Night of the Living Dead: 30th Anniversary Edition (UK)

INTRO
Night of the Living Dead is, honestly, the most fantastic horror film ever made. Even thirty years later, it manages to shock audiences. When I heard of a 30th Anniversary Edition, I was ecstatic, what with the recent Star Wars releases. What I got was the most atrocious butchering of a film I have ever seen. We are given is 15 minutes of completely irrelevant footage, played by the most awful actors I have seen. We get a new music score, the worst I have ever heard. These new scenes stick out like a sore thumb and the new score turns this movie from a horror film into a made-for-TV event. The worst is yet to come though - John Russo has deleted 15 minutes of original footage to accomodate his new scenes. The end result is a film virtually unrecognisable that deserves to be condemmed to hell. I am trying not to write too much or else I won`t be able to finish the article due to the fact that the keyboard will be through my monitor.

VIDEO
Now this is actually fantastic - it seems impossible that this film was from 1968 as virtually every trace of grain and dirt has been erased. A big thumbs up.

AUDIO
A disgustingly ugly Mono soundtrack. The original was eerie, haunting and powerful. This, with new soundeffects, radio reports and music score confuses and annoys the audience. We don`t even get the Dolby 5.1 mix from the American version.

FEATURES
An utterly despicable 10 minute `Behind the Scenes` featurette that focuses only on the making of this `30th Anniversary Edition`. Cue muchos bullcrap from John Russo, Russ Streiner and other scumbags who were involved with this piece of junk. We get a bad `30th` trailer, a totally pointless `Dance of the Dead` music video and a scene from Bill Hinzman`s flick `Flesheater`. Oh, did I forget, there are some beautiful animated menus where you can sit for hours watching the cemetary zombies hand move up and down the screen by about 1 inch, with fantastic background music from the talented guy who composed the new score (this nutter is also the Preacher).

OVERALL
No wonder this is in the £5.99 section at Music Zone. The original NOTLD has been raped of all its qualities and has been replaced by utter tripe. A host of sickening extras make this the worst DVD (and this is no lie) I have ever spent money on. PLEASE AVOID LIKE THE PLAGUE!!!

The bald guy with the goatee in this abortion of a film should be strung up by his buster browns!!! Leave it the f*ck alone!

The classic horror from 1968 is back. The zombies are back. The horror is back, but this is the director`s cut, which has been restored, reedited and remastered.
The movie is as creepy as it always was and the restoration work is simply outstanding.
The video transfer is very good. The movie has been restored and the image no longer seems from 1968. The restoration team cleaned each and every frame from any dirt or scratches and the end result is simply incredible. You can see a short comparison of the "before and after" in the trailer. This restoration, however, damaged the movie`s authenticity a bit, causing it to look almost "too good".
The DD 2.0 soundtrack is good. The soundtrack has been remastered and various subtle special effects have been added. Some split stereo effects were added as well and they add a lot to the movie`s atmosphere.
The menus are still and silent.
The extras include several deleted scenes, which are not-so-seamlessly edited into the movie (including, among other scenes, a "new" opening scene, which looks as if it was shot on video in the mid 1990`s) and a photo gallery.
Bottom line - creepy as ever, looking better than ever, this movie will haunt you for a long time. Try watching it alone at night with no lights on and see if you can survive this classic horror.

This is the 30th Anniversary edition and it`s horrible. It removes 15 minutes and replaced with 15 minutes of poorly acted scenes.

Get the Millennium edition, not only you get the orginal version, you get remastered sound and more extras.