Happinet 40th Anniversary Edition
BOX-ART
-_-_-_-
The title in blood red text stands out nicely against the black background with zombie silhouettes, similarly to the zombies surrounding the house in the film. It's simple, but a very nice cover. I should also mention that rather than the standard blue case, it's in a jet black one. All text on the front cover is in English.
The back features stills and images from the film, with a description as well as cast & crew credits. Under the description is a red box with a run down of the special features. At the bottom are the technical aspects of the disc. The entirety of the back is in Japanese, with a few small words such as story, cast, staff, etc.
MENUS
-_-_-_-
The menus are in a combination of English & Japanese. The main overlay is English, with Play, Chapters, Set-up, etc. The actual chapter names are Japanese, as are the audio/subtitle options and most extras. There is an actual menu background, with clips from the film playing over a similar styled image as the cover, as well as the standard pop-up menu during playback.
By default the film will play with the Japanese subtitles enabled, so you'll have to open the pop-up menu and disable them. Luckily, the button to turn subtitles off is a circle with an X inside, so there's no language barrier in the way.
VIDEO
-_-_-_-
With an average bit-rate close to max, there are no compression issues and all the fine grain seems in tact. Very nice contrast with no crushed blacks or clipped whites. It's a surprisingly clean transfer, with no major scratches or debris! For the time period and budget of the film you'd expect worse quality, but it's excellent. There has been some debate over the years among fans about the framing of the film. This version is supposedly zoomed in a bit, but nothing looks poorly framed or cropped. The original aspect ratio is supposed to be 1.37:1 but the 1.33:1 presented here looks fine, they are so close in size it doesn't really matter much any ways.
AUDIO
-_-_-
Despite being a Japanese release, the only audio track is the original English in an uncompressed dual mono. There are three sets of Japanese Subtitles, but since I don't know Japanese, your guess is as good as mine what they are. (I assume one is a translation of the film, with the second & third being translations of the commentaries.)
EXTRAS
-_-_-_-
An hour and a half documentary with cast & crew is the main feature here. It's encoded as 1080i and looks rather standard definition like, suggesting an upscale. A rough looking trailer is also included, with a similar quality to the documentary. Two audio commentaries are available. Lastly, we have an audio interview with Duane Jones, with stills.
Since there's only a few extras, you can just trial an error your way through them if you can't read Japanese.
FINAL THOUGHTS
-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-
I believe the disc is region free, so it should play anywhere. Even if it were locked, Japan is also region A just like North America, so it would play fine.
For about a decade this was the definitive version of the film. With it being in public domain there have been a crazy amount of releases of the movie on all types of home media, but most of them are rather mediocre. A 4K scan of the film was released in 2018 and is quite a bit better than this one. Most consider the newer Criterion version to be the new best.
TECH. SPECS.
-_-_-_-_-
ASPECT RATIO: 1.33:1 (Slightly Cropped Fullscreen)
VIDEO CODEC: AVC (38 MB/s)
NUMBER OF DISCS: 1
DISC SIZE: Dual-Layer
REGION CODE: A
AUDIO: English LPCM 2.0 Dual Mono 16 Bit (1,536 KB/s)
SUBTITLES: Japanese
RUN-TIME: 1 Hour 36 Minutes
