Zulu

Rating:
Summary: Unacceptable DVD Quality
Review: Zulu is one of my top ten favourite films, but this VCI DVD version is awful. Its the worst DVD I have ever seen. Picture definition and sound quality are very poor and worse than my video tape version.For example, when Jack Hawkins drives the wagon out of the Zulu camp on the video you can clearly see it's not him but some bloke with a beard - on the DVD version you can hardly see a face at all.The rousing magnificent sound track is lost here - it sounds like a distant 45 rpm radiogram version on this DVD. Despite my widescreen TV screen adjustments there is still a hideous large black line at the top.

Rating:
Summary: Unacceptable DVD quality
Review: Zulu is one of my top ten favorite films but this VCI DVD version is a discrace and the worst DVD I have seen. Picture definition and sound quality are inferior to my old video tape.(e.g.in the video version you can clearly see it's not Jack Hawkins driving the wagon out of the Zulu camp but some bloke with a beard - in the DVD you cannot see his face at all).
Also despite widescreen TV screen adjustments there is still a hugh black line at the top. The rousing music was one of the greatest features - here it sounds like a distant mono 45 radiogram version. Please dump this version and give everyone who bought it a refund or exchange.

Rating:
Summary: Just great!
Review: Have watched this movie at least six times. They don't make them like this any more........cliche. Michael Caine was an adorable newcomer who could act in it, and the other actors were superb. The native actors were wonderful. I just keep saying it was superb and wonderful, so this is boring, but it is a great movie. There aren't many you can watch over and over.

Rating:
Summary: Chud
Review: Put this on any sunday and it's still a cracking film. The direction is timeless, it feels modern enough to have just been made. The film's constant anti-war polemic falls on deaf eyes, at least with me. There's also a confusing bit where Baker demands to know why Caine can't identify the bodies of his men after the hospital fire. Does Caine retort with the guy's name as in "Chard, give me a break?" or is he saying "I can't identify them because they're charred"? Hey, I'm a pedant, okay? These sort of details keep me awake at night. That and the Doodlebugs. I'm also puzzled as to why chief Buthelezi would have agreed to take part in a film where his boys get rather a comprehensive drubbing, but perhaps they needed the spear change. I said...<hole opens in floor>

Rating:
Summary: An excellent, but neglected, film !
Review: "Zulu" has been a very neglected film for quite a long time and, for the life of me, I can't understand why. Its proportions are truly epic. Its cast features virtually every great British male character actor who was then active in the business, including a young (and foppish) Michael Caine. It is suspenseful and unpredictable. It is multi-dimensional, in that the British soldiers are not all noble, super-competent and brilliant -- and the Zulu warriors are not pictured simply as a mob of faceless, uncivilized "native bad guys". The first sight of the Zulu army appearing over the crest of the hill, as the camera slowly pans across the scene, is a truly heart-stopping spectacle.

"Zulu" presents its audience with a seemingly irreconcilable crisis of wills, the ultimate resolution of which is, well, let me just say... "satisfying". If you are a fan of "Lawrence of Arabia", or "Kwai", or "The Train", or any of the other great epic films, you can't fail to appreciate "Zulu".

Rating:
Summary: Intense, bracing, absorbing...and a real story
Review: "Zulu" rates as one of the best action dramas ever made. It's all the better given that it's a true story: 1,000s of Zulu Nation warriors against less than 100 British troops in a isolated mission outpost. How can they hope to survive? They just slaughtered the British regiment nearby and left no survivors...

When it's over, you're totally gripped by the events and emptied. I take it back, it's the best action drama ever filmed and they don't make them like this anymore.

Rating:
Summary: Front Row DVD is Great
Review: I just got a DVD release of ZULU from Front Row Features. It was in letterbox, with wonderfully restored picture. But that's about all you get... there are no special features besides the letterbox format, nice picture quality and a lousy 10 chapter stops. I would have liked trailer(s), 5.1 surround, closed captioning, a documentary or two, and stuff like that. But what can you expect when a movie in the public domain?

But it was worth my money to get a decent transfer. From what I've heard, this is the only decent transfer out there. I heard GoodTimes was good -- but with GoodTimes, about the most you'd get is a decent transfer of a full length movie and nothing else just like the Front Row DVD. Spend the money, you won't be disapointed!

Rating:
Summary: Great movie... when do they come out with a great DVD?
Review: It hurts me not to give Zulu five stars, since it is one of my favorite war films of all time. Although some flaws, like bayonets which noticeable go between someone's side and arm, may be irksome to the modern viewer, this Zulu has a great production value and is worth getting for the John Barry score and Michael Caine's first starring role alone.

