Night of the Living Dead - 1968

Not for the first time.

He made cash from the Elite Laserdiscs and dvd editions as he allowed them to create a master from his original negative.

So while there are plenty of el cheapo releases of this PD title there are still good reasons to only buy the disc that comes from an official source
 
I still have a VHS of that 1980s Hal Roach "colorized" version - can remember picking it up for naff all money because it was the only copy the local Virgin had in stock at the time. I thought the "colorization" was absolutely awful to be honest - I still enjoyed watching the film, but as I read on I think an Amazon review, it looked almost as though somebody had used crayons!

Sadly I've never seen that late 90s Anchor Bay version that be more pacific spoke of with the pink zombies - I bet that's a treat! :D

I can remember watching Night of the living dead with one of my supposedly "horror movie fanatic" mates and him basically moaning about how he was so disappointed with it, it was too slow, not enough gore, blah blah blah - pillock!

I personally love the film - it is one of the few I can definitely say has an eerie and somewhat unsettling atmosphere, in part helped by the original soundtrack.

Speaking of 'new soundtracks,' I wonder whether anyone else has ever seen the Bela Lugosi 'Dracula' with that orchestral soundtrack recorded in the 90s? One of my relatives bought me a VHS of it and I actually didn't mind it...
 
The appalling standard of the initial colourisation system in the 80's pretty much knocked it on the head from day one.

The early examples like Its A Wonderful Life and the Hal Roach Laurel and Hardy shorts were bad enough for C4 and BBC2 to quickly ban colorised films on their channels.

Its only in the last few years that modern technology has allowed colorisation to finally reach high quality.

The first 2 seasons of Bewitched have been colorised and its impossible to tell they were made in B&W.

Legend Films have been colorising classics like Laurel and Hardy's Babes In Toyland (under its alternate title) aswell as Dynamation creator Ray Harryhausens 3 B&W films from the 50s'.

Harryhausen himself worked alongside colorists for the films and the first one is already out on Bluray with the other 2 out shortly.

Unfortunately the dreadful legacy of the 80's system remains .

The Fox dvd of Miracle on 34th Street (R1) retains the old color version on disc 2 - and the huge 21 disc Laurel and Hardy boxset wastes precious space by including all those awful old 80's abominations alongside the B&W originals
 
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