CityoftheLivingDeadBluRay

City of the Living Dead (1980)

This review is a bit different from what I normally do. I’ve already reviewed the movie itself here. Bottom line is that I love City of the Living Dead. I mean I do run a website called Gutmunchers.com and along with Romero the late Lucio Fulci is one of the inspirations for the web comic and pretty much everything else we do here. So yeah I like the movie. Rather than rehash what I’ve already been over I thought I’d focus on the special features and transfer of the latest Blue Underground Blu-Ray release of City of the Living Dead.

Lets start off with the special features. Now to be fair these features are available on both the Blu-Ray and the new special edition 2 DVD set that Blue Underground has also put out. But I figure if you have a Blu-Ray player, why not splurge on the new format with a classic movie like this! There are 4 cool extras that I wanted to mention. First up is the Making of the City of the Living Dead. This goes into some detail of the making of the movie and includes interviews with Catriona MacColl and Michele Soavi. MacColl goes into some detail about working with Fulci on the film, including the famous “worm” scene. It was also very interesting to hear Soavi talk a bit about he death scene in the movie. Also interviewed are Sergio Salvati (Cinematographer), Massimo Antonello Geleng (Production Designer), and effects guys Rosario Prestopino and Gino De Rossi. If you ever wanted to know anything about the locations or effects from City of the Living Dead this making of documentary will give it to you.

If that isn’t enough City of the Living Dead talk for you (and it wasn’t for me) they also have a nice interview with Catriona MacColl called Acting Among the Living Dead, an interview with site favorite Giovanni Lombardo Radice, Entering the Gates of Hell, and yet another chance for the cast and crew to fondly remember Fulci called Memories of the Maestro. Really guys if you are a fan of this movie or of Fulci at all you really need to have this Blu-Ray in your collection. And again if you haven’t made the jump to Blu-Ray then grab the special 2 disc DVD edition.

Now lets talk about the Blu-Ray and how the movie looks in High Def. Let me start this as I always start this kind of discussion. I work with technology every day so I have no desire to sit here and talk about aspect rations, resolution and other such nonsense. If that makes me less of a nerd then that is probably a good thing. I judge these things purely as a consumer and basically only care about how nice the movie looks and sounds. I can honestly say that after having watched my old (let me stress this is the old release from Blue Underground not the new one) DVD of the movie up scaled that the Blu-Ray is a real improvement. City of the Living Dead has never looked better than it does now. I also noticed an improvement in the sound, though not as dramatic as the picture. So the next question is it worth a double dip? Well if you have the old DVD and are thinking of getting the Blu-Ray I can tell you yes it is totally worth it. Having not seen the new DVD I can’t say if it is that big of a deal. But I can’t recommend the Blu-Ray enough.

A great transfer, awesome special features, and the fact you get to watch a Fulci movie in 1080 makes this a no brainier for me. I highly recommend the City of the Living Dead Blu-Ray. For more information on this and the many other killer releases from Blue Underground head on over to http://www.blue-underground.com/

4 out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer