Dawn Of The Dead: The Extended Mall Hours Cut

March 28, 2011

Already watched this twice already. I’m glad this was made because I can still remember seeing film for the first time 11 years ago when I was a wee lad of 16. Stayed up until 2:30am to finish watching it. I never stayed up late like that when I was that age. This movie pulled me in THAT MUCH. I can still still remember jumping out of my bed and getting all excited when one of the main characters had a sudden change of heart (no spoilers here). Upon finding out that the version I had seen was the “director’s cut” and that there were 2 other versions, I knew I had to see it. I never saw the Argento version until the 4 disc DVD set. I said “hopefully someone finally goes and puts the footage from all 3 together to make the longest running cut of the film”. And now, I finally have it. Before this, there were bootlegs circulating on ebay that were vhs (and probably bad editing to boot).

That being said, this is my preferred version now. My only problem with it is, since I’ve seen the Director’s cut about 8279 times, I’m so used to the music in that version, that this one will take some getting used to.

May 21, 2008

This is an absolutely excellent version of Dawn of the Dead, in fact I think it’s vastly improved over the Cannes cut. All the footage has been blended in with the original. It’s obvious one or two times when there’s something added, because the colour shifts, and this is especially noticeable during the opening sequence with repeating titles, but honestly it doesn’t matter – it’s not at all distracting from the film itself.

Technical: 4 out of 5
Entertainment: 5 out of 5
Overall: 5 out of 5

March 31, 2011
*This rating was given before reviews were required*

January 13, 2010

Dawn Of The Dead was always a raw film in terms of direction, acting and most certainly, editing. Considering Romero is the credited editor, the opening of the theatrical version, with all that forced chaos inside a television studio, always struck me as being very poorly cut. It seems this resulted from shots being constantly removed from the film until we were left with the version I grew up with.

Where Dawn Of The Dead succeeds where most apocalyptic movies fail, is in creating an utterly convincing atmosphere of doom.

Having heard such great comments about Officially Unofficial’s Extended Mall Hours cut, I thought I would give it a try over the holiday season because as you know, this is the perfect festive movie for all the family.

The longer credit sequence is not any smoother than the original but with all the added material the reactions of the TV studio workers become far more plausible. This opening now works as intended. The newly added credits are noticeably more new/digital when compared to the original ones and some even repeat with two credits for the score by Goblin.

The added visuals work great but this throws up numerous audio issues. This is mainly because of integrating the new shots with the existing score, so every so often a bar of music repeats. As a result the soundtrack has become slightly awkward with repeated musical bars, poor syncopation and at times odd audio jumps. Editing this audio must have been a major nightmare, considering the source material but at times I did find it distracting.

Dawn of the Dead is a film that desires to be “fleshed out” because any new material simply adds to the overall chilling atmosphere. Officially Unofficial has improved the original theatrical cut with this Extended Edition. If the audio issues and some fine tuning or distressing to the opening credits could be fixed, this would be the best extended version ever FanEdited. 8/10

December 19, 2009

I was never a huge Dawn Of The Dead fan and will always like Night Of The Living Dead the most out of all of Romero’s movies, but I do like it more than I did before viewing this edit.
It is quite a long cut, and sometimes it lulls, but oddly enough, it worked for me because when things did pick up, it really got my attention perhaps more than if it was the faster paced versions.
Like the editor, perhaps my preferred version is the quicker paced theatrical version, but this is still a fantastic version with high quality.
If you’re a Dawn of the Dead fan, don’t miss it.