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DAWN OF THE DEAD
(Anchor Bay)

I’ve reviewed this twice already, so if you want me to stop, go buy it and send me written confirmation that it’s in your collection. The original 1978 DAWN is a terrific action/horror flick, and what makes me so covetous of its current presentation is not only a) that my documentary DOCUMENT OF THE DEAD is included as a supplement, and excerpted in another documentary, AND THE DEAD SHALL WALK, nor b) that you get three immaculate versions of the film to dwell on, but rather c) that this is the best DVD boxed set of the year, which, in being so impressive, gives the horror genre a validation that is long overdue.

Incidentally, there is a feeling around the genre community that to admit to any affection for the Romero-less remake of DAWN OF THE DEAD (2004) is tantamount to heresy. Nothing like a robust, bellicose fan base, and no genre has one quite like the horror genre. But I have to tell you, the new DAWN has one of the three best end credit sequences of the year (along with LEMONY SNICKET and KILL BILL 2). Brilliantly edited and designed, it depicts a monumentally bleak denouement for the leading characters and yet, miraculously, manages to get audiences out of the theater without plunging them into depression. It’s so clever that it deserves to be studied in editing classes.

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THE 1985 TWILIGHT ZONE TV SERIES, SEASON 1
(Image Entertainment) 1985/6. Approx. 17 hours. 1.33:1 aspect ratio.

Directors include: Wes Craven, Tommy Lee Wallace, Robert Downey, John Hancock, William Friedkin, Peter Medak, Paul Lynch, Bill Norton, Ted Flicker, J.D. Feigelson, Joe Dante, David Steinberg, John Milius, Gerd Oswald, Martha Coolidge, Alan Arkush,
B.W.L. Norton, Claudia Weill, Noel Black, Bradford May, Philip DeGuere.
Screenwriters include: Alan Brennert, Harlan Ellison, Rockne S. O’Bannon, Chris Hubbell & Gerrit Graham, Philip DeGuere, Ray Bradbury,
Audio Commentaries: Wes Craven, Alan Brennert, Philip DeGuere, Bradford May, J.D. Feigelson, Harlan Ellison, Alan Crocker, William Wu.
Thesps include: Bruce Willis, Melinda Dillon, Robert Klein, Meg Foster, Eric Bogosian, Lorna Luft, Season Hubley, Dee Wallace Stone, Tony LoBianco, David Dukes, Robert Morse, Adrienne Barbeau, Danny Kaye, James Coco, Piper Laurie, Morgan Freeman, Garrett Morris, M. Emmet Walsh, Dan Hedaya, Helen Mirren, Jeffrey Jones, Martin Landau, Peter Riegert, Fritz Weaver, Elliot Gould, Ralph Bellamy, Kenneth Mars, Martin Balsam, Robert & John Carradine, Peter Coyote, Richard Kiley.

Am I missing something, or wouldn’t everyone want to own a collection like this? Unlike the original TWILIGHT ZONE, where many famous names were making their early appearances, both in front of and behind the camera, the names in this new celebration of the 50’s/60’s series are seasoned veterans. It’s a phenomenal collection of high grade screenwriting, acting and directing credentials. And the quality of the transfers is decent, if not quite as crisp as one would have hoped.

Six episodes are helmed by horror stalwart Wes Craven. In your humble editor’s opinion, DEALER’S CHOICE, set entirely around a dining room table, is some of the best directing Wes has done. Morgan Freeman, Garrett Morris, Barney Martin, M. Emmet Walsh, and Dan Hedaya hit just the right tones of humor and tension. As in previous experiments like LIFE BOAT, claustrophobic space is adroitly manipulated so as never to become boring. I was thrilled to get the collection just for this installment. On the commentary track, Producer deGuere and Director Craven are hardput to remember if Dan Hedaya and M. Emmet Walsh were both in BLOOD SIMPLE. Time does those things to the memory. Eventually West, flipping through his notes, discovers that they were. Seems Hedaya was needling Walsh on the set.

But in addition there’s William Friedkin’s harrowing NIGHTCRAWLERS, a post-Vietnam nightmare that could easily be the short subject prior to the main feature screening of DEATHDREAM. One of the most violent films I’d seen on TV up to that time, it has a few Friedkin excesses and lapses in clarity, but it’s a powerful piece of celluloid.

