Search - Fright Pack: Walking Dead on DVD

The price is great

J. Kramer | Bronx/Queens , NY | 09/18/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"You get 6 movies,Hell of the Living Dead,Dead Heat,Let Sleeping Corpses Lie, House by the Cemetary, City of the Living Dead and Nightmare city.

The reason I brought this set is because I didnt have "Let Sleeping Corpses Lie", plus I didnt have Dead Heat. I figured If i was to buy both on DVD it would be about the same price as the set so I did, I will just have to seel the doubles I have of the rest no big deal.

Anyway I wont go into great detail about every movie but If you are to buy each one individually It will probably run you close $80 or so and for the price of this set its a must to get and I cant believe the price, they could have released "Let Sleeping Corpses Lie" for $20-$25 its self.

If anything just buy this set for City of the living dead, Let Sleeping Corpses Lie and Hell of the Living Dead ( which is good not great but a decent Zombie flick with a nice amount of gore). As for House by the cemetary is good as well,not great but an ok addition to this collection of discs, but I didnt like Dead Heat at all and I dont like Nightamre city, they both suck, IMO.


Let sleeping corpses lie its the best out of them all it drags and gets slow a bit but be patient the zombies are great and the gore is there and it actaully gives you a very creepy feeling and does bring a nice feel of horror, a well done flick. Get this box set its worth it as a die hard fan of Zombie Cinema and NYR Hockey : ), its worth having.
"

ZOMBIES..........ALL MY LORD WHAT SHALL I DO?

Michelle R. Monroe | Newark, OH USA | 09/12/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"These are my ratings for the following six (6) movies out of five (5) stars: HELL OF THE LIVING DEAD, City of the Living Dead, The House By The Cemetery, Nightmare City, Let the Sleeping Corpses Lie, and Dead Heat. All God save me please.......from these flesh-eating zombies!!!!

HELL OF THE LIVING DEAD (1984)- 3.5 -Directed by Bruno Mattei, After a chemical leak at the Hope Centre in Papua New Guinea (an organisation devoted to feeding underdeveloped countries) turns its staff into flesh-eating zombies, a four-man commando squad led by Mike London are sent to investigate. They run into a TV news crew led by celebrity reporter Lea, who are after the same story, but when they discover that the entire country has been overrun by zombies, what are the chances of them getting the message across? Unlike most zombie films, this actually tries to make a serious point - that if we don't feed the Third World, they'll come and feed on us!

City of the Living Dead (1983)- 4.0 -Directed by Lucio Fulci, In the small New England town of Dunwich, a priest commits suicide by hanging himself in the church cemetary which somehow opens the gates of hell allowing the dead to rise. Peter, a New York City reporter, teams up with a young psychic, named Mary, to travel to the town where they team up with another couple, psychiatrist Jerry and patient Sandra, to find a way to close the gates before All Saints Day or the dead all over the world will rise up and kill the living.

The House By The Cemetery (1984)- 3.5 -Directed by Lucio Fulci, A deranged killer lives in the basement of an old mansion and pops out occasionally to commit grisly murders that include be-headings, ripped throats, and stabbings with a fireplace poker. The killer needs fresh body parts to rejuvenate his cells. He also has maggots for blood.

Nightmare City (1983)- 3.5 -Director: Umberto Lenzi, Airplane exposed to radiation crash lands. Out of the wreckage, blood drinking zombies emerge armed with knives, guns and teeth! They go on a rampage slicing, dicing, and biting thier way across the italian countryside.

Let the Sleeping Corpses Lie (1975)- 3.5 -Directed by Jorge Grau, A cop chases two young people visiting the English countryside, suspecting them of a local murder; unbeknownst to him, the real culprits are the living dead, brought to life with a thirst for human flesh by radiation being used by area farmers as a pesticide alternative. Is one of the best zombie shockers of the 1970s, this Spanish-Italian coproduction (also known as The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue and Don't Open the Window, among other titles) is a real international affair. Inspired by George Romero's genre-shattering American hit Night of the Living Dead, it was shot in England by a Spanish director with a largely British cast, and supplemented by Spanish zombies and American character actor Arthur Kennedy as a bitter Irish police detective (with only a hint of a brogue). He's investigating a sudden rash of violent murders (the work of Satanists, he's convinced) and closes in on a pair of newcomers to the sleepy Northern England town, longhaired antique dealer Ray Lovelock and his nervous traveling companion Christine Galbó. Only they know the real culprits: newly deceased corpses, revived by agricultural experiments in ultrasonic radiation that are also turning newborns into vicious little monsters. Director Jorge Grau delivers all the stumbling zombies and gory flesh feasts you could hope for in a 1974 movie, but more importantly he creates the rare zombie thriller that manages to be both scary and smartly done. Some of the twists are a bit more far-fetched than others (why does dabbing blood on the eyes of long-dead cadavers magically bring them to life, and how would a zombie even know to try?), but it's a minor quibble in the face of the startling blood frenzy and Grau's satisfying dark dramatic twists. The DVD also features an introduction and a 20-minute interview with Grau ("I hope you will suffer profoundly," he jokes in the opening), as well as a gallery of posters and stills, TV ads, and radio spots. -Sean Axmaker

