Black Gate

Zombies, zombies everywhere
But not a trope worth a think. . .

I’ll cop to languishing under a surfeit of zombies.

Zombie filmakers suffer under the same burden a Shakespearean director does. You want to do a new production of Richard III, but how do you make your mark on four hundred years of canon?

As I see it, you have three choices. You try and set a new gold-standard in casting, costumes, set, stage direction and so on. A fine way to go about it, if you have the money. Your second option is to do an adequate job with the above, but add a gimmick, like the 1930’s fascist take on the play by Ian McKellen. The third option is to toss Shakespeare out the window, or at least make drastic changes to the material — ferinstance, enhance the many curses the characters throw at each other until the effect’s more fantasy than history.

A would-be zombie moviemaker is in the same besieged mall as our Shakespearean. Everyone labors in the justifiably popular shadow of George Romero, who took zombies out of the D-list Universal monster era, added a ghoulish twist, and sprinkled on some Rousseau. Romero’s zombie mythos is the new canon.

Zack Snyder set the new gold standard with his remake of Dawn of the Dead. The genre-tripping triad of Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost created one of the best entries in zombie film-making by simply giving it all a Brit twist with Shaun of the Dead.

Then there’s 2008’s Pontypool, which tosses Romero out the window in a number of ways. I’d never heard of it until I happened to catch it on late-night cable, but then I’ve been living in a child-care submarine for the past couple of years, so it was a thrilling surprise.

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The Secret of NIMH (1982)
Directed by Don Bluth. Featuring the Voices of Elizabeth Hartman, Peter Strauss, Dom DeLuise, Derek Jacobi, Hermione Baddeley, David Carradine, Arthur Malet, Paul Shenar, Wil Wheaton, Shannon Doherty.

Hello, my name is Ryan Harvey, and apparently all I do here at Black Gate is review animated fantasy films.

With 1982’s The Secret of NIMH now out on a fresh new Blu-ray Disc. . . .

Wait a minute. Seriously, MGM Home Video? (Or Fox, or whoever actually handled this disc.) This is the best you can do with your new release of The Secret of NIMH onto hi-def? Normally, I would wait until the end of a movie review to discuss the quality of a DVD/BD, but you require me upfront to take you behind the shed with a very large paddle. This is shameful. The Secret of NIMH is an acknowledged animated masterpiece, the film responsible for starting the uphill climb from years of “limited animation” doldrums toward the new flowering of the 1990s. This movie taught a generation of viewers what was possible in the medium. It has fans of freakish dedication, such as myself, a scads of websites dedicated to its deconstruction and analysis. And all you can do is slap down whatever print you had on hand and stick on 1080 lines of resolution?

No, no, this is unacceptable. Disney pours immense work into restoring their classics for Blu-ray release, using the best prints possible and cleaning them up so the films look as fresh as they did on the animators’ table. But your current version of The Secret of NIMH looks far worse than it did on theater screens in 1982. I should know, since I was there as a wide-eyed youngling, and recall how the movie blew apart my nine-year-old mind with its motion, depth of imagery, beautiful backgrounds, and bizarre fantasy effects animation. And yet you give us a Blu-ray slathered in scratches and noise with dulled colors and a washed-out palette. This is hardly a step up from the 2007 DVD release. You couldn’t even bother with an interesting popup menu font! Are you aware that this is a classic?

Ah, clearly not.

I think I have that out of my system. Breathe. Breathe. Okay, now I think I can talk about one of the greatest fantasy experiences ever put on animation cels.

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