BEWARE!! Stay away from the 30th Anniversary edition!
The five star rating I gave Night of the Living Dead is, of course, for the original, uncut, unadulterated edition. The original is, quite simply, the most terrifying movie I've ever seen, even when compared to horror classics like Diabolique (the original French version), Psycho, Rosemary's Baby, Halloween and The Shining. I saw NOTLD when I was 9 years old on Creature Features at midnight after a funeral. I had nightmares for the next two nights. The film still gives me the chills whenever I see it (usually at Halloween).
When the 30th Anniversary Edition came out, I bought it on VHS as I was curious to see what they termed as "new footage." What I got was a horrible mess that butchered the original film, removed the original music for a terrible synthesizer score and added pointless footage that makes the viewer want to grind his teeth down to the gums. One of the additions is a new character: a fire and brimstone preacher. While the acting in the original is amateurish,...
WARNING: This is NOT the movie you think it is!
When I first saw the packaging for this Special Edition of Night of the Living Dead it said there was 15 minutes of new footage and a new score. Well, GREAT I thought. 15 minutes of new footage that must've been cut out from the original release! New score, well, that could be a good thing too!
Until I opened the box to see the little booklet that revealed the ugly truth... There are new scenes alright. New scenes made by new people TWO YEARS AGO! The new scenes are badly acted, badly written, and badly edited. Scenes that subtract from the overall impact of the film and do nothing but taint a true horror classic. The new music is a cheesy synthesizer score that does nothing but irritate and distract throughout the film. (Cheesy synthesizer is good for other horror films, but it does NOT work well here.)
I originally bought this at a store, got it home and didn't even sit through the whole thing. I zipped through various chapters to see the HORRIBLE new...
The Millennium edition is really good.
This review pertains only to the Millennium Edition DVD of Night of the Living Dead.
Okay...as I'd feared, my negative review of the John Russo-massacred "30th Anniversary Edition" of Night of the Living Dead has been lumped unwittingly into this product's review, so I' m writing this one to clarify.
This DVD edition is the best edition I've seen of the film yet. Anchor Bay may have raised the ires of legions of Living Dead fans by releasing the sacrilegious 30th Anniversary Edition, but Elite Entertainment did right by this new edition.
George A. Romero's personal appreciation appears in the back of this DVD -- this immediately restores our faith. And the contents don't disappoint -- the picture and sound are good, and though this doesn't exactly contain the richest batch of bonus materials (sets like the excellent 3-disc edition of Dario Argento's Suspiria and the recent double-disc Re-Animator both feature loads of extras), it is a nice solid collection. You get a Duane Jones...
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