Editorial: Night of the Living Dead 1990 Blu-ray Gives Fans the Blues
October 7th, 2012
By the time that you read this, Twilight Time's limited edition Blu-ray of Tom Savini's 1990 version of Night of the Living dead has long been sold out. Unless you're looking to spend some serious cash on Amazon or eBay, you're just not going to be able to buy it. With that in mind...
I'm not going to write a review for the Blu-ray as it's pointless. Simply put, if you didn't nab one of the 3,000 Blu-rays from Twilight Time's website for $29.99, you're shit out of luck. Believe me, though, that's not necessarily a bad thing. I'm writing this editorial only to exorcise some demons. To get this out of my system. The truth is that I've never been more annoyed with the transfer of a film in my entire life.
Note: The darker images to follow are from the new Blu-ray and have not been altered in any way.
Night of the Living Dead 1990, despite its shortcomings, has developed quite a fan following. That would explain why Twilight Time sold out of pre-orders in about a week. Since all pieces were accounted for, the company decided to ship them out early to fans instead of having them wait until the originally announced release date of October 9th. I'm not going to get into the history of the original 1968 version and the 1990 version because it's all been well documented time and time again. Me? I was just happy to finally get to see the film's incredible looking flesh-eaters in glorious 1080p. I popped my popcorn excitedly, cranked up the sound system, and it began.
During its opening moments the print looked glorious. Every blade of grass... the cemetery gates... I was thrilled. A few minutes in I looked down to grab a handful of popcorn, and when I looked back up.... everything was blue. Dark. Tinted. Puzzled, I grabbed for my remote, thinking that somehow my PlayStation 3 had dimmed the screen because of inactivity. Anyone who has a PS3 knows full well what I'm talking about. I pressed buttons. Moved sticks. Nothing. No difference. It was from that moment on when I knew something was amiss. This transfer had been altered.
Source: Thanks to DVDTalk for Some of the Screen Grabs. Read their Review Here!
Wow, what a travesty. It's like watching the film with sunglasses on. What the fuck?
Submitted by LSD Zombie on Sun, 10/07/2012 - 10:17pm.
Does Tom Savini just not care anymore?
Submitted by DavidFullam on Sun, 10/07/2012 - 9:06pm.
So since this is a maker of the film defending the change, are we going to have the same people who defended Lucas defend this change with the whole "It's their film, they can do what they want to it" argument?
This sucks. I'll hold off on buying this for a while. I was happy with my DVD anyway.
Submitted by Terminal on Sun, 10/07/2012 - 6:46pm.
Guess I should count myself lucky for deciding against buying a copy. That color tinting is fucking awful.
Submitted by MagusMaleficus on Sun, 10/07/2012 - 6:41pm.