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During the Summer of 1997, I was on the hunt for any and every horror film available to me. I had gotten a hold of the Anchor Bay Dawn of the Dead Director’s Cut, Anchor Bay’s Maniac, Dawn of the Mummy, Microwave Massacre, Argento’s Deep Red, Evil Ed, Ice Cream Man and Mosquito, to name a few (of the dozens) within a matter of a month. Of the several video stores I’d come to pillage, the Videoplex across the street from where I worked (I was a part-timer at a supermarket when I was in college) had a little gem that had eluded me up to that point. It was an obscure Italian zombie film with lots of the sauce. The movie’s title was Night of the Zombies (on its original Vestron Video release; it had five trailers at the end of it!). I took it home and recognized some of the music. Hmmmm……it seemed like they’d lifted some of the soundtrack from Dawn of the Dead! Wiseguys in SWAT uniforms seemed to storm the set and blew zombies to bits before realizing that a shot to the head would bring them down. It was unoriginal, but awesome! I had to order this movie! I did, and it cost me $20.00. Full frame and by this time, available through Creature Features, this movie was in a darker print than its Vestron release. That didn’t bother me. I had it in my hands! With the advent of DVD, I figured it would be a matter of time before this movie would be released in widescreen. My prayers were answered when Anchor Bay restored it from its negative.
The movie starts out with an accident at a chemical plant on some remote island (of course) where the scientists are trying to come up with the perfect chemical that will solve the overpopulation problem…..a chemical that would cause normal human beings to eat each other! Well, needless to say, there’s a leak. The scientists on the experimental island become infected, turning them into flesh-eating zombies. An Interpol strike force in SWAT team uniforms is sent in to clean up the mess. However, they need to go through the island of New Guinnea to get to their destination.
While traveling through the countryside, they come across a pair of tele-journalists who have had their share of run-ins with the local zombiefolk. They pick them up, and continue to move into the jungle. The first village they encounter is swarming with the dead. After they stop for some fun and zombie target practice, they move on to have a few more encounters with the living dead until they end up at the island compound where the whole mess started. That’s where they need to stop the problem at its source before it’s too late for mankind…..
I was stunned when I loaded the DVD into the player and saw the main menus; the re-mastering from the negative was apparent from the beginning! I couldn’t wait to see the movie!
Hell of the Living Dead is presented uncut in anamorphic widescreen at an aspect ratio of 1.85:1. A beautiful job by Anchor Bay and their staff with this one. The SWAT uniforms are actually BLUE and not black, as they’d appeared in previous video versions. There is also a world of difference in the night scenes between this version and previous video versions. So much more detail can be seen (I didn’t even realize that the bonfire scene with the local tribe was indoors!). Thank you, Anchor Bay.
The Dolby Digital 2.0 mono sound is just fine for a movie of this type; it’s not the most sought-after movie in 5.1 surround sound. No hiss. No pops. Clean as can be.
The extras are a treat for collectors. A featurette (Hell Rats of the Living Dead) is included here with interviews with Bruno Mattei interspersed with clips from his films. He reflects on his career and the movies he has directed. This same featurette is available on Anchor Bay’s other Bruno Mattei DVD, Rats: Night of Terror.
The International trailer is on this disc under its Hell of the Living Dead title. Cool trailer that clocks in longer than most trailers. This is an instance where the major gore scenes make up most of the trailer. It would have been nice, however, to have included the Motion Picture Marketing (the company that released this movie in the U.S.) trailer for the Night of the Zombies release.
An extensive stills gallery is included; wonderful, rare video box covers and poster art from all over the world for this film can be seen. From this stills gallery, one can see that Hell of the Living Dead was released under several different titles in different territories. Each country handles the subject matter differently as well (United States exploitation moguls like zombies, so they had to call this one Night of the Zombies; Britain thought that Zombie Creeping Flesh was more appropriate; however, in Italy (keeping in mind that this movie owes 95% of its being to Dawn of the Dead and Night of the Living Dead), they titled this one L’Inferno Dei Morti Viventi (Hell of the Living Dead) to keep it in the Romero vein.
The box cover art for this DVD remains faithful to the United States poster and video releases by keeping the one-eyed zombie reaching out at the prospective buyer through the fog on the box (surrounded by his buddies, silhouetted in the background). Wonderful stuff.
Finally available in widescreen and digitally re-mastered from the original negative, Hell of the Living Dead can devour an all-new audience. Anyone who is a fan of the Italian cannibal/zombie cycle (this one was released in the middle of it) will eat up this movie. And with such a low price for the DVD, why wouldn’t they?
I did manage to get a hold of the Cydonia Pictures DVD version of this film under the title Night of the Zombies. In short, I was pretty unimpressed. They used the 1996 Creature Features Video version for a master (a full frame VHS master). The particular source tape was obviously through the mill and back, because there were many horizontal video dropouts (the tape must have been eaten at one point). There was a great deal of artifacting and "blocking" of the image; to be quite honest (and not sarcastic), I think that this DVD presentation was created by aiming a camcorder at a television screen. It looks pretty obvious.
The sound was terrible - heavy VHS "hissing" can be heard througout the film. The audio levels were high, though. No trouble hearing dialogue.
The extras were mediocre at best. There is a slideshow containing stills from the movie set to the soundtrack of the last scene in the movie. Although it is not up to par with Anchor Bay's stills gallery, the stills are clear and are not found in Anchor Bay's gallery.
Also included is the television spot. The television spot contains no shots from the film, only the title flashing onscreen with the "NO ON UNDER 17 ADMITTED" warning at the bottom of the screen; a narrator basically re-states the "under 17" message. No music. No footage. No stills. No impressed.
Three newspaper ads for the movie are included. These could have been added to the stills gallery and saved us all a menu to navigate. I guess it's just to make the disc look like it has more on it.
The last extra is the "trailer" for Lucio Fulci's Gates of Hell (aka City of the Living Dead). It's nothing more than a few clips from the film; this was taken from Paragon Video's Dr. Butcher, MD videotape. There's another "trailer," and it is nothing more than this trailer plus the "coffin" scene tacked onto the end. Weak bonus. Note: Their presentation of Gates of Hell is probably as bad as this disc; go with Anchor Bay's City of the Living Dead.
Overall, the disc is VERY poor. One could have done better making a video CD of this movie. I recommend this disc only for completists and hardcore fans of this movie. It's about the same price as Anchor Bay's Hell of the Living Dead, so if you want the best possible presentation of this movie, get a hold of Anchor Bay's version.