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Also, regardless of the negative feedback I give this DVD, we are unfortunately obligated to buy it, if we ever want to see a special edition DVD.
Ok, here goes. Yeah it looks great. But it just felt wrong. I couldn't place the reason. I thought maybe it was a visual matter. But I quickly realized that what was bugging me was the soundtrack. It was inexplicably, utterly mangled.
Will someone tell me why? Why were the vocals for whole songs removed? I am sorely disappointed and angered by this. I am outraged by the George Lucas style of re-working your film for DVD, and abandoning the original theatrical cut. If you feel the need to improve your film, fine, provide an alternate cut, or additional scenes, or whatever, that's great. Give me the option on the menu to see the "improved version, or the regular cut. But don't alter a classic, and not even mention it and try to pass it off as the original.
There are so many examples of this butchering, that I can't name them all. I only watched it once last night, and am at work now, but a few definitely come to mind.
#1 The scene where Trash and Suicide and the gang are speeding towards the cemetery used to have the Damned song Dead Beat Dance as the background music. Well, not anymore! You get the inital maniacal laugh, and then nothing, a completely different song. Why?!
#2 The scene where the zombie says: "send more cops", with a thick new york accent. A classic scene right? We all loved it right? Well did you notice that they changed the voice? Did you notice that is was awful in comparison, and not nearly as funny? Was there a good reason for this sacrilege? Has Dan O'Bannon lost his mind, or was this the studios fault? In the end credits, where the best-of scenes replay a second time, we hear the "send more cops" line in all its original glory. So I know I am not imagining this.
#3 What's his name, the Pathmark guy (no slight intended, his performance was excellent), takes his own life by placing himself in the crematorium. In the original version of this scene is accompanied by the song Burn the Flames, which sports a haunting guitar solo at the exact moment the door shuts and we hear the man's tortured screams. It is actually one of my favorite scenes in the film. The haunting music enhances the sadness of the moment.
But not anymore. Now the music is faded out in a particularly unartistic way, and the scene plays silent. Sorry but this is a disgrace. I waited years for this film to be re-released and I feel betrayed. The soundtrack was perfect the way it was. In a different film it would not be as a big of a deal. But when you are the ONLY zombie/comedy/horror film with a punky soundtrack, and a damned good one, and everyone loves you for it, you don't go around meddling and altering, deleting and rewriting, compiling and defiling.
It go to the point where I held my breath with every song change, worried sick that they would ommit lyrics or do away with the track altogether. Waves of relief washed over me when I reached the scene where the zombies are attacking the funeral home (and our heroes are furiously nailing doors and windows shut)and I discovered that the Cramps song "Surfin Dead" was left intact. Thank god, or the devil, for that one.
Could I be wrong? Did I miss some sort of soundtrack feature, where mistakenly clicked something off or on? Or is the sad fact that this movie has been permanently altered...?
Freddy is a typical early 1980s punk rock fan who, on his first day at work at UNEEDA Medical Supply, learns that the movie "Night of the Living Dead" was based on an actual event involving zombies and that UNEEDA one day came into possession of one of the zombies which is now being held in a cylinder in the basement. A non-believing Freddy is shown the container just as it explodes, filling the supply company's building with a toxic green gas. The gas causes the sole human body in the body to come to life (as well as freeing the zombie from it's cylinder prison) and after failing to destroy the zombie the tradition way (cutting of it's head) they take it to the local crematorium to be cremated. Unfortunately this makes things MUCH, MUCH worse as the smoke laced with the toxic chemical mixes with storm clouds that rain down on the city at night and resurrecting the bodies buried inside the town's cemetary where ironically Freddy's fellow punk-friends are having a little party.
The kicker for Return of the Living Dead that makes it a classic film and makes it one of the most well loved zombie movies is the fact that the film's zombies aren't your typical movie zombie. They are smart (luring police to the crematorium after killing off several cops who come to investigate all of the strange activity going on), are fast and agressive instead of slow and dumb and the zombies have the most hilarious banter involving their thirst for brains that can have even the most squeemish movie viewer laughing.
Featuring a great punk rock sound-track and a great mix of humor and violence, this film has sadly been out of circulation for over a decade do to the it's punk soundtrack. Now it's back on the market on DVD. This is a must buy DVD for any true horror fan....
Any genre fan who has a morbid sense of humor is sure to enjoy 1985's THE RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD. In the same vein as other tongue-in-cheek horror shtick such as the Chiodo Brothers' KILLER KLOWNS FROM OUTER SPACE and Sam Raimi's ARMY OF DARKNESS, this one's specifically a spoof of George Romero's classic and highly revered zombie film NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. Director/Screenwriter Dan O'Bannon, probably best known for having penned the original ALIEN movie, does a fantastic job of lovingly poking fun at the Horror and SF genres while at the same time satirizing everything from the U.S. Military to Punk Rock. This movie is not only funny, it's got plenty o' "brains"!
And you can't beat the financial value of the DVD edition. Not only does it cost less than a lot of other full-length, widescreen DVD thrillers--including some that are hardly worth the plastic and aluminum it took to make 'em--but it also includes these cool extras: an optional audio commentary by O'Bannon and production designer William Stout; both the G-rated and R-rated theatrical trailers; over 5-minutes of various TV spots; some storyboard-like production stills; and a really cool "Designing the Dead" featurette, in which O'Bannon and Stout discuss the evolution of the final look and feel of the movie (lots of great shots of Stout's EC-Comics-like designs for the zombies offered in this one).
