Night Of The Living Dead DVD Retrospective

[JohnIan101]

PART I: THE 1968 CLASSIC - G P2

Lets cover some of the extras in better detail.

Someone once told me - art is dead. But if that's the case, what does that make artists? Zombies?

- De Vol



The intro by Count Gore De Vol. It start in color that slowly desaturate until it's black and white. That was a nice touch.

Who?

The Count was or rather is a horror movie host, much like Elvira: Mistress Of The Dark. Anyhow, the Count had a show on WDCA in Washington, DC ("Creature Features") that ran for over a decade from 1973 to 1987. Then returned in 1998 as a internet program, streaming movies and shorts. By the way, that's a print of comic book character Vampirella (created by Forrest J Ackerman and comic artist Trina Robbins) on the inside of his coffin.

Anyhow, let's just say the Count was East Coast as Elvira was West Coast. Yeah, I never heard of him until this release.

But there's more; Dick Dyszel who played the Count was also the guy behind the make-up on the kid's show, "Bozo The Clown" - well one of they guys who played the clown. I saw reruns when I was real little in the 70s. He was also "Captain 20", another kids program, never saw this.

There is a trailer on the disc for a documentary, "Every Other Day Is Halloween" on Dyszel's colorful life. Man, that looks quite fascinating. I need to pick that up.



From left to right; Maberry, Paffenroth, Kirtley (moderator), Adams, Hauschild and Gutierrez.

The "Zombie Encounter" panel was cool and would've been way better if it weren't for the piss poor audio and amateur camera work. The guests were handed a microphone, but whoever was working the sound board was not doing their job. The audio hadn't changed (much). You could hear them before the mic was used. I don't understand. And you have to crank up the sound to hear them.

As for the camera, it's on a tripod, I'll give them that. But it's not filmed centered, but rather far on the side (there are zooms as needed). This could've been, way better. On top of that, the audio is somewhat muted.

Putting those woes aside, the discussion was fascinating. Intelligent Zed talk with published authors on the legacy and continued contribution of the Romero classic. Z Fanboys like myself crave stuff like this. Here's something also interesting; the location. It was held at Lutheran Church Of The Redeemer (8PM that October with the event starting at six in the evening) on 55 Wyckoff Avenue in Ramsey, NJ. It began with a screening of NOTLD: R, then the discussion. That's a progressive church.

I liked Peter Gutierrez comment about how the Zed problem could've been manageable - just have Ben (Duane Jones) go out every half hour and wack a few zombies to death; he's good at that. It wouldn't have gotten so out of hand. Also have Tom (Keith Wayne) go out too, wack-a-zed.



The action figure ad is for Mego-like toys of Cemetery Ghoul and Ben. If you're into collecting toys or were old enough to be a kid in the 1970s then you know all about Mego. If not... they made large action figures (roughly eight inches tall), not just pure plastic - they came with cloth clothes. I would love to own those Emce figures, they cool damn sway. They come in Mego-like retro packaging. The single series also includes Barbara and undead Karen.

"Night Of The Living Box Art" is all about Rob Hauschild's hobby; collection VHS cover art from various home video releases of NOTLD. Man, that is quite the nitché and fascinating. Some of the covers shown were impressive, others were just an embarrassment. *shakes head* Some of the video descriptions were so off - like the distributor didn't know what they were selling. Others had the finale image right on the cover.

"Night Of The Gaming Dead" is just lame as hell. It imagines the movie if it were turned into a 1980s video game, "Pac-Man". This was made by Voodoo Velvet, just avoid it. The same with the two shorts, both are bad filler - no ALL THREE are bad fillers.

The "Artist Call-In Commentary" is exactly as you guessed, the DVD producers called the artists to give their thoughts on their contributions. You get to chose from twenty-eight artists. The full run time is 29:04 minutes, but you can't view them all together just as single entries.

I could not access any of the DVD-ROM features. As in...

Can't find them on the disc.

This came in a white DVD case. The disc art shows multiple side profiles of a zombie, skull exposed around the hub. Turn the disc and see the skull open up and his brain popping out to be consumed by the mouth and shoot out of his head, a forever loop.

The menus are in anamorphic widescreen, if your curious. And the function highlighter is a red hammer and a red trowel, cute.

- - -

This is one of those odd bits. I don't really care for this interpretation, BUT I do love some of the extras on DVD. It's is very apparent that a lot of affection and appreciation was put into the production. I give no ill towards that - overall, it's an impressive labor of love. And the commentaries were fascinating too (too bad the audio was poor). This release turned out far better than it should.

This is not part of my library. It goes in a special spot for DVDs that I won't discard for unique reasons. That is, they have an element or moments that rise it above crap. Not good enough to be part of my official collection, but not poor enough to be sold off.

If you're curious, the reason it's longer than the regular film is because of the protracted animator credits.

And there's a stinger at the end, a skinless Furby saying "Need food; me hiding, need food". Then laughs and gives a kiss.

- - -

Looking about online, I find stuff.

George A. Romero was interviewed by Nelson Wyatt which appeared in The Gazette, a Canadian newspaper (on September 11th, 2014. The interview happened on October 21st, 2011 in Mexico City. This and that. But something was dropped that I didn't know.

You might recall in the entry for "Birth Of The Living Dead" part 1 (May 19th, 2016); I wrote about Romero's "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" connection. What I didn't know was how much influence it had on him.



The director wanted Betty Aberlin in his horror flick. Aberlin played Lady Aberlin on the kid's show. One of the human characters in Neighborhood Of Make-Believe. This did not sit well with the gentle, sweater wearing TV personality...

He wouldn't allow that. I originally wanted to use her in the role of Barbra and Fred put his foot down and said no.

Romero continues...

He loved the film. He came and loved it. He was always a huge supporter over the years.

That's kinda charming, would Aberlin have played her different? Could this Barbara be more normal and less catatonic? We'll never know.

Here's a good quote from that panel. The question was whether the zombie genre has topped off; become over-saturated...

For the most part zombies don't have personalities in the story - they simply represents that threat. And it allows the characters then to be in a story where there is a constant threat; constant stress and pressure which warps normal behavior. And it's the warped normal behavior that forms the basis of most story telling. We don't tell stories about people living ordinary lives and doing ordinary things with nothing happening because that would be boring. We write stories in almost any genre about some crisis, some event that comes along that forces the characters out of normal being. And that is true with "The Wizard Of Oz" [1939] as it is with "Night Of The Living Dead" [1968]. Characters taken out of normal behavior by a crisis - well the zombies allow for that without intruding into the story because we don't have to give them, pages so to speak. We don't have to define their characters, tell their histories. We don't even necessarily need to tell how they became zombies, you know? Romero didn't waste a whole lot of time on it. They're there! And then we see how that warps the characters, warps their interactions - and we get to tell endlessly creative stories about people in pressure, people under stress. It's not going to get old.

- Jonathan Maberry



There you go folks. The cinema infection can not be halted, Ben would attest to that and hillbilly grievance. See you back here on October 20th, 2016 for a vintage documentary.