English Subtitle For Rise Of The Zombies 2012

1979, Color, 91 mins. 36 secs. Directed by Lucio Fulci Starring Tisa Farrow, Ian McCulloch, Richard Johnson, Auretta Gay, Olga Karlatos, Al Cliver Blue Underground (UHD, Blu-ray & DVD) (US R0 4K/HD/NTSC), Arrow Video (Blu-ray & DVD) (UK RB/R2 HD/PAL),, Media Blasters, Anchor Bay (US R1 NTSC), Italian Shock (Holland R0 PAL), Dragon (Germany R0 PAL), Vipco (UK R2 PAL) / WS (2.35:1) (16:9) By far the most famous and internationally successful contribution to the horror genre from director Lucio Fulci, Zombie still ranks as one of the most outrageous gore features ever made. It also played a pivotal role in introducing Italian horror to the international masses, serving as a sort of cultural time bomb that triggered several generations' worth of growing affection for a genre once regarded as gutter material. Time has also been very kind to this film; its guttersnipe nastiness now seems almost endearing after subsequent decades of fast-running non-zombies and CGI blood, while its origins as Fulci's first plunge into the purely fantastic and irrational (excepting perhaps The Psychic) made it the cornerstone of his essential early '80s horror cycle. The plot (what there is) follows Anne (Farrow, Mia's look-alike sister from The Grim Reaper and the excellent Fingers) as she travels with reporter Peter West (Zombie Holocaust's McCulloch) from New York City to look for her missing father on the cursed tropical island of Matoul, where the dead have been coming back to life and attacking the locals. An inbound ship with a macabre surprise or two including a flesh-tearing ghoul aboard provides a big clue, and so it's off for a tropical voyage to hell for our two heroes. The mayhem all stems from the reckless mad scientist, Dr. Meynard (The Haunting's Johnson), who has been combining science with ancient voodoo rituals. Pretty soon the entire cast (including Fulci regular Cliver and Gay) is fighting off hordes of the living dead, and the blood runs deep enough to require a raincoat. Originally released under the title Zombi 2 in Italy, Fulci's epic was intended as a pseudo-sequel to George Romero's profitable living dead classic, Dawn of the Dead (released in Europe as Zombi). However, Fulci opted to drop Romero's satiric approach and goes straight for the jugular, offering no satirical commentary whatsoever and shifting its social message to the spooky past of the \"old world\" invading modern cities and the consequences of colonialism. Of course, it proved an easy film to deride at the time with its erratic dubbing and rough visual style compared to the more baroque The Beyond or House by the Cemetery. Farrow and McCulloch have little to do besides look neurotic, Cliver looks sleepy, and Johnson skulks about in a haggard fashion and grumbles about the dead disturbing his work; however, the uncanny atmosphere of the film turns these approaches into assets, creating a twilight world where everything's going to hell faster than anyone realizes. The best acting award easily goes to the beautiful Olga Karlatos, who also enlivened Fulci's Murderock and played Prince's mom in Purple Rain; she makes a very strong impression in the two scenes she has, including the iconic splinter scene that remains one of the most astounding moments in European horror. The VHS editions from Wizard Video, Magnum Video (who also issued a long out-of-print pan and scan laserdisc), and a handful of public domain companies looked pretty wretched, suffering from greenish skin tones during the island scenes and muffled, scratchy audio. The Japanese laserdisc (under the Zombi 2 title) looked substantially better, though the print was somewhat worn, with hissy sound. The Roan and Anchor Bay versions on laserdisc and DVD respectively marked the film's widescreen US debut and feature a digitally remixed soundtrack in Dolby Digital, with some oddly recorded new sound effects. The colors were digitally enhanced and punched up a little too much for comfort on the laserdisc; for example, during a couple of faded scenes, the shadows glow an electric blue. On the other hand, the Anchor Bay DVD is too pale, washing out even the blues of the ocean scenes. The fun bonus material includes the US theatrical trailer, a couple of TV spots, and some hilarious radio promos. The commentary by McCulloch with Diabolik moderator Jason J .Slater provides quite a few chuckles, including an amazing comparison between Fulci and Preston Sturges! More often, though, the comments stray way off the subject and may not please Fulciphiles, but there are still some nice nuggets in here. In Britain the film fell afoul of the video nasty panic and was only available for years missing as much as four minutes, under the title Zombie Flesh-Eaters. The first DVD was still cut slightly and marketed as the Extreme Version,\" with cuts eventually waived for later versions. The German disc from Dragon, under the title Woodoo, is uncut and also features an Antonella Fulci interview. Now things get really