Customer Reviews

Night of the Living Dead

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This audio recording isn't good at all. It's abridged, which is a problem all in itself for any audio recording. The acting is awful and exaggerated for some reason, the dialogue and attitudes a bit hostile in places that don't make sense. But all in all this recording sounds like it was made back during the days when radio dramas ruled. Which is one of the reasons I've kept this CD. I love the movie, the original and the remake, and I wanted to be just as taken in by this CD. My first impulse after the first listen was to get rid of it, but I kept it, and I listened to it again. So it's not THAT bad, but it's not that good. I didn't pay much for this CD (thankfully) but I'm not sorry anymore that I got it. It's good to listen to while at work (with headphones, of course) and for getting that Night of the Living Dead mood to watch the movie later in the evening. It's not bad to have around when you have nothing else to listen to, but don't get this CD expecting the entire script or award winning acting. Buy it as cheap as you can or have someone burn a copy.

There's no other way to put it -- this performance of NOTLD is terrible. As a fan of the original film, I was intrigued by the concept of the film as a radio play. But the performances are just horrible; I mean, actually painful to listen to -- full of the worst cliches and ridiculously shameful racial stereotypes. You think I'm making that up? I'm not.

If you want to listen to a good horror dramatization in time for Halloween, try the 3-D audio performance of Stephen King's The Mist, or the BBC Radio performance of Pet Semetary.

I adore aural entertainment! I've well lost track of how many hundreds of dollars I've spent on audiobooks and OTR cds and mp3 cds (and cassettes back in the 80s and 90s as well).

But the production quality of this adaptation is really unprofessional. I suspect it must, surely, have been a student project that Simon & Shuster were duped into publishing. The writing is fine, but the acting is weak (though, granted, many would say that of the original cult classic film, lol), but most off-putting of all is the producer's amateurish use of FX. Most annoyingly, whenever characters are meant to be outdoors they sound as though they are in a cave -- which makes the first 15 minutes of the production very confusing.

It's a brilliant idea: Night of the Living Dead would make a spectacular audio drama! But this is not it. I can't, in good conscience, even recommend it to the die-hard complete-ist fanbase, or for its schlock appeal. Had I heard it before I had purchased it, I wouldn't have purchased it.

And I really, really wanted to love it, too. I am quite obsessive about audio dramas, about horror, about the zombie sub-genre and about George Romero's work. But I still couldn't bring myself to listen to this thing again.

This CD was incredible. I am usaully not that fond of full cast audio books because the background noise and the movements of all the characters can get very loud and distracting. To make up for this producers sometimes make the overall volume louder, and together it all reduces the quality. No such problem with this! Very clear, very well acted piece. I was completely impressed with this production of a classic.