Creature Corner.com reported:

http://www.creature-corner.com/?type=news&id=3327

To boot, a 40th Anniversary edition of Night of the Living Dead will also be released that day, so if you don't have this classic you'd damn well better add it to your collection when it hits the shelves.

Night of the Living Dead: 40th Anniversary Edition

Duane Jones' Final Audio Interview
Audio Commentaries
”One For The Fire – The Legacy of Night of the Living Dead” - An all-new ninety-minute documentary on the making and enduring appeal of the film featuring cast & crew interviews
Restored all-new 4x3 1080p HD transfer

Anyone else here have any other info on the release, like who's putting it out?

BeAst WisheS -- L

Dimension is releasing it. Probably in conjunction with their release of DIARY OF THE DEAD.

Yes, amazon have it listed as a Weinstein Company release.

And here I was afeared that the Anniversary was going to go by with no real notice.

Silly me.

Worth noting perhaps that later this month the Fangoria show in LA will be having a cast/crew reunion. This June at the show in NJ there's one too:

• GEORGE ROMERO
• KYRA SCHON - Karen Cooper
• JOHN RUSSO - Writer
• RUSS STREINER - Producer
• JUDITH O'DEA - Barbra
• BILL HINZMAN - Cemetary Zombie
• MARILYN EASTMAN - Helen Cooper
• GEORGE KOSANA - Sheriff McClelland

Ruggero Deodato, Lamberto Bava and Michele Soavi are an added bonus at the NJ show.

For what it's worth...

The events of the movie fell on the 28th of April. Seeing that DST in 1968 fell on the last Sunday of April.

Will Romero share in any of the proceeds from this release?

Lousy cover, but it's good to see NOTLD getting a HD release. No way will it beat the Elite edition for the extras, but if the transfer is good, I may get it on Blue Ray.

So... will this new NIGHT be a roper HD Blu-ray release?

Hopefully, he'll have nothing to do with it! ;)

Of course, the list should read:

RUSS STREINER - Producer/Johnny
MARILYN EASTMAN/Helen Cooper/Bug-eating ghoul w/bad wig

Couldn't find the cover on the Amazon page? Have you got a link Domenick? (A minute later...) Never mind just found these:

http://www.hkflix.com/xq/asp/filmID.546064/qx/details.htm

http://www.zombiefriends.com/club/news.asp?nid=60

Just googled "NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD 40th" and found a couple of interesting links:

Website dedicated to the 40th Ann.:
http://notld40.com/

IMDB listing for the new documentary found on the DVD.
One for the Fire: Night of the Living Dead 40th Anniversary Documentary
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1104837/
Documentary MySpace page:
http://www.myspace.com/notld40thdoc

Here's hoping they did it right.

BeAst WisheS -- L

The article says the TRANSFER is a new 1080p restoration, but there's no mention of a Blu-ray release (none listed at Amazon either). Has anyone seen any concrete info on a HD version?

The Weinstein Company have yet to announce any plans as regards Blu-ray. They supported HD DVD (briefly), and I suspect it's a no-brainer that they will eventually release on Blu-ray, but there's nothing concrete yet.

Who the hell wrote this logline?

An innocent young woman finds herself in the incredulous position of having the previously dead guests at her father's grave come to life around her!

You're sh*tting us!

That's hysterical. It reminds me of the wretched writing at the site they'd set up to publicize SWEENEY.

As a freelancer, I know what it's like to have to do a job with no time to research properly but this person clearly has never seen the movie whose 40th anniversary he or she is trying to get us excited about.

Well, it is a description from a HK import site. It reads like a bad translation. It was probably translated from the Chinese description to English...badly.

So... nobody in Hong Kong has seen the movie either? ;)

I dunno, an innocent young woman in an incredulous position sounds like something I'd like to see! :ph43r:

How can it be so hard to write a synopsis on NOTLD?! Sheesh.

I'd be tempted to add why would you even need a synopsis...

... but drop the name of the flick in a group of randoms, and almost always one will exclaim "BRAINS!"

Yeah, Sid Haig actually does that in the TCM Underground ads. It's funny to imagine a million NotLD fans flinching in unison.

