The Dead Walk: Remaking a Classic (1999) watch online HD

The Dead Walk: Remaking a Classic (1999)

*** (out of 4)

Good featurette has interviews with Tom Savini, Patricia Tallman, John Russo, John Vulick and Russell Streiner as they discuss why they decided to remake NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. For the most part this twenty-five minute featurette is worth watching if you're a fan of the remake or of the original. It's interesting hear from Russo and Streiner as they discuss the copyright issues on the original and why this played a part in the remake. Savini talks about how he was originally set to work on the original but got called away to Vietnam. Tallman is on hand to discuss her character. There are some nice stories told here but it's too bad more of the cast members weren't interviewed but perhaps we'll get a more detailed documentary at some point.

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.