The Dead Walk: Remaking a Classic (1999) (V)

User Rating:

5.8/10   

Director:

Jeffrey Schwarz

Genre:

Documentary | Short

Plot Keywords:

Making Of | Interview | Remake | Zombie | Film Making

Cast

George A. Romero	...	Himself
John A. Russo	...	Himself
Tom Savini	...	Himself
Russell Streiner	...	Himself
Patricia Tallman	...	Herself
John Vulich	...	Himself

Runtime:

25 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Trivia:

Appears on the DVD of Night of the Living Dead (1990).

Movie Connections:

References Aliens (1986)

Great documentary for fans of the remake.

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

The Dead Walk: Remaking a Classic is a 25 minute long documentary featured on the Night of the Living Dead (1990) DVD released by Columbia just about everywhere & should be available in a bargain bin near you right now! Basically this is a brill documentary & one of the best I've ever seen on a DVD, it has just about everything you could want within reason. Most of the main players in the remake are here with only George A. Romero & Tony Todd M.I.A. & there's some nice behind the scenes footage & deleted gore.

The first thing the documentary covers is the reason behind the remake & that it was basically so the original producers could make some money since the original Night of the Living (1968) had no copyright notice because the people who did the opening titles 'forgot' to include any sort of copyright therefore legally no one owned it & they couldn't make any money from it. It also covers the casting, the location shooting, how they tried to make the zombies scary, the things they wanted to achieve with the film, it's compared with the original & there's a cool segment on the special make-up effects & the trouble it had with the MPAA who gave it an 'X' before the cut version got an 'R'. Pleasingly some of the cut gore footage is present in this documentary including a few gory head-shots, Barbara pulling the poker out of the Uncle Rege zombies head & a fantastic shot of Tom sitting in the back of the pick up truck shooting a zombie which in it's uncut form shows the zombies head literally exploding everywhere.

The Dead Walk: Remaking a Classic is a top documentary for a film which I'm a big fan of, that obviously makes me biased to some extent but I still think this is better than most self congratulatory DVD documentary's out there, well worth a watch if you have the DVD.