complicated. Due to a rights snafu, both Media Blasters and Blue Underground wound up with the American DVD rights for the film, which resulted in the latter company issuing its version first. Both versions are culled from the same master and contain the English and Italian audio tracks with optional English subtitles, in a more faithful 5.1 mix than the previous one or the original mono mix. The transfer is an improvement over its predecessors, and both look very similar except for the BU one featuring a slightly cooler color palette and the interlaced MB one looking slightly yellower. Both appear to be boosted in the brightness department, which isn't wholly satisfying during the night scenes. The BU DVD contains the same barrage of trailers and TV and radio spots, while the Media Blasters edition (confusingly branded under the title Zombi 2) includes \"Food for the Worms\" (12m27s), a fun bonus interview Captain Haggerty (the portly New York boat zombie) and a whole second disc packed with interviews with most of the participants, \"Building a Better Zombie\" (97m30s), including the FX artists and actors. However, it's cut into an incredibly long, rather shapeless documentary form and requires viewers to carve out a lot of time and patience to get to all the good stuff. Die hards will want it, but neophytes will probably give up about ten minutes in. For the record, participants include Dardano Sacchetti (an uncredited writing contributor), producer Fabrizio De Angelis, FX artist and gorehound favorite Gianetto de Rosi, director Enzo G. Castellari (who was approached for the film before Fulci), Cliver, Ottaviano Dell'Acqua (the worm-faced zombie and one of the stunt men), composer Fabio Frizzi (making his first solo collaboration with Fulci on this film), and many additional production crew members. Also included are bonus interviews with costume designer Walter Patriarca (6m1s) and guitar-strumming zombie actor Dakar (3m34s), bonus zombie-themed trailers galore, and different still galleries. Of course, that was hardly the end of the road for what has now become regarded as one of the most significant zombie films in history. (Incredibly, it even turned up famously in a Microsoft TV commercial for Windows 7 in 2010!) As should also be obvious by now, it's tough to pinpoint exactly how Zombie should look given the variety of color schemes found on various releases, and things took another turn with Blue Underground's HD, 2K-transferred \"Ultimate Edition\" in 2011, presented on two Blu-rays. The transfer supervised by cinematographer Sergio Salvati definitely looks more vibrant than others with strong colors and, for once, consistent skin tones. Interestingly, this is the first home video version where you can clearly see that a bright red light is being blasted onto Gay during that underwater scene, an expressionistic flourish completely lost before when it turned into a dull, dirty purple color. Overall it's a significant upgrade across the board over the DVD, but it's also noticeably soft and even mushy at times with no visible grain; the prelude to worm-eye's appearance with Farrow and McCulloch lying on the ground has a soft, waxy appearance that will have noise-reduction phobics raising some red flags. Audio is presented as usual in both English and Italian, with the former feeling more legitimate given the three leads' performances (though Fulci's brief appearance only syncs up in Italian). Both are in 7.1 DTS-HD, 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround EX, and mono, with the former two options mostly adding some ambiance to the music in the front speakers with extremely minimal bleed over elsewhere. That's definitely preferable to the gimmicky fake mix of the first Anchor Bay disc, though the obvious presence of some augmented sound effects (especially gunshots) is jarring. English subtitles are offering as both SDH (transcribing the English track and sound effects) and a translation from the Italian track, which is very welcome; other subtitle options include Japanese, Chinese, Koren, Thai, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and German. (Whew!) The US and international trailers are included on the first disc in new HD transfers, plus a new hi-def poster and photo gallery, a brief new intro by director Guillermo Del Toro (24 seconds), and those TV and radio spots. Disc two (which features an amusing maggot-themed menu) kicks off with \"Zombie Wasteland\" (22m19s) filmed at Cinema Wasteland's zombie-themed event in Cleveland. McCulloch (\"There's an awful lot of metal sticking out of people's bodies\"), Johnson, Cliver (who speaks in a whisper due to health issues), and Dell'Acqua are on hand to talk about their warm feelings for the film and its fans, their more ambivalent memories of Fulci, and of course, the perils of getting worms in your ears and mouth when shooting a zombie attack. Ken Kish and interviewer Art Ettinger are also on hand to talk about the film's appeal, and it all wraps up with an amusing hom