REVENGE OF THE ZOMBIES On Blu-ray From Kino

 

I wrote a blog post on REVENGE OF THE ZOMBIES in 2023, but I felt I needed to point out that this new Kino Blu-ray of the movie is the best I've ever seen any feature made by Monogram look. The black & white image doesn't look as razor sharp as, say, something released by Criterion, but the transfer on this disc reveals plenty of detail, especially in the scenes which take place outside John Carradine's Louisiana outpost (which now come off as looking fairly atmospheric). The complete main titles are presented as well (a rare thing for any public domain film made in the 30s and 40s), along with a war bond advertisement after the end credits. 

Now....does the excellent visual quality make the film seem better?? As I pointed out in my original post on it, REVENGE is basically a semi-remake of another Monogram production, KING OF THE ZOMBIES. It's a tossup over which of the two films is better. Both have almost the same plot--a haughty scientist is trying to create unbeatable zombies for the Third Reich--and they both have the same deficiencies--the zombies in either movie are not very threatening or memorable. REVENGE does have John Carradine in the mad scientist role, but he plays it very low-key here. The best element that both REVENGE and KING share is the antics of Mantan Moreland, but plenty of Old Monster Movie geeks would say that isn't much of a plus. 

The main extra on this disc (other than a few trailers for other films released by Kino) is a brand new commentary by Tom Weaver. He discusses the relationship between REVENGE and KING, and he also talks about John Carradine's somewhat lackluster performance. Weaver also gets into the various issues the original script of REVENGE had with the censors and even the Office of War Information (one would think those folks had more important things to worry about in 1943). Gary D. Rhodes pops up twice in the commentary to offer a few insights. 

Personally I love the idea of Kino putting a title like this out on Blu-ray.....but one could question the idea of giving a mediocre low-budget black & white movie that is only an hour long a Blu-ray release. At least Kino has offered up a new audio commentary. If the company is planning on putting out more Poverty Row product, I would suggest having multiple titles on any future releases, and coming up with some worthy extras. The wild and wacky genre movies made by the likes of Monogram and PRC are entertaining in a crazy type of way, but it's often more fun to talk about them than actually watch them over and over again.