Dead Heat (1988)- 1 -Directed by Mark Goldblatt, Roger Mortis and Doug Bigelow are cops that are chasing crooks that are dead serious about crime. Or should I say they are chasing dead crooks perpetrating serious crimes? Seems some nutcase has learned how to bring back the dead and is sending them on crime sprees. Now these indestructable goons are in the way of officers Mortis and Bigelow. To even things up, when Mortis is killed (in the line of duty, of course) he gets a jump start from the Resurrection machine and takes the fight to the zombie bad guys.

Four (4) of the movies that I just named off for you and rated are 100% completely Uncut, Uncensored and Unrated in Remastered Anamorphic Widescreen (for the best picture quality) and they are HELL OF THE LIVING DEAD, City of the Living Dead, The House By The Cemetery, and Nightmare City.

These movies are a great collection to anyone's horror collection and to any fan of Euro-Horror movies. This is the best deal for all of these movies together in a walking dead bear case design, that also includes a walking strap for you can take your movies with you were ever you go. This one deal that you cannot pass up.

"

WALKING DEAD

a viewer | 03/26/2006

(3 out of 5 stars)

"This is the fourth set in Anchor Bay's "Fright Pack" collection, no doubt meant to clear their warehouse of old inventory. The savings are passed on to viewers like you, but is it even worth the purchase? Here is my humble rundown:

LET SLEEPING CORPSES LIE: Meant to cash in on the success of George Romero's original "Night of the Living Dead", this film is similar in tone, yet with it's own approach and style which score it points for not taking the easy route. This film was a Spanish production, although the majority of the actors appear to be British and speak (albeit poorly dubbed) English. The plot involves a young woman traveling across the British countryside, en route to admit her heroine junkie sister into an institution. After an automotive mishap, she finds herself traveling with a young art dealer when the dead inexplicably being crawling from their tombs. This ties into recent test runs of a new machine by the department of agriculture meant to rid to county of crop infestation. Story wise, this film is the most coherent in the set. The ending, while run of the mill in recent horror films, was fairly satisfying for a movie over thirty years old. The transfer is quite good, with the exception of grain throughout the movie, but for a low budget production it's quite forgivable. Also known by the title "Don't Open the Window", among many others, "Let Sleeping Corpses Lie" is a slow moving little chiller that is of better quality then the title suggests. Special features include an interview with the director (in Spanish with English subtitles), poster and photo galleries (featuring ads with a topless woman with back to camera -- false advertising at it's greatest!), and radio spots.

HELL OF THE LIVING DEAD: Total exploitation garbage that tried to ride on the backs of "Dawn of the Dead" and "Zombie" for the gore hound dollar. This is film making at it's poorest -- blood and guts do not an enjoyable movie make. The "story" features a newswoman and a gang of SWAT members (sound familiar?) traveling in New Guinea where the living dead are attacking the local tribesman. This setting allows the busty newswoman to strip down and paint her breasts before approaching the natives. We get what looks like National Geographic footage of a tribal funeral spliced in with reaction shots from the actors to convince the viewer that the crew had actually traveled all the way to the jungle. It's really tasteless (even for a zombie flick) and goes well beyond the "so bad it's good" mantra. It passed good and went back to bad again. The dubbing is atrocious and they even had the nerve to use parts of Goblin's score for "Dawn of the Dead". I hate the fact that even the smallest part of that masterpiece of a zombie film was recycled for this trash. As for gore, we get a couple unconvincingly inspired bits, including a cat jumping out of a woman's stomach and a tongue being ripped out. Special features include a trailer, as well as a brief interview with the director where he states that he doesn't even like his own films. If the director is unhappy with it, why should anyone else bother! Despite the fact that Quentin Tarantino apparently enjoys this movie, this is one title that Anchor Bay should have left in video obscurity. Only the truest of gore hounds would rank it high on their list.

HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY: I've seen four of Lucio Fulci's films to date and this one was certainly my favorite. Most fans cite "The Beyond" as his "masterpiece" or "Zombie" as his most accessible, but this one just worked for me. Like his other horror films, this one is slow and disjointed, but I thought it created a very effective mood. Maybe it's the whole boogeyman in the basement aspect, but this one was the easiest to sit through for me. The story centers on a young couple and their son as they relocate to New England so the husband can pick up the research of a colleague who hanged himself. The house they move to was the former home of one Dr. Freudstein and his wife. Mystery surrounds the house and it's former owner and the family begins to experience strange phenomena, which would cause most people to go running for the hills, but this being a Fulci film, they are smiling and happy in the following scene. Despite it's flaws, this was the most satisfying of the films I've viewed. I think it might be the presence of Katherine MacColl that keeps drawing me back. She certainly evokes more from to the viewer than the stone-faced Tisa Farrow in "Zombie" (a film I find to be vastly over-rated) As is the theme with these titles, the dubbing is poor, especially for the young boy. It appears they used a woman for the voice-over and it comes off a little cartoon-ish. Special features include theatrical trailers and a tv spot.

