THE REVEREND’S REVIEW
Dawn of the Dead
Dir George A Romero, US/Italy 1978
Second Sight Films, £74.99 (4K)/£64.99 (Blu-ray)
The Haunting of Bly Manor
Created by Mike Flanagan, US 2020
Streaming on Netflix
Vampires vs the Bronx
Dir Oz Rodriguez, US 2020
Streaming on Netflix
Witches of Amityville
Dir Rebecca Matthews, UK 2020
High Fliers, £9.99 (DVD)
It’s witches, ghosts and vampires this month, but leading the classic monster pack. This of Vereleased ‘Ben Hur of horror movies’ comes in a bulging seven-disc set with multiple film versions, soundtrack albums, books, posters, extras galore plus a free wallet-hole (it costs £64.99). The film itself remains a raw masterpiece that manages to be a million things at once: a wise epic, a hardcore exploitation movie, a cultural satire, a disgusting gore-fest, an eerie apocalyptic vision, and a kick-ass and funny action movie. Watching it after many years, I still can’t figure out how Romero pulled this off. He wrote the script in an apartment in Rome (at the invitation of the film’s producer, Dario Argento), but when his wife Christine Forrest read his vision she was worried. His ambition simply outstripped his budget. She was right of course; until she was proved wrong – much to her delight. And that’s what delivers: delight. Not just to its audience (I punched the air when this set hit my doormat) but to the people who worked on it too. You can see it in their faces in these excellent new extras. Forty years on, and they still look giddy when talking about the miracle of . Who can blame them, when the film that spawned an entire zombie industry is still the best zombie movie ever made? Which looks beautiful, by the way, and comes in two different flavours: Blu-ray and 4K
