Product: Night of the Living Dead (1990)
Rating: 4.0
Way better than many are saying.
First of all, I was one who ended up paying a premium for this disc from one of the resellers. I bought it knowing full and well that I would probably not like it after all the bad reviews I saw here on Amazon and around the web. I still paid for it though, because I really do love this movie. My family is from Evans City, and I grew up watching the original movie, which to me, will never be surpassed. I have always loved this remake though, because it was very well done, thoughtfully re-imagined, and done with respect to the original and through the proper channels. With all this in mind, I decided to give the disc a shot and judge this edition for myself. The truth is, a little bit of what everyone from both sides are saying is true. Isn't that the way things usually go? Here is what I found...The HD quality of this film is stellar...it is a million times crisper than it ever was before. While it maintains a reasonable and in my opinion needed amount of film grain, it's as crystal clear as I would ever want a blu ray disc. That being said, the film IS darker than the original print. However, it is not nearly as dark as the screen captures on the net would have you believe. In my opinion, those were taken on a television with some horrible settings, or they were photo-shopped to stir up controversy. The latter is probably closer to being the truth. From what I see, the filter is just dark, and not at all "smurf" blue as some have been saying. The darkness that this print of the film now has is, in my opinion, more in line with what it should have been in the first place. I always thought the original print was a little bright, but after seeing this I think it was WAY too bright. This being said, there are a few scenes which are maybe just a little too dark, but those probably only entered into my mind because I was constantly looking for and expecting to find problems throughout the entire film. On the subject of the picture, I never did pick up on the part where Tom's shirt looked "painted on". Not saying it isn't there, but I was looking for it specifically and I missed it. Will look for it again on a subsequent viewing and update if I see it.Even though I think the darker print looks better, I do have some minor problems with it as well. If it were possible, they should have certainly tried mixing down the damn bird noises you hear when Barbara and Ben are running around outside at the beginning of the film. I realize that birds do, and regularly hear them sing late in the day and at night where I live, but not to this extent. To me, this just seemed a little goofy, and sort of a give away that the dark contrast had been edited in later. My verdict on the picture quality, including the filter is a solid 4 stars. In my opinion, if the original 1968 classic had been filmed in color (very thankful it wasn't, but still), this is what the lighting would have looked like.On to the sound. Once again, a major improvement here. Just like the picture, the sound is crisp and clean. I have not heard the 5.1 mix yet, but the difference from the standard DVD copy is better beyond compare. The musical soundtrack is clear in all the right spots, and really does a lot to add to the mood. I can't wait to hear it in surround! Two small problems I did notice though. First of all, other reviewers are correct when they mentioned that in the scene where Harry is shooting at Ben, we can't really hear the click of the empty weapon. As someone who has mixed sound semi-regularly for different music and film projects over the years, I'm not entirely sure how this could happen taking into consideration that the rest of the mix is great.My second issue with the sound, and my greatest overall annoyance with this release is something that likely won't bother a lot of other people. They took the camera shutter sound effect off the rotating pictures in the credits....to me, this highlighted the obvious homage to the ending of the original film (even though the sound wasn't present in '68), and called back memories of the use of the same effect in TCM which worked really well and was pretty unique. My guess is that in order to do the new sound mix, they just replaced the entire audio track instead of re-mixing the old one when they went to revamp the sound. Docking my audio mix score by a whole point because of this, but it's just personal preference. 4 stars.Overall, I am happy with my purchase of this disc, even at the slightly inflated price I paid. The fact is, this IS a limited edition, and of pretty small quantity. Others are already standing in line for the very few copies that were returned to Twilight, so it's going to remain sold out. The decision to pay the price for a copy on the secondary market is yours, but for the 60 dollars that I paid, I am satisfied and would recommend it at that price. This disc has effectively replaced my DVD copy, and while not perfect, is to me at the moment the best available version of this classic film.