It was a remarkable thing to see DOCUMENT OF THE DEAD when it first turned up on video tape: here was an on-location look at the making of a horror classic- incredible stuff! And it still is, after all these years. The bonus scenes included on the new(est) DVD release are must-see, as well: there are extended interviews with Romero and Savini and commentary by Frumkes himself. Watching it takes me back to those Golden Days of Yore, when DAWN OF THE DEAD first exploded across Movie Screens. It's nigh impossible to convey to Latecomers just how shocking (and Original and Imaginative) DAWN OF THE DEAD was Back Then. There'd been nothing like it, and we were ALL blown away. (I'd seen it the first time while suffering from pneumonia: as I left the hospital and staggered up the street toward the bus stop, I spotted a marquee a block away: DAWN OF THE DEAD. I decided that, if I were going to die of pneumonia, at least I could die watching a horror movie. I made it to the theater, bought a ticket, and wobbled down the aisle to the middle of the sixth row. The next thing I knew, heads were exploding and great dripping chunks of human flesh were being ripped from screaming victims by man-eating zombies. It was overwhelming. I made it home and promptly had the only hallucinations I've ever had in my life- of zombies piling out of a van I was driving to attack the traffic cop who'd pulled me over. To say that it was quite an experience is an understatement. I went back to see it at the next opportunity and for years it was the one movie I suggested whenever it turned up at a Midnight showing. It remains, to this day, one of my all-time favorite movies.) (I was so smitten that I sat down and wrote a "sequel," which I titled DAY OF THE DEAD, and sent it off to George Romero in Pittsburgh. For legal reasons, I was told, there was nothing he could do with the script, but it was fun writing it and I've since written scores of stories for Neil Fawcette's HOMEPAGE OF THE DEAD- including a series entitled THE UNDEAD- and shot my own Romero-inspired zombie movie, THE LIVING DEAD.) It was also exciting to see a documentary about the MAKING of DAWN OF THE DEAD. On one of the dvds, there's a home movie that someone shot showing a gag that never appeared in the final film: someone shoots a zombie in the eye with a crossbow. The effect looks good to me, but it's never appeared in any version of the movie I've ever seen. Tom Savini, in one interview that appears on the latest DVD, states that the word "zombie" doesn't really describe the creatures in the DEAD movies (although Ken Foree's character is the one who calls them zombies in DAWN OF THE DEAD, when the motorcycle gang invades the mall). I would suggest "the undead." Regardless, zombies will never die.
Review of Document of the Dead
