camera, everybody is moving.

Really appreciate it. And I repeat myself - too bad this is garbage.

Oh yeah, before I forget the distributor's name is "Dub Squared" - Dub3. Okay.

Should you buy this? Easy answer is no. But if you want the cover art, find it cheap. Can't say I did; needed content for this month, the film's 50th anniversary. I paid $10.25 (total) off Ebay.



Like with that above mentioned BCI release. I'm gonna keep this for the artwork; not officially part of my collection.

The disc has printed art which mirrors the cover.

- - -

The image quality?

It's watchable and damn feels like I'm viewing a YouTube video - hell downloaded from the site and slapped onto disc. The movie when it starts is jerky, like frames are missing or in poor slow motion. It gets better after some minutes.

The film is quite soft - not focused with moderate to heavy pixilation throughout its run. At times like they tried to upscale a weak video. Besides coming from a poor res source, there is another reason. This is a single layer DVD that was not fully utilized. Single layer has a 4.7 GB capacity. Getting info on my computer, this just uses 2.55 GB. Let that sink in.

Crap on top of crap.

But the worse thing is how this was butchered. The movie was never in widescreen, it was made in full screen. But here it is presented in 1.77.1 widescreen, not 1.33.1 (full). This is not a crop of the top and bottom, but a stretch. The inverse of 1970s martial arts movies shown in America, squeezed.



Here is three examples of why you should stay away. And not even complete widescreen as it is window boxed. WHY??? This should not be in wide, at all. *sigh*