Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a little look at the amazing horror geeks wet dream of a DVD release: Anchor Bay's 4 Disc DAWN OF THE DEAD set. This is the real DAWN OF THE DEAD, with real characters that you can relate to, real heart and soul that went into the making of the film and a real subtext instead of lots of flash and quick cuts. I know there are a lot of fans of the DAWN OF THE DEAD remake and I'm sorry if I'm offending you at all, but after spending the last few days lost in Romero's original world I have come to dislike the remake more and more for taking the name, the mall and leaving behind any of the underlying messages. Like I said in my review, I would have liked the movie a lot more if it had been a semi-sequel or homage, but when you remake something I find it unfair to ask the fans of the original to "put it aside" and view the remake as a separate entity. If they really wanted us to do that, then they wouldn't have called the film DAWN OF THE DEAD.
Sorry about the rant, squirts. I can get pretty vocal when it comes to my original DAWN OF THE DEAD and Anchor Bay is only fueling the fire by putting out the DAWN OF THE DEAD ULTIMATE EDITION DVD set. This set is comprised of 4 discs.
DISC 1:
US THEATRICAL VERSION
The first disc (with machete zombie on the DVD itself) has Commentary by George and Chris Romero and Tom Savini. Romero and Savini have recorded commentaries for DAWN before, so there's nothing here that really sticks out to me as being anything new. It's always good to hear from the man about his memories of shooting, but the most entertaining stuff on the disc is hearing Savini's somewhat... how to put it delicately... hazy memories from the set. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt on some of the stuff that he contradicts himself on, but he makes a big deal of the big jump he makes from the second floor of the mall at the end of the movie... about him missing the mattresses and boxes and injuring his feet. But as you'll see in the documentaries on the 4th disc you'll see him make the jump and be 100% on the boxes. He tries to explain a little bit in his commentary about how he missed the boxes on the REHEARSAL, which makes more sense, but at the same time he also goes on to describe exactly what happens after he made the on-camera successful jump as happening after he made the rehearsal miss jump. All that shit just makes me laugh.
Also on the disc you'll find Theatrical Trailers, TV spots, Radio Spots, Poster and Advertising Gallery, George A. Romero bio, a comic-book preview and many audio options, such as 5.1 DTS, 5.1 Dolby Surround, 2.0 Dolby Surround and the original Mono. And of course, they present the film Widescreen. You get a little booklet of the Comic adaptation of DAWN and it's pretty well done. It ends with our heroes when they get to the mall and a note saying you need to buy the Trade Paperback for the rest.
DISC 2:
EXTENDED VERSION
This is my favorite cut with more character and more gore. The commentary track on this one, though, is the least interesting of the three with producer Richard P. Rubinstein and moderator Perry Martin. Martin's fine, but Rubinstein's talk is very dry and boring... you know, very producerish. The only thing that I really dug about the commentary was his revelation about the actual budget of the film: $600,000. He had been saying it was $1.5 mil to try to get people in foreign territories to pay more for the rights, a very common practice.
There's also a Monroeville Mall commercial from the '70s which is awesome. Very dated, very sweet with footage of mannequins that I'm sure are in the movie... Perfect small special feature.
Also included on this disc is a behind-the-scenes photo gallery, a memorabilia gallery (which, strangely didn't work for me, but maybe it was just an early glitch) and production stills. This one is presented only in the original Mono.
DISC 3:
THE EUROPEAN VERSION
My favorite commentary in the entire set is on this disc and has the four leads (Ken Foree (Peter), David Emge (Flyboy), Scott H. Reinger (Roger) and Gaylen Ross (Fran)) and it's the only commentary track that doesn't feel like a retread or like it's just going over boring material. The four actors get along really well and playfully jab at each other throughout the whole thing... I mean, Gaylen Ross repeatedly makes fun of David Emge's run. "Oh, that's not a girly run or anything..." What's funny about it is she keeps pointing it out... I don't know, it had me laughing at least.
