Three decades ago, one day shy of Independence Day, horror fans from sea to shining sea poured into their local theater to get a jump on celebrating America’s birthday the only sensible way they knew how – by taking in a viewing of Day of the Dead, the relentlessly grim and gruesome capper to George A. Romero‘s legendary Trilogy of the Dead.

The Dark Half
Blu-ray
Director: George A. Romero
Screenwriters: George A. Romero, Paul Hunt, Nick McCarthy
Cast: Timothy Hutton, Amy Madigan, Michael Rooker, Julie Harris
Scream Factory
Rated R | 122 Minutes
Release Date: November 18, 2014

Directed by George A. Romero (Night of the Living Dead, Creepshow), 1993’s The Dark Half is based on Stephen King‘s novel of the same name.

In order to talk about Romero’s adaptation of The Dark Half, first we must discuss a little history. In the late ’70s and early ’80s, King published a handful of short novels – Rage (1977), The Long Walk (1979), Roadwork (1981), The Running Man (1982), and Thinner (1984) “” under the pseudonym Richard Bachman.

Shortly after the release of Thinner, Bachman was exposed as King’s pseudonym by a Washington D.C. bookstore clerk who noticed similarities between the two authors. The clerk, Steve Brown, wrote to King with the evidence he’d gathered, and King called him days later to come clean in an exclusive interview. The interview was published in The Washington Post, and King announced Bachman’s death – from “cancer of the pseudonym.”

Autumn is here at last and there’s no better way to mark the occasion than by checking out this week’s edition of The Digital Wire….well, actually you could take a stimulating walk around your neighborhood on a brisk and sunny day, perhaps start getting your Halloween decorations and plans in order, or maybe make yourself a hot cup of tea and sit out on your porch as the most gorgeous of sunsets begins. When you’re done with all of that, check out this week’s edition of The Digital Wire because we’ve got a crowded field of horror, sci-fi, fantasy, and action releases on home video all battling for your attention and the funds you have stored away in that Christmas Club savings account.

Below you’ll find info on several future home video releases complete with technical specs, release dates, and links to pre-order at Amazon. We would greatly appreciate it if you use those links to order because a small percentage of each order helps keep this website running at max power. The cover art for certain titles has yet to be finalized.

A week ago I wrote a retrospective article on the 25th anniversary of “Weird Al” Yankovic‘s supremely silly cult classic UHF and ended it with these words:

I automatically assumed at the time that Shout! would pick up the license to release UHF on Blu-ray because it’s an MGM title and they typically distribute that studio’s lesser-loved catalog entries. Plus this year would be the most appropriate time for a UHF Blu because the movie celebrates its silver anniversary in 2014 and anniversaries always look good on a Blu-ray/DVD cover. But I had no idea that when Shout! announced its upcoming home video release slate over the weekend at the San Diego Comic-Con they would be including a new 25th anniversary edition of UHF among some of their better-known titles.

George A. Romero (seen above with zombie James Hetfield and others) is the man responsible for creating the undead zombie sub-genre we know and love to this day with his 1968 classic Night of the Living Dead.

Romero’s vision of zombies—swarms of dead rising from their graves and consuming the flesh of any living soul they can get their hands on—has shown great longevity. There’s been an incredible amount of movies, video games, TV shows, and comics made in the past handful of decades, including the Robert Kirkman comic The Walking Dead, which was of course turned into the hit AMC TV series of the same name.

And so, naturally, it made all the sense in the world to ask Romero if he wanted to make a couple episodes of The Walking Dead, something that would have surely sent geeks into a frenzy. But Romero said no. Here’s why.