Night Of The Living Dead DVD Retrospective

[JohnIan101]

Reunification

The darkness is my lover and acts of pleasure.

- Samantha Fox

Things that once were lost have now found its way to cinema surface. We stand at the precipice of the whole! Not fancy dreamin' or a bold lie. Truth.

What am I speaking of?

In short - synthesis.



Lets take a step back - some history (Romero with camera above)...

March 7th, 1974 the Monongahela River overflowed, spilled onto downtown Pittsburgh, filling the streets with muddy water and debris. The former location of The Latent Image office building.

The basement was where they stored their archive; master prints to their TV commercials, shorts to posters, press kits, props, outtakes and deleted scenes for "Night Of The Living Dead". In fact this was the location where scenes of the farm cellar was filmed.

Film's distributor Walter Reade Organization did two major things. One, renamed the film without putting a copyright notice - making it public domain, right off the bat. The movie's original title was "Night Of The Flesh Eaters", but changed since it was too similar to the 1964 horror flick, "The Flesh Eaters". At the script stage it was then called "Night Of Anubis". Anubis being the Egyptian God of the dead (before Osiris took over, but that's another story).

And two, they made trims to get to the action sooner. Roughly nine minutes worth, this occurred before Ben and Tom (with Judy) go out to refuel the truck. This can be noticed when Harry and Helen fight in the basement; there's a jump cut on Harry, his body abruptly changes positions (51:41 minutes).

These moments were thought forever lost; gone by the deluge.

Took weeks to go viral. The news came out (widespread) on October 19th, 2015.



On October 4th, at the Monster-Mania [32] convention (Hunt Valley, Maryland); guest, director George A. Romero dropped major news. It's been found!

Speaking to fans he said a 16mm work print was discovered. The event that propped the unearthing was Romero and fellow director Martin Scorsese working with NOTLD negatives for a restoration project. The print was found in co-writer, John Russo's collection.

The missing moments = zombie horde outside the farm house, the biggest spectacle in the film; done with many extras and mannequins. And more of a tense fight between husband and wife at the bottom of the cellar stairs.

- - -



These edits are talked in Elite Entertainment's 2002 "Millennium Edition" DVD (taken from their "25th Anniversary Collector's Edition" laser disc set). That commentary carried over on Genius Products's 2008 "40th Anniversary Edition" DVD - which will be covered in the weeks ahead.

Say thank you - I transcribed the relevant section. Man, typing this out was frustrating; practically two hours spent on 3:40 minutes. So much of what they said overlapped each other. Enough belly aching.

Discussion with George A. Romero, John Russo, Karl Hardman and Marilyn Eastman.

