Yuku free message boards

I did just get one of the Unicorn tapes and it looks like the same print used for THE HANGING WOMAN but with a different title job. Nice box.

93 minutes should be the complete runtime.

And that is INCLUDING the Teen Workout footage mentioned in the other thread.

I think he is one of the soldiers guarding the cemetery. The word from Mirek and Bob Monel both is that there is no single definitive version of this film currently available on home video; MV's is closest to the described complete Spanish runtime, but remember that would be a covered version and would include scenes not shown in the English prints.

This is a funny movie, as in strangely evasive as a complete presentation. I gave up on finding one that would clock MV's out of sheer, utter frustration -- I think that like EL GRAN AMOR DEL CONDE DRACULA we are always going to be coming up short on this title unless a Spanish company like Manga or Divisa coughs up a restored version made from an archived Spanish print -- And even then one would presumably have to further restore it by substituting the uncoverd takes of the nude scenes to get what you're REALLY looking for here, which is unfogged pubes and all of the footage Merino shot.

Don't take this wrong, but good luck :--D . There probably is a complete Spanish print somewhere, but like all of the other gems in the rough it probably is in private hands, filed somewhere that nobody is aware of, or otherwise removed from availability at this time for a company to restore it. I wish someone could: It's a crackerjack little horror thriller which deserves to be seen. The problem is that with all of the misleading, erroneous or unclear information abounding about the movie in it's various forms that, like myself, many people have sort of "given up" on it, and are content to allow it to remain as a mystery rather than drive ourselves spare.

I was out & about the other day thinking about this film and a couple three others [DRACULA'S GREAT LOVE, SLAUGHTER HOTEL, NIGHT OF THE SEAGULLS & WEB OF THE SPIDER] that act as sort of a "lesson" or study in how films become cut, lost or otherwise inaccessible in their complete forms.

RETURN OF THE ZOMBIES/ORGY OF THE LIVING DEAD is particulary fascinating because of the sheer number of diminished re-releases. The IMDB has an impressive list of re-titlings:

Orga de los muertos, La (Spain)
Beyond the Living Dead
Dracula the Terror of the Living Dead
Hanging Woman (USA) (video box title)
Orgia dei morti, La (Italy)
Return of the Zombies
Terror of the Living Dead (USA)
The Hanging Woman
The Orgy of the Dead
Zombie 3: Return of the Living Dead

And what is even more remarkable is that all of them are different, and NONE of them complete and/or definitive. As with my beloved WEB OF THE SPIDER, each release seems to have been re-interperated for different audiences in different parts of the world or at different times, even.

While the reasons why this happens is pretty obvious, a tougher challenge [and what I think ECC is getting at] is tracking the cutting & diminishment BACKWARDS to find the one form that all of the others have as their common ancestor. It is a process similar to etymology or cladistics, scientific processes to find common ancestors for a given life form or verbal expression, respectively.

The problem is that there really isn't a scientific method for tracing how cut films end up in their state, since [especially in RETURN OF THE ZOMBIES' case] there isn't a written or documented record on how many times video transfers were made, and if in fact there was one "grandfather" video transfer that they can all be traced back to.

COUNT DRACULA'S GREAT LOVE is another excellent example because of the peculiarities of the one transfer we know of, which was done off-centered for some reason. No matter who's version you see, including the Dutch Sunrise Tapes version and the British VPD PAL tapes, they are ALL off-centered. Is this a peculiarity of how the English print was made? Common logic would have it that if the Dutch and the Brits were doing transfers of their own, we'd see one of them at least strike home with an on-center presentation. But the only version with truly correct framing are the DRACULA'S VIRGIN LOVERS tapes from Ivers Film Services, which show the film in it's original 1:85:1 LBX form, but is cut.

Something Weird Video also has a cut version of DRACULA'S VIRGIN LOVERS which I am presuming that they reformatted for home video themselves, since nobody else has a fullframe version of that print and it does have the same title card as the Ivers prints. BUT, the transfer SWV used is from a *DIFFERENT* print than the Ivers tapes: It does not have the color loss noticeable especially right at the beginning, nor the buzzing screen noise & scratches. I would give good money to find the transfer technician & ask where they got the version from, and why they chose to do a fullframe transfer -- Unless the 16mm print they used was already prepared for 1:33 presentation.

Now when considering RETURN OF THE ZOMBIES, it seems as though all of the surviving examples are fullframe transfers that were dead on: Nobody seems to have done one that is drastically different in outward appearence than anyone else's. AND YET NONE OF THEM IS THE SAME, unlike WEB OF THE SPIDER, where we see the same fullframe P&S'd transfer shown in English, Spanish, German and (maybe) French. Yet those transfers were all made from a very different print of the film than the Italian language version used by the Dutch & the Greeks. You can tell just by the surface noise projector marks during "control moments". There MAY be one complete master print that they all have in common, but if so nobody has prepared it for home video.

The logical explanation is that different target markets got different versions of the film and that may be the case with RETURN OF THE ZOMBIES as well. There may not be a "definitive" version in the truest sense of the word, though like Mirek I personally feel that Midnigh Video's IS the most favorable & complete version available.

The most fascinating consideration is, in my opinion again, that NONE of the other versions were derived from that transfer or the print it was generated from. Just how that particular version ended up in Japan remains unanswered, but it is a very different print than the one used to make, say, THE HANGING WOMAN, who's re-titling was done while still in the print stage. RETURN OF THE ZOMBIES appears to have been titled during the video transfer process, and yet the titles we see on MVs and the Wizard transfers are VERY very different in appearence, even if they contain identical information.

This is a truly mysterious film, even more of a mystery than WEB OF THE SPIDER which simply seems to have been issued in different forms for different markets. RETURN OF THE ZOMBIES seems to have no direct lineage that one can trace from the present day home video versions back to a specific print.