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Some titles are des­tined to be vis­ited again and again by DVD com­pa­nies.  It can be done for any num­ber of rea­sons — new tech­nol­ogy, an anniver­sary, etc — and if a fan is lucky, the pre­sen­ta­tion the film will evolve with each release.

Take Lucio Fulci’s Zombie, for instance: the Anchor Bay DVD beat the old VHS ver­sions with its let­ter­boxed trans­fer — but said trans­fer was also pale and primitive-looking by mod­ern stan­dards.  A few years later, Shriek Show and Blue Underground simul­ta­ne­ously release new discs of this title with the same trans­fer (find out why by click­ing here).  The Shriek Show had scads of extras but botched the trans­fer through an inter­laced pre­sen­ta­tion.  The Blue Underground disc looked great but was com­par­a­tively light on extras.

Luckily for fans, Blue Underground has returned to the well for a 40th Anniversary pre­sen­ta­tion… and the results offer a step up in all departments.

The trans­fer uti­lizes a new 2K trans­fer that was super­vised by cin­e­matog­ra­pher Sergio Salvati.  The results look great, even through the standard-definition prism of a DVD: the black lev­els are nice and rich, the color palette of the island pho­tog­ra­phy is suit­ably lush and the detail is nice and crisp.  Viewers also get the option of watch­ing the film with a short but enthu­si­as­tic intro from direc­tor Guillermo Del Toro (more on him later).  In terms of audio, fans are treated to three choices: mono, 5.1 Dolby Stereo and 7.1 DTS.  The 5.1 mix was used for this review: it doles out sur­round effects sub­tly but effec­tively.  As you might expect, the throb­bing electro/tribal score gets plenty of heft in this mix.

There are also tons of extras for this redux, most of them new.  The first disc’s main extra is a com­men­tary track that fea­tures actor Ian McCulloch and mod­er­a­tor Jason Slater.  This track pre­vi­ously appeared on the Anchor Bay disc and has its prob­lems but still man­ages to enter­tain.  Slater’s mod­er­at­ing is ten­ta­tive at best — he doesn’t have inter­est­ing ques­tions or much chem­istry with McCulloch — but McCulloch picks up the slack nicely.  This genre-flick vet does a fine job of giv­ing the fan an actor’s-eye view of work­ing on the film, com­plete with funny sto­ries about work­ing with­out per­mits in New York and a run-in with a Sicilian crew mem­ber that resulted in a death threat.  It’s a mod­est affair but fans will be happy it was pre­served for the hand­ful of killer anec­dotes it offers.

The rest of extras on disc one fall into two cat­e­gories: trail­ers and images.  You get both inter­na­tional and American spots, the lat­ter being a nice hard-sell that sells the film as a gross-out (com­plete with barf-bag offer).  There are also radio spots that offer an array of comic-book macabre sce­nar­ios to sell the film.  The image gallery is the ani­mated kind, set to cues from the film’s dis­tinc­tive score.  It’s pretty impres­sive as it breezes through all man­ner of posters, video boxes, stills and can­did pho­tos at a nice clip… much more involv­ing than the usual click-thru gallery.

The sec­ond disc is where the real fun begins.  It offers eight new fea­turettes helmed by Michael Felsher and Jim Kunz that cover a wide array of cast and crew mem­bers.  Here’s a quick break­down of what fans can expect:

Zombie Wasteland: this cast-driven piece cap­tures four cast­mem­bers — Ian McCulloch, Richard Johnson, Al Cliver and stuntman/poster zom­bie Ottaviano Dell’Acqua — who are all inter­viewed dur­ing a group appear­ance at the Cinema Wasteland con­ven­tion in Ohio.  All are forth­com­ing with their mem­o­ries of their work on the film, their opin­ions of Fulci and their grat­i­tude for the third act of the career that they are now expe­ri­enc­ing at con­ven­tions.  The edit­ing is punchy, the pho­tog­ra­phy is great and the enthu­si­asm of the sub­jects is con­ta­gious (Cliver’s humil­ity towards the film’s fans is down­right touch­ing).  There’s also a fun coda that “quotes” Zombie itself.