Dread Central has the first review of the new release:

http://www.dreadcentral.com/node/27093

Unfortunately it does not mention if Don May is credited for overseeing the new restoration, as I asked over on the "Don May, Jr. at SGM, Candid interview" thread. Paging Mr. May...

Surely Mr. Felsher would know if this was a Don May remaster? Mr. Felsher?

BeAst WisheS - L

Well, since George said something about me, I guess it can now be discussed:
http://www.movieweb.com/dvd/news/65/28565.php

I will say that I was hired just for my digital restoration skills. I had nothing to do with the new HD film transfer. I was hired for cleanup. I also supervised the audio restoration, too.

Now, does that mean the transfer should be relatively free of DVNR-related smudginess, or are they likely to apply goofball filters further downstream from you?

The horrible DNR, very present on the Elite disc, is NOT on the new disc. I have some check discs here and no noise reduction was applied.

When you said George, I was like... George who?

From the interview:

GEORGE ROMERO:
Well, first of all, there's this fellow named Don May, who's the premiere film restoration artist, who did it. It looks beautiful. It's almost too good. Wow. It's actually stunning to me that they got it that well...

Very cool.

Noooooooiiice!!! Err - I mean, 'nice!'

Thanks, Don. :)

I often pray to Don at odd moments of the day. :)

Bravo!

It's been a very, very long time since I looked forward to a DVD release.

This news makes the waiting even better.

Nothing will ever beat the thrill of cracking open that Elite LD for the first time. The massive letdown of the teaser PD footage--"I paid how much for this?"--followed by the euphoric rush of the actual THX-approved transfer. What showmanship!

Just walked over to J&R in the rain during my lunch break and bought it, happily.

UPDATE 5/21: It looks terrific! And the documentary (though I've only seen the first twenty minutes) is great. Seeing the even more beautiful Judith O'Dea and the still goofily handsome Russ Streiner revisit the original cemetary was both a kick and very moving to this fan.

"JimPV" over at CHFB posted a bunch of grabs off the new release. While they beat 'em or burn 'em when it comes to the contrast and general clarity, what's with some of the cropping in the new release?!

Elite:


Dimension:

Looks great, but the blowing up of the image is disturbing. I'd like to think that's his equipment, but I'm not so sure of that.

It's confirmed in Fangoria's review.

I'm guessing this has been a regular topic of conversations that I've missed all these years, but those micro-freeze frames always stuck out to me in what was an otherwise immortal remaster/release. I always assumed Don and company were using an AB negative and there was a small jump as the actual splice went through the gate and they doubled the frames to cover the shift in image. (Don, does any of this ring a bell? Why were the frames doubled?) Glad to hear I wasn't alone in being distracted by this nitpick and am very happy to hear that they appear to have been fixed on this new disc.

Despite that tiny obersvation, the ELITE NOTLD disc and ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 were my favorite remasters as far as providing a true metamorphosis of the film from all previous video releases. HALLOWEEN was also great in that I finally got to see the train pass by Loomis on the phone, and see Myers watching Linda and Bob on the couch, etc. etc., but ELITE'S NOTLD and the ASSAULT remaster radically changed my impression of the films forever. Speaking of which...

Agreed Bob. It still makes me happy every time I see it. Looking forward to checking out this new disc this weekend.

BeAst WisheS -- L

Because I love all you folks on MHVF, I'm going to write a response regarding NOTLD here on this forum and only here. I'm only going to write this once here and, if you frequent other forums, you can certainly link my message below on any other forums you feel needs the information.

Not sure what caused the cropping (being in this business, I know it could've been caused by any number of reasons), but it was that way on the master I was provided. My personal "gut" feeling is that it may have been zoomed in to remove the "vignetting" present on the extreme edges, mic shadows, etc. Not sure though and I'll never get the answer because the lab that did the transfer (according to the slate at the head of the digital master I was given) is no longer even in business. I noticed it and I did contact not only the producer of the DVD, but I sent comparison screen grabs to George and company and I heard nothing back. I proceeded with the restoration on the master I was given. Based on his comments in interviews, etc. I can only assume that George is happy with it and approves the way it was presented, so that's really all I need to know to be proud of the way the film is presented on the new DVD. It's my personal opinion that this version of the film still blows away any other version of the film ever presented on home video, though, and you can quote me on that.

