Product: Night of the Living Dead (1990)
Rating: 1.0
Isolated score is about the only reason for you to overspend on this!
As someone who actually received and watched the blu-ray (and isn't affiliated with Twilight), I'll comment.The start of the movie, the graveyard scene looks tolerable but it starts to darken and get blue once the first zombie arrives. It's as if the director of photography (responsible for this 'artistic choice') added a blue tint and dark shade over the opening of the movie to make it seem like nighttime, but forgot to remove that effect once it's actually night time. Even the moon looks blue (!) 20 minutes into the movie, whereas the same shot at the start of the blu-ray movie shows a white moon (because the effect hadn't started yet). By the time Barbara and Ben meet at the house, it's so dark that for me I had trouble making out the action as well as Tony Todd's performance; his face literally disappears in the shades, so much so that if this was the first time you'd see this movie, you'd think they couldn't light for a black person. It's that dimmed down.Yes, it was an accident that the opening sequence was shot in full sunlight (Savini was hoping for a cloudy storm), but this contrast was what gave the remake IMO an interesting look. The Twilight Blu-ray seems to want to cover that 'accident' up by artificially create a different scenario and it simply does not work. In regards to the original (DVD) version I found this interesting quote:"While the day lit cemetery scene was a happy accident, the rest of the cinematography is expert, with the lighting in particular being sublimely plotted. It is all immensely contrived: hard-to-place "kickers" make characters' silhouettes stand out, and other great pains result in lighting that looks... completely natural. The daytime interiors are created with sunlight-like cool diffusion, the nighttime exteriors are adequately vast and dark, and the interior of the farmhouse at night seems to be lit only by a bunch of shitty incandescent bulbs. The best thing that can be said about these elaborate lighting schemes is that you will never notice them."([...])All of those elaborate lighting schemes showed properly in the DVD version are dimmed down here and make everything look as if it's pale lighting.This also hurts the high definition aspect which is IMO clunky to begin with; As a matter of fact I'm not so sure the level of detail is that much improved over the dvd and the dark/blue filter doesn't improve things. The blue filter is not as bad as in that youtube video on page 1 of this thread, but it is present and as a result it pushes the other colors away. It gets better once someone turns on the lights inside the house, but the blue filter remains even during the night scenes (again, see the moon shot below).The only positive things I will say about this release are the isolated score and audio tracks (which seem ok), but that's faint praise really.In conclusion, this version is not enjoyable to watch because of the darker image and blue tint, and I refuse to adjust my settings or equalize contrast/brightness because that is not how I want to watch movies. I watched this movie on standard settings and as you can see in the image below, the DVD looks so much brighter and as a result so much more detailed. And this is a dvd from 2000; I actually think It's one of the first DVDs I got back then and it simply can not be that a blu-ray edition with only an isolated score as 'new' extra is worth 30 $ simply for its limited edition status; The people behind Twilight might be fans who like to put these movies out there (though I can not fathom how anyone who knows this movie would approve of this transfer), I'll gladly refer them to blu-ray producers such as arrow video (UK) who take their craft seriously and for that kind of money aside of a decent transfer add alternate poster art covers, stills and tons of newly produced commentaries, interviews and featurettes, in short a genuine reason for fans of these movies to upgrade to blu-ray and get value for their buck. Twilight in my opinion, falls short by a long way here and should lower their prices for the type of quality and barebones editions they put out. I hope this whole situation will prevent quick sell outs for them and allow for reviews to be posted first before customers are forced into buying.And since this title is already offered here on amazon for more than double the price, I'd say it's not worth it!