It seems that once again Night Of The Living Dead has been raped. First we get the horrible 30th Anniversary Edition and now a color edition.........
Is it just me, or did anything else think the grainy B&W look of the film really added to the overall feel and fright? Who in their right mind would remaster the film in COLOR!?
One good thing about the DVD is that it will have commentary by Mike Nelson of MST3K fame, which might be the only reason to buy this DVD.
more info:
http://www.joblo.com/index.php?id=4123
Thank Ted Turner for this colorization bulls**t! Black and white films are lit differently because they are B&W so when they do this color number on them they look like s**t.
I wonder what dumbass studio exec decided to do this?
Ridiculous. The B&W was what made the film. Not saying it would have been no good had it been originally filmed in color but using B&W made it so much more than it could have been. I love this movie and I'm really sick of the way movies are trashed. Hey, I have an idea...let's see if they will colorize all of the Wizard of Oz and maybe they can ruin that one too.
Colorization is an assault on art. Horrible, horrible, horrible.
Is this the colorized version that made the rounds on TV back in the mid-80s?
If so, this is nothing new--it's probably being released for zombie completists. I remember Romero and company cracking jokes about the color version in their laserdisc commentary. The zombies are all green, so the shock of the first zombie attack isn't so shocking.
Jmc,
I did a little research after first reading the article and you are correct about there being a previous colorized version. This seems to be the first color release on DVD though and I believe might even be a whole new remastering.
They played it during prime-time on quite a few of the cable and some of the UHF channels [usually during late night there.] I can't remember if they edited any of it, but I imagine they did. This was around 1986-1987ish, I think. I think it's the only time I remember it being played on commercial TV [like WGN, etc.]
The company responsible is called Off Color Films, an offshoot of Legend Films. Their first foray, which just came out last Tuesday, is Reefer Madness. This Halloween, they're putting out the NotLD, and Carnival of Souls as well, both with Mike Nelson commentary tracks. I don't care how p**sy anyone gets, the commentaries will be worth it. The one on Reefer Madness made me laugh so hard I nearly cracked some ribs. Also, there is an option to watch the non-colorized version on the DVD as well.
Brother R
Brother Ragnarok
I agree with Brother Ragnarok commentaries would just about be worth it, I'm still against colorization though. I remeber there was this one version where the image was cleaned up (nice) but for some reason most of the music was changed (bad) I don't think this was 30th anversary one because all the original footage is in it and there are no new scenes, so the best version is proabably the original version (yes it is the best version)
I had the colorized version on VHS, but I sold it on Ebay. I watched it in color once. Every time I watched it after that, I turned down the color on my TV and watched it in black & white. Thank God I bought the black & white version on DVD.
"Keep Ted Turner and his damn crayola's away from my films" - Orson Welles
Or some variant of the above. People often forget that the best black and white films are shot differently than color films, to take advantage of the contrast the format allows. Part of the reason film noir practically died was the introduction of color as the primary format for films.