I spent a hell of a lot of time restoring the master. Basically it was 10 days of non-stop restoration/computer processing (seriously, I worked more than 16 hours each day, for 10 days, to get it done). I wanted more than two weeks to do everything, but I had to work in their time-frame and budget, so I did a lot in a limited time (I worked more on this than I have on ANY other movie in my career, really). There are some amazing differences between the Elite one and the Dimension one and, for sharpness, quality of image, etc. the Dimension version complete smokes the Elite one in many respects.

One of the things I am most proud of is that I was able to fix most of the annoying splices/jumps that occur at just about every single cut in NOTLD. This was an issue on the original negative from the very beginning and has been on every single version of the film... ever. We didn't have the technology, 15 years ago, to fix these on the Elite version very economically. At almost all cuts, from shot to shot, the film "bounced". I got rid of as many as I could and spent the most amount of time on this. You can see that the problem originated in the original negative cutting because one of the "jumps" I couldn't fix is right at the beginning during the opening credit optical... the film "jumps" behind one name block of onscreen credits, but the credit block names remain rock solid in the center of the screen.

I was also able to fix many of the water damaged frames, tears, and splices. There is one shot of Duane hammering nails in a board on a door/window that is MUCH cleaner than it was on Elite's version. We even digitally added back his fingers that were cut off because of a tear in the neg (the tear in the frame went right through his hand and, as such, we lost his fingers... we were able to capture his fingers from a previous frame and replace them in the torn footage).

Also, there IS a scene in the Dimension Films version that contains a heck of a lot more picture info on all four sides than the Elite version. I'm not entirely sure where it is right now, but it's a scene of Duane surrounded by zombies outside (with the camera placed slightly above the action aiming down at Duane, I think). On the Dimension version, you can see what looks like a wad of paper being thrown in the lower right hand corner of the frame. It arcs down and to the left from the lower right side of the frame and falls to the bottom of the frame. On the Elite version, the frame was repositioned to not have that in the shot... At the time of the Elite transfer, Karl Hardman didn't know what it was, so he requested that we frame it out of the shot. You can see it in the Dimension version and not the Elite. And, honestly, there may even be a few more shots in the Dimension one that has more picture info on the sides... I can't remember if Karl had us do other repos or not.

Also, the audio is FAR superior on the Dimension version. I spent almost two full days going in and retooling the original THX approved audio tracks and removing a lot of the optical hiss and "needle drops" that you could hear on the original PD music tracks in the film. All the music in the film was taken from vinyl records and there was always hiss and "pops" because of the record needles. We got most of that out... a good example of what was cleaned up is right when Judy O'Dea goes into the house at the beginning. Right after she opens the door and leans against it once she's in the house for the first time, listen to the differences in the music cue as she's leaning on the door from the inside if you have both versions... The Elite one has plenty of pops and hiss and the Dimension one is amazingly smooth now. That's just one example I can give... sonically, the Dimension version is far superior, too.

The Elite version was plagued with Digital Video Reduction and the Dimension one is not. If you watch the night scenes carefully, on the Dimension version, you can actually see all the moths and bugs flying around the actors (like when they try and get gas for the truck). Because of the DNR on the Elite one, many, many of these bugs/moths are completely erased and the sharpness of the entire film suffers because of the DNR.

Look, no one who has the Elite version should get rid of it anyway because of the extras that are not present on the Dimension release. But, I recommend at least springing for the Dimension version because of the image quality differences and Mike Felsher's excellently edited documentary from Robert Lucas/Chris Roe. When I watch just the NOTLD film from now on, I'm putting in the Dimension version, regardless of the cropping... honestly, the previous Elite DVDs of NOTLD have been a hard watch for me because I know of all the problems we tried to fix that didn't translate well to digital DVD. The Elite disc just drives me bonkers when I watch it now... I see too much wrong with it... and I worked on the damn thing. That's just my .02 cents.

Thanks Don, Your analysis of the matter has me running out to Best Buy now before it closes to pick it up. Keep up the good work! D