Day Of The Dead: Ultimate Edition | Blu-ray + DVD

When it comes to George Romero movies, everyone knows Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead. They are genre defining classics after all and are well worth owning for quite literally any horror fan. For some reason, people always over look the third movie in the series, Day of the Dead. The best of the original three, in my opinion.Day of the Dead was originally released in 1985. It was written and directed by George Romero, produced by Richard Rubinstein and features Lori Cardille, Richard Liberty and Joe Pilato in the lead roles. It's a movie about a team of scientists and soldiers holed up in an old bunker during the zombie apocalypse. The eggheads are trying to find a "cure" or a means to live with the zombies and the military personal are all on edge, fed up with playing protector and are on the verge of cracking due to the stress of the situation.Despite being a fairly simple premise, I think the story for Day of the Dead was very well done. The atmosphere is quite bleak, the end of the world has happened and there is no hope whatsoever for our characters. We get to know several interesting people like Dr. Frankenstein the butcher, William the alcoholic radio operator and even the strangely lovable "Bub" the zombie. Joe Pilato's soon to be crazy Captain Rhodes is the scene stealer. He may not be a world class actor, but he certainly did the job here. He steals every scene he's in with great quotes, a lot of energy and creates serious tension between him and the other characters. The chemistry between characters makes it really hard to look away from the screen as you just don't know who'll crack first.When it comes to the original trilogy, Day of the Dead is by far the best looking of the lot. The zombie make up is absolutely stunning. You'll see zombies all pruned up from the heat outside, the good ol' blue make up from the fresher corpses (see Dawn of the Dead) and others who have rotted to the point their body is falling apart. No doubt this is down to the excellent work by Tom Savini. His work on this movie is by far his best up until this point. This movie contains a lot of the gore shots and even some of my favourite from any movie. They are a great sight to behold. Some of them are so clever that they hold up to this day.I also think cinematography and set design is particularly good. There's a lot of effort put into making the tunnels and rooms look restrictive, claustrophobic but familiar. Despite a good chunk of the film taking place underground, you know exactly where every character is and it doesn't ever look off putting. Set design and lighting really works here. The tunnels also have a striking contrast to everything above land which is bright, green and quite beautiful (despite the shuffling undead).The version of the movie I own on bluray is the Umbrella Entertainment copy. It features 2.0 and 5.1 sound, a tonne of extras on the main disc including TV spots, trailers, interviews with the director etc. As an added bonus, there's a second DVD that features "The Many Days of the Dead", "Joe of the Dead", "Reflections on the Living Dead", "Travelogue of the Dead" and an image gallery. Safe to say, there's a lot to see here and a worth pick up for any fan.In terms of image quality, it's not the best. It IS definitely an improvement on the old DVD copy but it's not as sharp as it could have been. The first portion of the film when they're looking for survivors looks a little rougher than the rest of the film, it was the same on the DVD. Possibly cheap film used on set or print damage? When the film gets the main facility, the image quality jumps in quality. The main difference between this and the old DVDs is the sharpness and intensity of the colours, especially red. You'll notice a lot of fine detail in all the gore shots, something I'm sure fans will love. It all looks so juicy.If anyone is wondering, the Umbrella Entertainment copy IS region-B and most definitely works in UK players. It's not the cheapest film out there but no doubt fans of Romero's zombie films will desire a copy and if they do, this is a good alternative. It's not breaking the bank like the American and deleted Arrow Video copies. I recommend checking it out. It's still my favourite of all the zombie films and I think it's held up rather all.

Recently I've been upgrading my collection of what I think of as 'Modern Classic Horror Films' to BD. As Kim Newman suggests in his book 'Nightmare Movies', the post-Gothic, Modern Horror film appeared with 'Night of the Living Dead' in 1968. For me, by the end of the 1980s, the genre was in terminal decline, so the kind of films I've been purchasing for maybe the third time has included the aforementioned Romero classic (which looks fabulous on the official BD), 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre', 'Halloween', the works of Dario Argento between 1975-1982 and the like.I saw 'Day of the Dead' at the cinema when it first appeared. While it doesn't have the immediate iconic appeal of 'Night' and 'Dawn', I've always felt it is a great film and easily the most consistent and even of the initial 'Dead' trilogy (I won't mention the second trilogy). The film is of a piece, flowing seamlessly from one scene to the next, with superior effects and music to its predecessors, with no jarring moments - for me some of the library music of 'Night' ruins the consistency of the film, while to my way of thinking, there is not yet a definitive cut of 'Dawn' - the ideal version for me would be a revision of the extended cut that incorporated the additional thrills and violence of the European cut and featuring only the music by Goblin, albeit pumped up in the mix...and all of this on bluray in hidef, DTS 5.1, naturally. I can dream.'Day of the Dead', however, can't really be improved, except in terms of quality of presentation. The Arrow UK 3 disc edition incorporates all the special features from the previous US divimax edition DVD on 2 DVDs (plus the film on DVD) and of course, a BD disc.Arrow are by now well known for delivering inconsistent results on BD. To be fair, you can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear, but when a film as technically proficient as Argento's 'Tenebrae' ends up with a worse transfer than Fulci's 'Zombi 2' (aka 'Zombie Flesh eaters' something is amiss - not to dis the Fulci, it's a cracking feature and my enjoyment of it has been improved enormously by Arrow's stunning transfer, despite the 6 seconds of missing footage at the start of the film), you know that their quality control needs questioning. who is in charge at the office, Arrow?The BD of 'Day' looks better than the divimax DVD, but is a disappointment: so many of the well-lit sequences seem very soft-focussed, especially in the backgrounds, while the foregrounds sometimes fail too - in numerous scenes the actors' faces lack the sharpness one expects from good cinematography and proper bluray mastering. The darker scenes in the mine are absolutely fine and the gore sequences are pretty amazing. Although this is a big improvement on the DVD versions - the blues have the kind of steeliness only seen on DVD and theatrically - I still feel a better transfer must be possible. No way were the actors' faces out of focus when filmed...Overall, this BD doesn't approach the quality of 'Suspiria' and Arrow's 'Zombie Flesh Eaters' - and remember, these were Italian films both made some years before 'Day of the Dead'. Another worthy comparison is the Blue Underground BD of 'the Living Dead at Manchester Morgue', which looks amazing -and this was a cheapish film made in 1974 (and to my mind, the best living dead movie of them all after 'Night').Finally, I'd urge fans to seek out the recent double CD reissue of the soundtrack - not listed on amazon - from the USA, as it's a stunning bit of work and massively underrated.