There's also revelations about the actors that I didn't know, like that Flyboy (Emge) is, funnily enough, the only main cast member to have any sort of army or military training. He was in Vietnam, yet he's playing the wuss. Go figure.
There's also tons of international trailers, posters, lobby cards, pressbook galleries and the like on the disc as well as a bio on Dario Argento, who cut this version of the film for European markets. This cut is great in some areas, but he cuts a little too much of the humor out... my most missed sequence being the part at the end when Ken Foree's gun gets snatched away from him by the zombie that took Roger's gun earlier, who then decides he likes the new gun better. I love that bit. But Argento did cut one scene better... At the airport near the beginning when they're fueling up the helicopter and Flyboy is attacked... In the regular cut Gaylen Ross just kind of stands there watching him as he's reaching for the mini-sledge hammer to bash in the zombie's head, but in Argento's cut the fight is much quicker so she doesn't seem to be just standing there doing nothing. But then again, Argento also cut out the zombie who gets the top of his head lobbed off by the helicopter, so there you go. I still prefer the Extended Version.
DISC 4:
DOCUMENTARIES
Now this is a fun disc. Two, count 'em two, Feature Length Documentaries , plus a few minis take up room on this disc. The first is called THE DEAD WILL WALK, which is an all-new doc that has brand new interviews with everybody and their brother. Argento, Romero, the entire cast, Savini and bunches of the crew tell the story of DAWN OF THE DEAD from the very beginning with Romero being invited out to Italy by Dario Argento to write DAWN to the very end indie release of the film. This one's a lot of fun and the doc where you can see Savini make that successful leap from the second story I mentioned earlier.
The other doc has been around for a while, but I'm really glad it's included on the disc as I hadn't ever gotten around to seeing it. It's Roy Fumkes' film called DOCUMENT OF THE DEAD, which was put out in the '80s. Where the first doc on this disc is more of a talking heads look back, this one is full on set coverage from the actual time. Surprisingly, the two docs don't cover a whole bunch of the same material, so you can watch both without feeling as if you're retreading anything.
The two mini docs are about 10 minutes apiece. The first is a home movie that one of the zombies shot at the time on 8mm. The film is silent, but the zombie narrates it (his name is Robert Langer, by the way). This is some real fly on the wall stuff and very interesting. Could you imagine movies being that cool to let extras just bring their video cameras and go around shooting the set? In this day and age!?! But I'm glad Langer shot because his is some of the most interesting stuff on the disc.
The other doc was shot by none other than hot hunk-a man Greg Nicotero (The N of KNB EFX) and is a tour through the modern day Monroeville Mall (where Dawn was shot). The tour is lead by Ken Foree who is joined by a few of the more memorable zombies (machete zombie, nurse zombie and escalator zombie to name a few) and David Emge. This is actually pretty sweet as Foree guides the group around the mall, pointing out where the bank was, where he made his famous "When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth" speech, etc.
All in all, I can't say enough good about the release. Some of the commentaries aren't all that, but just the fact that you're getting all the cuts and all those features... They aren't kidding when they say this is the Ultimate Edition. For the average fan who wouldn't care about the extra features Anchor Bay released DAWN OF THE DEAD a few months ago as a single disc edition. This one is made for us, the super geeks. This is easily one of my all time favorite DVD sets released and I predict it will only be outdone by the ROTK: EE at the end of the year. I highly, highly, highly recommend this disc to you guys. Three different cuts of the movie to choose from, tons of documentaries and supplementals and damn near every thing you could ever hope to know about the making of one of the all time classic horror films. Now if only Anchor Bay could put out a 4 Disc Fred Dekker spectacular of THE MONSTER SQUAD and NIGHT OF THE CREEPS with a full disc of bonus goodies each. Then I could die happy!
That's it from me on this one, squirts! I'm about to embark on a great adventure to see one of the great wonders of the world, but I got a few goodies to give you folks before I take off, including interviews with the coolest buddy comedy zombie hunters in recent memory and a certain Darko Director. 'Til then, this is Quint bidding you all a fond farewell and adieu.
-Quint
