Revenge Of The Zombies/Night Of The Living Dead John Carradine 2002 DVD

A zombie double. In ‘Revenge of the Zombies’ (1943) Dr Max Heinrich (John Carradine) is an insane sceintist who has turned his own wife (Veda Ann Borg) into a zombie, and now plans to create an army of undead slaves. When his wife’s relatives arrive and stumble across his grisly plan, Dr Heinrich works fast to unleash his legion of zombies. Whilst in ‘Night of the Living Dead’ (1968), Barbara (Judith O’Dea) and Johnny (Russell Streiner) on a visit to their father’s grave are interrupted when Johnny is killed by a flesh-eating stranger. Barbara escapes to a nearby farmhouse, meets up with a few other desperate individuals, and prepares to do battle with the zombies who gather outside.
This value-for-money Zombie Double Feature is billed as “Flesh Creepers, Volume 1”, and offers a double billing of George A Romeros classic Night of the Living Dead (1968) and Steve Sekelys rather less fondly remembered Revenge of the Zombies (1943).
Night of the Living Dead is a masterpiece, but it has also slipped through a copyright loophole which means it has been issued on video and DVD by a great many distributors in as many variant versions. This one isnt ruined by colorisation or dodgy new footage as a couple of rival releases are, but it is soft-looking print, free of censor cuts but very washed-out-looking. The background notes inexcusably get the date of the film wrong, crassly tagging it “think Blair Witch 1964”, and mention the existence of extras-filled special DVD editions, which rather rubs in the fact that this no-frills effort has none of the commentaries or documentaries found on other releases.
Revenge of the Zombies is a sluggish hour-long wartime B-picture, with John Carradine underplaying for once as a Nazi scientist creating an army of zombies (ie: a handful of shuffling extras) in the Louisiana swamplands. Comedy relief Mantan Moreland has the best moments and the trudging-around-the-backlot zombies (“things walkin aint got no business to be walkin”) are fun, but it isnt especially good of its kind.
On the DVD: The Zombie Double Feature presents both films in “horrorscope”, which means letterboxing and blurry image. The only extra is a list-like essay about the habits of flesh-eating zombies in Romero films.