Synapse’s TOMBS OF THE BLIND DEAD Blu-Ray Sports Multiple Cuts and New Commentaries
Mike Sprague
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Synapse Films is working on a new release of Amando de Ossorio’s Tombs of the Blind Dead for later this year. It will include multiple versions of the movie and new audio commentary tracks.
Also Read: Blue Undergound Bringing The Complete Blind Dead Collection to DVD
Read more below.
Synapse president Don May Jr. tells Rue Morgue: “Tombs was one of those situations where we inherited a previous scan and restoration that I was not able to supervise myself. I had to do some fixes, some color corrections, and other things to bring the movie up to our usual standards of quality, and finally, it’s done.”
It will sport three commentaries. One by [historian/author] Troy Howarth, one by Rod Barnett and Troy Guinn from the NaschyCast podcast, and one by Lone Fleming, the star of the film. Both the longer Spanish and shorter English cuts will be included, plus a hybrid version.
May describes the hybrid: “[It’s] the nightmare I caused for myself. I got the bright idea to do a hybrid version; I said, ‘Why don’t we put the English track over the longer Spanish edition, and where the Spanish one has extra footage and dialogue, we just cut to the Spanish and put subtitles on it.’ So we have the long version mostly in English with 15 or 20 minutes in Spanish, with optional subtitles. I didn’t realize till after I started it that it would be a massive pain in the ass, but we’re doing it. It’ll be interesting for the fans to have the opportunity to see it that way, and it’s weird, because there are scenes in English with just one or two lines of dialogue in Spanish, and you get to see what the people who first put the movie out in the U.S. decided to cut.”
May adds: “We’ve got three commentaries, including one by [historian/author] Troy Howarth and one by Lone Fleming, the star of the film, which is awesome. She sent me an e-mail when she heard we were doing TOMBS, saying, ‘Whatever you need, I’m here!’ so I said, ‘OK, we’ll take you up on that!’ and we sent somebody to Spain to do the commentary. She had a blast, and to get her, after all these decades, to come back and talk about the movie was great. We also have a commentary by Rod Barnett and Troy Guinn, who do the NaschyCast podcast, which is a lot of fun.”
May continues: “We’ve got the infamous REVENGE FROM PLANET APE opening [slapped on the film in the ’70s by a duplicitous distributor attempting to tie it in with the PLANET OF THE APES franchise], and an amazing documentary on the Spanish zombie genre that’s a follow-up to the one on the LIVING DEAD AT MANCHESTER MORGUE Blu-ray, by the same people [director Naomi Holwill et al.].”
He adds: “Also, we always try to do a CD for our special editions, and there has never been an official soundtrack CD of TOMBS OF THE BLIND DEAD, probably because the original elements are not separated and they can’t be found or whatever. But we’re doing a heavy-metal tribute CD for TOMBS. There’s a band called Hooded Menace whose first few albums were basically love letters to the BLIND DEAD films, so we’ve got a couple of tracks from them. Lee Dorrian from Napalm Death had another band called Cathedral, who did a song called ‘Tombs of the Blind Dead,’ and he’s letting us have that for the CD. And collectors who are into horror soundtracks and limited-edition vinyl will know the band Zoltan, who have done John Carpenter and PHANTASM tribute albums, and they did a record with their own takes on the themes for the four main BLIND DEAD films, so we’re going to have those. The CD is going to be awesome. We’ve got a few other surprises in store as well.”
Sounds good to us! We’ll keep you posted on further details and the release date!
Will you snag this new edition of Tombs of the Blind Dead later this year?
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