Saturday, March 20, 2010

Virus - inferno dei morti viventi on DVD from AWE

Christmas is coming early this year, at least in Scandinavia! In August/September Another World Entertainment will be releasing Bruno Mattei's huge masterpiece Virus - inferno dei morti viventi (1980) aka HELL OF THE LIVING DEAD aka Night of the Zombies! Awesome. The film isn't difficult to get hold of as it's out on a spiffy reg. 1 DVD (which includes an interview with Il Maistro himself) but, regardless, it's pretty cool it's coming out on Scandinavian DVD. One minor detail I'm puzzled about is AWE's way of reasoning; About 18 months ago I spoke to AWE head honcho Jan Schmidt and suggested they put out Bruno Mattei's last two zombie films, ZOMBIE: THE BEGINNING and ISLAND OF THE LIVING DEAD. I mentioned it would be a scoop as these two films weren't released ANYWHERE in the world. It would have meant a lot of DVDs over the counter to costumers from other countries but the reply I got from AWE was they didn't want to put these two films out as they were probably "too crappy" ("probably" cos AWE didn't actually check them out). And now they're releasing HELL OF THE LIVING DEAD instead!!

HAHAHA. I mean... how is that the better choice??? HELL OF THE LIVING DEAD is just as crappy as the other two (but in a completely entertaining way, of course). The difference is just you can buy HELL anywhere online. Beats me if I understand their reasoning. Oh well, I'm certainly not complaining over finally seeing HELL on Danish DVD and I'll be first in line to scoop up the film (altho I've already got the reg. 1 disc). Thanks to AWE for providing Danish fans with local releases. Even if I don't quite comprehend their reasoning. LOL.

The two cover scans are from Japanese and Turkish VHS.