Review: Day of the Dead (Ultimate Edition)

Blu-ray: Day of the Dead (Ultimate Edition) (1985)

Day of the Dead: the final part of George Romero’s original ‘Dead Trilogy’, that while not becoming the immediate hit that the previous ‘dead’ movie ‘Dawn of the Dead’ was, has aged like a fine wine and is now appreciated a lot more than it was upon release.

The world is now overrun by zombies and a small group of survivors, consisting of scientists and military personnel, are holed up in an underground facility while trying to work out how best to cope with the ever growing zombie hordes: try to ‘train’ them, ‘cure’ them, or just exterminate them all. Can a ‘cure’ be found? Is it possible to kill all of the zombies? Will the group end up killing each other?

Trapped together under extreme circumstances, tensions are high and emotions stretched to breaking point.

I’m preaching to the converted here, as 99.9% of all horror fans have surely seen this zombie classic by now. For the 0.1% that haven’t; buy this release from Umbrella Entertainment immediately, as not only do you get a great looking Blu-ray of the movie, you also get an extensive set of special features that are worth the purchase price alone.

With an iconic central performance from Lori Cardille as Sarah Bowman; the only woman trapped underground with dozens of men and who kicks ass harder than any of them, Day of the Dead is gritty, gory, thought provoking, and once again holds a mirror up to the time that it was made, much like the previous 2 entries ‘Night of…’ and ‘Dawn of…’

Enjoy the movie and lose yourself in hours of informative and entertaining special features.

I’ll end this by gratuitously posting a couple of photos (from the many that were taken) when Lori kindly took me to the Monroeville Mall (where Dawn of the Dead was filmed) in October this year while I was staying with her and her amazing husband Jim. I can confirm that she is even more awesome in real life than Sarah is ‘Day’.

Dawn meets Day!

DISC 1: BLU-RAY SPECIAL FEATURES:

• Audio commentary with George A. Romero, Tom Savini, Cletus Anderson and Lori Cardille
• Audio commentary with Greg Nicotero, Howard Berger, Everett Burrell and Mike Deak
• World’s End: The legacy Day of the Dead
• Behind the scenes: on-set
• Behind the scenes: Tom Savini
• Interview with George A. Romero at MIFF 2008
• Theatrical Trailers
• TV Spots
• Gateway commerce promo video

DISC 2: BONUS DVD SPECIAL FEATURES:

• The many days of the dead
• Joe of the dead
• Reflections on the living dead
• Travelogue of the dead
• Image gallery

Review by Dave (host of 60 Minutes With) from discs kindly supplied by Umbrella Entertainment.