DEAD HEAT: This is definitely the odd man out in the set. For one, it's more of a comedy and it probably won't appeal to the type of guys who hunt down all these obscure foreign B-movies for one or two gore scenes. This one is a product of Hollywood and it shows. Still, it's not a bad little movie and one I probably would have enjoyed as a kid. The story follows two buddy cops who are attempting to track down the source for why a string of criminals are immune to bullets. There search leads them to a pharmaceuticals lab where one of the cops is killed and brought back to life using a "resurrection machine" (it's not explained in any greater detail than that). He's up and walking, but his body continues to rot as he and his partner continue the search for who is behind this whole operation. Will he be able to save the day before his limbs start rotting off? You'll have to wait and see. This DVD has the best special features of the set, including commentary from the director, featurettes, trailer, deleted scenes and more. The quality of the movie is not as good as I would have hoped for a "Divimax" release and the sound is about as good as a VHS. Never the less, it can be pretty enjoyable if you're in the right mood. Look for cameos by the late Vincent Price and "Kolchak" himself, Darren McGavin.

CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD: Probably the weakest Fulci film I've come across (and that's saying a lot) "City of the Living Dead" is largely disjointed and moves at a clunky pace. The basic plot involves a young psychic who has a vision of a preacher hanging himself in a cemetery, apparently causing one of the "seven gates to hell" to be opened in the small town of Dunwich. The majority of the movie is just people in the town talking of strange occurrence, inter-cut with scenes of the psychic and a detective traveling to the town to close the gate before "all hell breaks loose". The movie is punctuated throughout with bits of poorly done gore (a woman spitting out animal intestines, for example) and some halfway decent zombie make-up. The atmosphere is sometimes effective and the fact that it almost entirely takes place at night doesn't hurt either. Still, the dubbing is somewhat poor, despite the fact that most of the actors are speaking English. The transfer has a fair amount of grain and unlike some of Fulci's other films, this one is presented in the "matted" 1.85:1 ratio, as apposed to 2.35:1, which I felt added to the look of films such as "Zombie" and the "The Beyond". In all, this is a flawed, if not watchable, horror movie that feels more like a ghost story with gore that a full on gut-chomping zombie fest. Also, it must be said that the ending is totally stupid and makes no sense. I read that it was the result of a drunken conversation with Fulci and the editor. Sort of a "Wouldn't it be funny if..." Be prepared.

NIGHTMARE CITY: I really don't have much to say about this one. It's easily the second worst of the set, but it didn't elicit the venomous reaction I had to "Hell of the Living Dead". I found it to be dull and tedious to sit through. In fact, I never had the urge to finish it. It begins as a reporter is arriving at an airport to greet a government official, but the plane apparently had been exposed to some sort of radiation and when the hatch opens up, mutated zombies (with heavy fire arms, no less!) come running down the platform. The make-up on these guys are pretty awful. I believe they were going for the look of tumors or something because the head loses shape under all the prosthetics. The result looks like a bunch of psychos running around with meatballs for heads. That was a big hindrance in my taking this one seriously, but I think it was around the time we got 5 minutes of "Solid Gold" type dancers prancing around a televison station in front of the cameras before a newswoman made the interruption that there was a national emergency that I'd gotten my fill of "Nightmare City". I skimmed through the rest until I got to the end. After watching it, I'm glad I saved myself from sitting through the remaining hour. Special features include a theatrical trailer and a retrospective featurette, which I didn't even bother with. Again the dubbing on this one is poor, which seems to be a pattern with these Italian releases.

In closing, I would not recommend any of these films to your average person off the street. There is certainly a niche audience for titles like these, and for them this set would be a great value. I'm not sorry I made this purchase, but "Hell of the Living Dead" and "Nightmare City" went right in the junk bin. Totally unworthy of my valuable shelf space. The rest were mildly enjoyable, but given the chance I'd think twice before actually purchasing them. "Let Sleeping Corpses Lie" was the real gem for me, but even so, it's not perfect. It would be a great movie to catch on AMC late at night when you can't sleep. The other three were worth watching, but I don't think they will be getting frequent viewing in my horror collection. Still, Anchor Bay has put together a very affordable collection, although it's easy to see why they had so many of these titles still unsold. At such a low price, you can forgive the fact that they threw in a couple duds. It is possible to get this set for under $20. If your like me and you've never seen any of these films before, you'll want to avoid paying retail. For what I paid, I don't feel cheated. With Anchor Bay you know your getting the best quality available and all of these films have been anamorphically enhanced."