Revenge Of The Zombies/Night Of The Living Dead - Region 0

Night of the Living Dead is a masterpiece, but it has also slipped through a copyright loophole which means it has been issued on video and DVD by a great many distributors in as many variant versions. This one isn’t ruined by colorisation or dodgy new footage as a couple of rival releases are, but it is soft-looking print, free of censor cuts but very washed-out-looking. The background notes inexcusably get the date of the film wrong, crassly tagging it "think Blair Witch 1964", and mention the existence of extras-filled special DVD editions, which rather rubs in the fact that this no-frills effort has none of the commentaries or documentaries found on other releases.

Revenge of the Zombies is a sluggish hour-long wartime B-picture, with John Carradine underplaying for once as a Nazi scientist creating an army of zombies (ie: a handful of shuffling extras) in the Louisiana swamplands. Comedy relief Mantan Moreland has the best moments and the trudging-around-the-backlot zombies ("things walkin’ ain’t got no business to be walkin’") are fun, but it isn’t especially good of its kind.

On the DVD: The Zombie Double Feature presents both films in "horrorscope", which means letterboxing and blurry image. The only extra is a list-like essay about the habits of flesh-eating zombies in Romero films.--Kim Newman