As I mentioned in my recent brief review of "The Crazies" a remake of the George Romero 1973 film of the same name and some of it shot about 150 miles due west of Fairfield in Lenox and Winterset, I felt the remake lacked edge so went in search of the original 1973 version. To my dismay (and no I don't have an active Netflix account but more on that later) I couldn't find it at local rental places even though the film was released on DVD just a few years ago. The reason might be that it is considered a "cult" film and the company who has the rights specializes in that and may specifically be doing limited editions to keep the collector value up.
The 1973 version to coincide with the remake was rereleased on both DVD and Bluray. Yesterday I decided to trundle over to Rasputin's, a Bay Area used CD/DVD store that has an outlet nearby. Looking through the new releases I didn't see it and I did as best I could look through used DVDs but to no available. I then decided to see what they had in their used Bluray section and there to my surprise were new copies of the Bluray and discounted! The latter is something rare for that store as their Bluray prices were often more than the suggested retail for some reason. So I decided to snap it up figuring I could resell it if I didn't like it. The 1973 version is of course a B-movie. As some of us may remember back then most theaters showed two features, one a big Hollywood blockbuster and cheap B-movie that most people would walk out on after 10 minutes (and at drive-ins start doing something else). The film was commissioned by a small studio who had some soft core porn hits and wanted to branch out into other projects. It was also Romero's first union film. The script came from one that someone had written and he used about the first 10 pages as an idea. It was a story about a military plane crash that results in a biological weapon going into a towns water supply and making the residents go crazy and how the military goes into "damage control" resulting in them invading the town. The rest of the original script involved studying how both the military and the residents went crazy and could one tell the difference. It was also too verbal and the studio wanted an action film (he settled on something in between). Romero took those fragments to make the 1973 version and Brett Eisner likewise took concepts from that version for the remake. As I suspected the 1973 had a little more edge though it was a little less effective as the production quality (made on a $270K budget) was not that good. It was also less kind to the military given we were in the Vietnam era. Eisner apparently didn't want to go there in this post 9-11 age which is too bad (it is more subtext). The Bluray version is a nice transfer however I guess they didn't want to touch the soundtrack present in stunning DTS-Mono. It unfortunately seemed to be equalized for small drive-in speakers making it a bit trebley. I may have some high rolloff setting on my AV Receiver but I didn't go looking for it. One hilarious thing is that blood looked like someone had spilled a bunch of red poster paint. The Bluray also comes with commentary which I began listened to last night. It appears to have been done in 2002 to for the DVD version released back then. There is also a 14 minute featurette with cult actress Lynn Lowry who appears in the film. As for Netflix, yesterday I went to my local Hollywood Video to see what new release Blurays I might want to rent. Amazingly there were no new releases either Bluray or DVD. The clerk told me they didn't get a shipment and suggested that does not bode well. Hollywood Video owned by Movie Gallery declared bankruptcy for the second time last month. They closed stores in the area but the local one was profitable so they kept it open. My bet it will be gone soon. So it may be time to re-activate my Netflix account which was probably deleted anyway. In the meantime Redbox is very handy and they did get the new releases I was interested in but on DVD only (with an occasional Bluray).
