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Night of the Living Dead: 30th Anniversary Edition -Anchor Bay Anniversary (1968) Edition Year: 1999
Summary Zombies gone wild! My Thoughts Night of the Living Dead is one of my favorite horror flicks, and since I was in a Halloween mood the other day I decided to rent this puppy. There are a lot of different editions of Night of the Living Dead out there. It suffers some strange voodoo copyright curse that allows companies to bring out any old version of the film they want, causing much confusion when wanting to purchase one. When looking for a copy I'd suggest doing a little research first, because you may end up with a complete dog of an edition, much like the one I'm going to review. But first, let me talk about the film itself. Night of the Living Dead was one of the first films to usher in the modern zombie genre we all know and love. The film has both spawned and inspired films like Day of the Dead, both versions of Dawn of the Dead, 28 Days Later, Resident Evil, and many many others. It was the film that helped solidify that zombies aren't created by voodoo in our modern culture, but by other more realistic horrors of our age like an uncontrollable virus. Night of the Living Dead also plays up the human conflict as a horror element to heighten the dramatic tension. Night of the Living Dead: 30th Anniversary edition messes around with the film, so I'm going to discuss the original cut. This cut also appears in this set, sort of, in a 1998 version. The 1998 version is much like the original except it has some shitty music mix, more on that later. The real film opens with a woman and her brother visiting a cemetery. Unfortunately for the both of them, this is the worst moment to be in a cemetery because the dead come alive and have a real hunger for the flesh of the living. The woman, Barbara, manages to escape the first zombie and find a “safe” house. She mostly freaks out a lot until Ben comes along. Ben has got to be one of the most clear headed characters of all time. It’s a good thing he is too, because by this point Barbara has simply lost it. After a few zombie confrontations, a few more survivors come out from hiding to create even more tension. At this point the film goes into, "Who's going to die next?" mode until the shocking ending. The greatest strength the film has is the interplay between the characters. I've seen plenty of survival films where I didn't give a crap as to who lived or died, but in Night of the Living Dead I wanted it to work out for even the most unsympathetic characters. Now, I must go on to the ugly 30th Anniversary cut of the film. This will contain spoilers for anyone who hasn't seen the film so be careful. ******SPOILER ALERT!!!****** The one and only good thing about this edition is the quality of the film print. It's practically crystal clear and I've never seen it look better. That's were the goodness ends, though. Night of the Living Dead: 30th Anniversary Edition contains a close to original cut mentioned before, labeled the 1998 cut. The other cut is what ruins this edition. The real horror of this set is sadly not the film, but the 30th Anniversary Edition cut which features nearly 15 minutes of new footage. This new footage is horrible, simply and completely horrible. It's like some stupid fan film was inserted into the midst of one of the best horror films of all time. The main footage starts not with the classic opening of Barbara and her brother in the graveyard, but with two grave diggers bringing the body of an executed child killer/rapist that very same graveyard. The scene is tied into the rest of the film by several details. The two guys bring the body to the cemetery in the truck that the hero Ben later uses (oh how clever!), they talk about a diner that Ben mentions later in the film (oh my god!), and then they run away from the corpse that later harasses Barbara and kills her brother (my head is going to explode with awe!). This sounds kind of cool, but believe me its atrocious. Both the dialogue and the acting in these scenes are vomit inducing. Now granted, the original wasn't the best as far as the dialogue went, but at least it looked like they were trying. The other big problem is that the actor that played the first zombie has aged and gained weight. He sort of resembles and undead Ronald Reagan creature thing, which looks so unbelievably stupid. There are some more zombie scenes that are inserted along with the different beginning and it all seemed to me as rather pointless. The ending is what really disturbed me the most. After Ben is shot in this cut we get a nice little, "1 year later" thing that goes back to a reporter interviewing the mysteriously alive preacher character who should by all rights be dead that I LOATHE. He goes on some rant while holding a dog and I'm left wondering what the fuck is going on. He starts yelling about how the dead must be spiked when I'm thinking, "What have they done to this film?" It has nothing to do with the rest of the film and as a subplot it’s completely pointless. This scene ruins the entire impact of the original’s ending. After Ben is shot and killed in the original cut it goes to the still photos of Ben being dragged by meat hooks onto his funeral pyre. Instead he's shot and we’re brought to the pointless and stupid preacher scene. The original film left you with a feeling of emptiness and desperation and really drove home the true horror of the film. This version leaves you with a "What the fuck was that?" feeling. See what kind of a rant this film has got me on? You'd think that all of this would have been bad enough, but wait there's more! Night of the Living Dead apparently didn't have a good enough score in the beginning, so they hired a guy with a small Casio keyboard to write the worst possible music he could. It was so noticeable and grating to hear a bunch of synthesized garbage that, honestly, it hurt my feelings. ******END SPOILER ALERT****** This version is a raping of a great film. No scratch that, they raped it till it bled, knocked its teeth out then orally rapped it, and then used it as a toilet. We must all give thanks to George Lucas for the wonderful idea of reinserting new footage into a perfectly fine film to begin with. It feels like a bunch of amateurs who never watched a film or bothered to even follow plot structure got a hold of this masterpiece. The dialogue and acting are so stilted I wondered if the edition was actually a joke, but sadly it is not. It’s a shame they had to do this to such a good film. Do yourself a favor and shoot this edition in the head with a shotgun. It will eat your brains if you don't. Extras The 30th Anniversary Edition extras aren’t completely a waste. Sure, they aren’t all great but at least some effort has been made here. The commentary track is actually pretty interesting since it features a few of the original cast/crew members. It suffers, though, from the absence of director George Romero and from the attitude that the horrible new additions are so great. The "behind the scenes" featurette is forgettable, since it shows the filming of new edition garbage. I thought that the still photos section might be cool until I actually saw the photos. They are from the shooting of the new edition. Blech. Rounding out the rest of the 30th Anniversary Edition is a scene from the film Flesh Eater by William Hitzman that is completely dull and pointless. There's a music video that features a barely tolerable techno song and looks pretty amateurish overall. Some versions of this edition feature a second disc that features the new and improved crappy soundtrack. And as if this edition needed more strikes against it, I also have to point out that the menu system itself sucks and it's actually pretty hard to navigate around. Score: Original Film: 9.0 1998 Cut (new musical score): 8.0 30th Anniversary Edition cut: 6.0 Extras: 5.0 Edition: 0.5 -Paul
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