John: And our prop room was in this basement.
Karl: Yeah, lots of nice stuff down there.
Marilyn: That's where the famous flood was, is that right Jack [Russo's birth name]?
Karl: That destroyed everything.
John: Yeah. Later on the "Night Of The Living Dead" work print, a lot of the elements that went into the movie and a lot of our early films were destroyed by a flood.
George: In this basement?
John: In this basement.
George: The old Monongahela River came up and...
Marilyn: Mmm Hmm
Karl: Yup.
George: Took it all away.
Karl: The argument - THE ARGUMENT!
George: Has this jump cut coming up too, the real obvious jump cut.
Marilyn: Oh the one that Walter's...
George: We were trying to cut some time out, wasn't that?
John: Well, the distributor...
Marilyn: That's it. Yes.
George: The distributor wanted some time out of the movie.
Marilyn: Right.
George: And I remember the biggest, my biggest problem I had with it was that BIGGEST widest shot we had of the zombies out in the field got cut out. And instead of being, instead were putting it in somewhere else it just got cut out.
Marilyn: Lost.
George: And that's the shot I wished we had back. I can remember it being a great looking shot - was a big wide shot. We had, stood some mannequins up, out - way in the distance. And we had...
Marilyn: I remember.
George: It was our biggest zombie shot.
Karl: A great horror disservice.
Marilyn: Woh [jump cut happens].
George: And that shot never in... In here is the jump cut, right?
Marilyn: Didn't we just see it?
John: Didn't...
Karl: I think we just past it.
George: Oh did we pass it? I'm sorry, I was looking away.
Marilyn: Yeah, that was it.
Karl: Yeah.
John: Yeah, they insisted...
George: There was some dialog that came out, I don't even remember what it was. But...
John: There was about six more minutes of basement scenes.
George: But I remember, I remember Russ was in New York at the distributor and he said 'Well I can, I figured out where this place where I can get these few lines out of here.' And, and he; they didn't even have movieolas or anything, he was just looking at it [the negative] up against a light box or something. He said, 'I don't think you'll notice this. The head pretty much seems to be in the same position.' And they took it out.
[laugher]
George: We didn't have a lot of cutaways anyway. But...
John: Well, I think there weren't any cutaways; now that you mention that wide shot and you know, if we were doing that now, we could've probably put some music in and actually taken the liberty of going outside to a zombie shot.
George: Right.
John: And that could've been the cutaway.
Marilyn: How many minutes did we drop? In order to...
John: I think...
George: Not much.
Karl: Six wasn't it?
John: About six minutes I think...
Marilyn: All together? Because it seems...
John: And they insisted, they said 'the whole movie's too talky and this whole section and it has to go.' And you know it was our first dealings with a distributor and they were; they were in power position and we figured...
Marilyn: The, the ohm, bonfire.
George: I don't remember it being that much.
Marilyn: The bonfire at the end, I know was trimmed. Remember that?
John: Was it? That I don't remember.
Marilyn: The credits roll and it goes back to the bonfire in the original. There were...
George: That's still there.
Marilyn: I think it was a minute.
George: That's still there.
Marilyn: A minute or two.
John: That's still there, it's still ends on a live shot.
George: It comes back to life at the end, the fire comes back on with that final spitz of music.
Marilyn: But it was longer.
John: They wanted more zombie shots in and they wanted the dialog cut. And we didn't have almost - all of our zombie shots were in. I think we came up with were just a few more seconds.
Karl: Well there wasn't, yeah but...
John: Short shots and then we had to put the jump cut in to get the; to shorten the dialog. And that's all we could do.

- - -

As understood, the work print is being restored by Scorsese's The Film Foundation, founded by the director.

Later Romero stated he prematurely released the info. An official statement will be made soon.

Things to consider...

Could it be that Romero wants to re-release a remastered feature back in theaters?

This may finally bring some closure to the public domain woe? A Director's Cut can be copyrighted. While this still leaves the theatrical version in public domain, does bring solid green backs to the filmmakers.

No word on when this will come out or how long the restoration will take. Now if we can get the missing spider-crab sequence from King Kong (1933).

- - -

Earlier this month (October 7th, I'm that anal), popped my DVD and watched. Still catching new things all these years.

Fleeing from the cemetery ghoul, Barbara runs into the farm house. The front door is locked so rushed towards the back - hoping the back door is serviceable, which it is.

A quick shot of her running by the side of the house...



WTF? Is that a cellar door on the side? Why wasn't Harry Cooper concerned about it? Was it blocked by something on the inside?

Throughout the film; it's referred as the cellar, not basement.

Just thinking out loud; among those deleted scene there is a reference to this other door?

- - -

Back to that convention, the other guests; not going to list their filmographies, too numerous...

Actors:

Matthew Lillard
Keith David
Meg Foster
Seth Gilliam
Brad Greenquist
Dale Midkiff
Andrew Hubatsek
Denise Crosby
Zach Galligan
Terry Kiser
Dee Walllace
Thomas G. Waites
T.K. Carter
Joel Polis
David Clennon
Will Sandin
Charles Cyphers
Don Shanks

Other Horror Celebrities:

Roger Jackson - voice of Ghostface in "Scream" films
Tony Moran - played Michael Myers (The Shape) in "Halloween" (1978)
Nick Castle - played Michael Myers (The Shape) in "Halloween" (1978)
Alan Howarth - film composer

I'll keep you posted on news.