Flesh Eaters On Film: this seg­ment is devoted exclu­sively to pro­ducer Fabrizio De Angelis, who reflects on how he formed a part­ner­ship with Fulci for sev­eral pic­tures (a rar­ity in the Italian film world).  He talks a bit about how his hor­ror pro­duc­tions were struc­tured to “get” the audi­ence and offers some inter­est­ing com­men­tary on how inter­na­tional financ­ing worked for films dur­ing his era.

Deadtime Stories: writ­ers Elisa Briganti and Dardano Sacchetti are inter­viewed about the script.  Sacchetti takes the lead as he dis­cusses how the screen­writ­ing busi­ness worked in Italy in that era, how his habit of blend­ing gen­res led to the film’s horror/adventure combo and the European comic book that indi­rectly inspired the premise.  Briganti adds fas­ci­nat­ing coun­ter­point mate­r­ial, includ­ing the tragedy that Sacchetti was cop­ing with dur­ing the writ­ing process, and also offers her own intrigu­ingly philo­soph­i­cal thoughts on what made the film was so successful.

World Of The Dead: this seg­ment focuses on the look of the film and divides itself between cin­e­matog­ra­pher Sergio Salvati and art direc­tor Walter Patriarca.  Salvati dis­cusses how he and his crew pulled off atmos­pheric pho­tog­ra­phy in a pre-CGI era, includ­ing light­ing tricks used to make the zom­bies appro­pri­ately ugly.  He also tells some great sto­ries about how cer­tain shots in New York were stolen, includ­ing the bridge coda (of course) all the aer­ial pho­tog­ra­phy.  Patriarca shows some cool pro­duc­tion design art and tells an intrigu­ing anec­dote about the tor­tured gen­e­sis of the “hos­pi­tal” set that he con­structed on the island location.

Zombi Italiano: Probably the seg­ment the hor­ror fanat­ics will like the best as it inter­views makeup FX artists Gianetto De Rossi, Maurizio Trani and Gino De Rossi.  Plenty of inter­est­ing insights into how key set­pieces were pulled off, includ­ing a funny tale about how neces­sity was the mother of inven­tion dur­ing film’s famous splinter-through-eye sequence and a grip­ping account of the film’s famous “zom­bie vs. shark” scene.  A nice sur­prise here is Trani’s fond dis­cus­sion of how Fulci was a men­tor to him.

Notes On A Headstone: this fea­tures com­poser Fabio Frizzi dis­cussing his famous score.  It’s brief but action-packed as Frizzi blitzes his mem­o­ries of work­ing with Fulci, his take on dif­fer­ent scenes and how choos­ing where music wasn’t used was often as impor­tant as how it was used.  He’s a charm­ing, enthu­si­as­tic sub­ject and the only regret here is that he didn’t get to talk more about the indi­vid­ual cues, espe­cially the clas­sic main theme.

All In The Family: another brief piece that is essen­tially a brief col­lec­tion of mus­ings from Fulci’s daugh­ter, Antonella, about her father.  She offers a very per­sonal take on his rela­tion­ship with the hor­ror genre and his atti­tude towards the film­mak­ing busi­ness.  She also offers her own thoughts on why his hor­ror work was so suc­cess­ful.  Short but com­pelling and thoughtful.

Zombie Lover: the last in line is the most pleas­ant sur­prise of the bunch.  This is sim­ply a piece in which direc­tor and Zombie super-fan Guillermo Del Toro dis­cusses his his­tory with and appre­ci­a­tion for the film: the movie palace he saw it in, the dream­like qual­ity of watch­ing it and how hard it was to explain the film to dis­be­liev­ing friends and fam­ily.  He moves on to an appre­ci­a­tion of the film from a director’s stand­point that is full of fas­ci­nat­ing details. The fin­ished piece will charm the inner “mon­ster kid” in every Zombie fan.

All in all, the new fea­turettes are a vital addi­tion to the lore of Zombie.  Felsher and Kunz have deliv­ered a lot of insight for fans in a series of enter­tain­ing, con­cise pack­ages. Congratulations are also in order Paolo Zelati, the pro­ducer of the inter­views, for get­ting the most out of this impres­sive col­lec­tion of Italian genre film veterans.

In short, the com­bi­na­tion of a qual­ity trans­fer upgrade and the expan­sive set of new extras make this a keeper for Zombie fans.  Until the next evo­lu­tion of this cat­a­log favorite arrives, the Fulci faith­ful will be very pleased with this anniver­sary set.