Dawn of the Dead: Ultimate Edition

Rating R Formats DVD Genre Horror Starring David Emge, Ken Foree, Scott H. Reiniger, Gaylen Ross Publisher Anchor Bay External Links Anchor Bay

Anyone reading this review probably already knows that this is George Romero's 1978 follow-up to his classic Night of the Living Dead. What not everyone might know, however, is that wanting to recover a sizeable loss on the first film was one of the primary motivating factors behind making this sequel. Fortunately for fans, Dawn of the Dead also turned into a classic and can be found in movie collections of young and old. Anchor Bay, having released the film in a couple different versions previously, offers all three major versions of the film in the Ultimate Edition. It is by far, one of the most impressive horror DVDs to date. Check out the long list.

Disc Extras

Full Motion menu with music
Scene Access with 24 cues and remote access
Subtitles/Captions in English (closed captioning only) with remote access
Cast and Crew Biographies
Cast and Crew Filmographies
5 Original Trailer(s)
5 TV Spots/Teasers
2 Documentaries
3 Feature/Episode commentaries by 1) George A. Romero, Tom Savini and assistant
director Chris Romero; 2) David Emge, Ken Foree, Scott H. Reiniger, Gaylen Ross; 3)
producer Richard P. Rubinstein
Packaging: Digipak
Picture Disc
4 Discs
1-Sided disc(s)
Layers: RSDL
Layers Switch: 01h:09m:00s

Other

Radio spots
Poster, lobby card, stills, memorabilia and advertising galleries
Home movies
Tour of the mall and commercial for the mall.
Mini-comic

Two U.S. trailers, an Italian trailer, and two German trailers, three American TV spots and two U.K. TV spots and nine radio spots are joined by numerous art galleries with a grand total of 14 posters, 68 lobby cards, 15 ads, 100 stills, 100 more behind-the-scenes stills, 52 photos of memorabilia (including books, games, figures and more), 73 pressbook images, 21 soundtrack scoers and 90 video covers (DVD, laserdisc, and video). Lengthy bios and filmographies for Romero and Argento are also supplied, and there's also an advertisement for the Monroeville Mall where the film was shot.

The fourth disc is devoted to documentaries. A new documentary, The Dead Will Walk includes recent interview footage from most of the principals and surprisingly enough hardly duplicates the commentaries, and when it does, gives a different perspective. Also provided is the celebrated "making-of" film Document of the Dead, previously released on DVD by itself from Synapse. A 13m:24s segment of home movies from the set is provided with narration from one of the zombies.

Finally, there's even a video mall tour guided by Ken Foree. The foldout digipak package includes a roadmap for what materials are where, as well as a mini-comic adapting the beginning of the film.


It is exhausting how much information in packed into this collection. For film lovers of this genre, there is nothing better or more complete. This is truely a celebration of horror.