The irascible, cantankerous Harlan Ellison pens a few episodes, and contributes commentary tracks as well. On the commentary track for PALADIN OF THE LOST HOUR, Ellison blithely reveals that Gilbert Cates, then president of the Director’s Guild, was the ‘Alan Smithee’ of the film’s title. And he discusses the extent of Danny Kaye’s selfishness as an actor. But he loves the episode.

Even Sci-fi Dean Ray Bradbury (seen elsewhere in this column praising his friend Ray Harryhausen) delivers a teleplay.

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The ALAN CLARKE COLLECTION
(Blue Underground) 412 mins.

SCUM – 1977, Written by Roy Minton. Produced by Margaret Matheson. With Ray Winstone, Phil Daniels, David Threlfall. Commentary with Phil Daniels, David Threlfall and Margaret Matheson. Selected scenes with commentary by Ray Winstone.
MADE IN BRITAIN – 1982. Written by David Leland. Produced by Margaret Matheson. With Tim Roth, Eric Richard, Terry Richards. Audio Commentary with Tim Roth, David Leland and Margaret Matheson.
THE FIRM – 1988. Written by Al Hunter. Produced by David M. Thompson. With Gary Oldman, Lesley Manville, Philip Davis.
ELEPHANT – 1988. Produced by Danny Boyle. Audio Commentary with Danny Boyle. Interviews with Gary Oldman, David Hare & Molly Clarke.
DIRECTOR: ALAN CLARKE – 1991. Directed by Corin Campbell-Hill.

There are DVD collections from every company which have displayed the mark of dedication from individuals within those companies who either desperately loved the product being packaged, or were peerlessly phenomenal organizers. I know you can rattle off a dozen of them within a minute: THE ALIEN QUADROLOGY from Fox, DAWN OF THE DEAD (covered in this column) from Anchor Bay, JOHN CASSAVETES: FIVE FILMS from Criterion, THE COFFIN JOE TRILOGY from Fantoma, STAR TREK: THE ORIGINAL SERIES, in their brightly colored plastic cases, the immaculately restored SHERLOCK HOLMES COLLECTION from MPI, THE STREET TRASH 20TH ANNIVERSARY DOUBLE-DISC DVD (whoops…did I say that?). In any case, you all have your own favorite super-produced DVD releases. You live for them, you love them, you proudly display them, you constantly return to them, you will always treasure them.
Until the next audio-visual format comes along…

But Blue Underground has taken this one step further. All these others have been much in demand: growing them big may have needed a passionate voice at the company, but they also represented a calculated, bottom-line risk. Where, then, does the five-disc, fabulously produced ALAN CLARKE COLLECTION come from? What alternate universe spewed it out? What black hole in space deposited it at our doorsteps for the holidays?

Blue Underground has done this before, actually, with their jaw-dropping MONDO CANE COLLECTION (reviewed ’03). That collection, and the current one, were not widely requested mega-boxes: a toe-in-the-water-to-test-the-market single or double disc might have seemed more prudent. But no, they went whole hog on a personal mission: to expose the DVD-going public to a remarkable and overlooked body of work. And bravo to them!

Alan Clarke was a righteous guy. He created, often after encountering obstacles, serious but entertaining films in the UK that were about social issues, hard visions of his times. Juvenile imprisonment and maltreatment, the nazi skin head subculture, IRA hitmen relentlessly going about their work. The BBC, supportive of difficult subject matter, was paradoxically given to censorship once presented with the end results. Peter Watkins suffered it in ’64 with THE WAR GAME, and Clarke met the same fate with SCUM, and had to remake it the following year for theatrical release. Both versions are presented in the collection.

He also introduced his audience to some of the major talents of the day: Ray Winstone, Tim Roth, Gary Oldman, and Danny Boyle. His eye for talent was as unerring as his ear for compelling and pertinent drama.

The separate disc documentary, made one year after Clarke’s untimely death, achieves a supreme goal of bio-docs: it makes you want to see all the man’s work. His uncanny documentary style, his use of unfamiliar faces in long steadicam takes that create uneasy states of reality. Also we get fellow director Stephen Frears talking movingly about him, while looking like a Brit version of Rodney Dangerfield. Clarke’s bed-ridden activities around the time of his death sound so fascinating you wish he’d kept a camera going even then.

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