October 11th

Today was my pal Jack's annual Halloween shindig.  Twelve folks, pizza, treats, movies & shorts, and a game made for some good times.

Zombie: Dawn of the Dead (1978) directed by George A. Romero

The greatest zombie movie ever made, re-edited by Dario Argento for Italian audiences.  It's a peppier cut, getting to the action faster.  There are some additional shots and lines of dialogue that are cool (a grim conversation in the helicopter should've been kept in the real version).  However, I didn't really like most of the changes.

The speed of this edit takes a lot away from what I like about this movie.  The pride and boredom the characters feel after claiming their new home is diminished.  There's barely any breathing room between Roger's death and the arrival of the motorcycle gang.  The humor is mostly removed, too, with a few pies thrown and that's about it.  The soundtrack is, not surprisingly, wall-to-wall Goblin music in this edit.  Some of the extra Goblin music just isn't very good and it replaces the goofy and iconic mall music, which is very disappointing.  I also feel like Frannie's character was gutted in this edit.  Dario seems to only use her scene when necessary and is comfortable cutting her out as much as possible.

Regardless, ain't we lucky that this exists on DVD and we can watch it?  Pre-Starz Anchor Bay was awesome.  RIP.

Watched: DVD from Anchor Bay.

Afterwards, we played some Cards Against Humanity.  We weren't sure how the game would work with such a large group, but it turned out fine.  We split into teams of two to cut down on the number of answer cards to read each round and the laughter started immediately.  It's funny watching people's faces as they tried to choose which answer card to play: you could often see the "this is horrible, but I want to win" thought process dance across their visage.  I love this game.