I wish I could say that the DVD is worthy of the movie. I have the Diamond Entertainment edition. Thankfully it is widescreen, and thankfully it was cheap. The picture and sound are really pretty decent, although I haven't tried it out on HDTV yet. The unforgivable sin of this DVD, though, is the fact that the whole 138-minute feature is divided into exactly FOUR chapters! Would it have been any harder to give us ten chapters, or forty? The case is garish, and misspells actress Ulla Jacobsson's first name.

Great movie, well worth the price. It will also be well worth it whenever Criterion comes out with a decent DVD set of Zulu.

Rating:
Summary: Fake widescreen, terrible DVD quality
Review: I am a big fan of Zulu but the DVD transfer, specifically from "Platinum disk corporation", is one of the poorest quality DVD transfers I have ever viewed. 1st, the DVD is sub-VCR quality, the poorest VCR home recording from cable or off-air of Zulu will be superior to this DVD. 2nd, the DVD implies it's widescreen, it's not, it's letterbox but only inside standard 4:3 aspect ratio. As far as I have read, any DVD from "Platinum disk corporation" out of La Crosse, Wisconsin, is complete garbage - unless you like to play your DVD's on a 9" TV with mono-audio. I was unable to verify if the Amazon version is from Platinum or not, don't take a chance until you know it's NOT from Platinum.
Ignoring media problems... Zulu is pretty darn good, a good DVD transfer would be an excellent addition to any DVD library. And if like you liked Zulu, you will love the far superior film "Zulu Dawn", which tells the story of the bigger battle at Islandwana that preceded what happened in Zulu. Haven't found a good DVD of "Zulu Dawn" yet either.
Zulu is definitely well worth having on DVD, but be very careful until you can find a reputable DVD version.

Rating:
Summary: Zulu - a tolerable DVD of a great film
Review: Zulu is one of the greatest historical action movies ever made, and one of the great war movies. It is based on what historian Michael Glover terms "the most highly decorated battle in British history", the defence of Rorke's Drift during the Zulu War of 1879. Eleven of the defenders received Britain's highest award for military valor, the Victoria Cross--the rarely awarded counterpart of the US Congressional Medal of Honor. The movie is a landmark in the art of cinema for its extraordinary combination of location, cross-cultural engagement, a real story, good script and fine cast. This 1964 film never looks tired, despite my many years of rerunning it in 16mm, the Criterion laserdisc, and now the Front Row Entertainment Inc. DVD. Anecdotally, military colleges have used Zulu to show the power of directed massed musketry, and leadership and teamwork in combat.

Zulu is the greatest achievement of the career of British actor Stanley Baker, who co-produced with US-born, formerly blacklisted director Cy Endfield. Nothing else in the genre really measures up, including Endfield's so-called "prequel", Zulu Dawn, or other epics based on British colonial wars, such as Khartoum. It was filmed on location in the grandeur of Natal, South Africa, with descendants of the Zulu warriors who took part in the original action portraying their forebears. The prominent Zulu politician and traditional chief, Mangosuthu Buthelezi, plays the Zulu leader, his distant relative Cetewayo. Mass Zulu participation in the project guaranteed the uplifting dignity and authenticity of cross-cultural characterisations of the film. Early magnificent scenes with masses of Zulu extras show the Zulu royal kraal, with a mass wedding of warriors in progress as news arrives of the annihilation of a strong British force at Isandhlwana. These unique scenes probably never could be filmed again because of social and cultural change. The nearest conceptual comparison in the war genre that comes to mind is the cross-cultural aspect of Tora! Tora! Tora!

Stanley Baker believed so strongly in Zulu, despite difficulties in raising finance, that he sank much of his own money into it. Playing a British Army engineer officer thrust by events into leading a desperate defensive action following the disaster of Isandhlwana, he heads a strong cast, including a young Michael Caine as an upper crust infantry officer. There are wonderful cameo roles by Jack Hawkins as an alcoholic missionary; Nigel Green as the imperturbable Colour Sergeant Bourne, always ready with a calming order or a bayonet; James Booth as Private Hook, portrayed as a malingerer who is perhaps the least likely Victoria Cross winner; Patrick Magee as Surgeon-Major Reynolds, continuing up to his elbows in surgery even as Zulus try to break in. The narration by Richard Burton is very fine, and in character with the Welsh origin of the British soldiers. Welsh and Zulu singing on the cinematic battlefield is spine-tingling.

This film deserves the very best frame-by-frame and soundtrack digital restoration and DVD transfer that technology can provide, working from an original 70mm print. Meanwhile, the Front Row Entertainment Inc DVD, about the equal of the Criterion laserdisc, will have to do. The image quality is much less sharp than we now expect of new DVD releases. The color and audio are just passable. It is in widescreen format.

Stanley Baker died in 1976. Cy Endfield died in 1995. Other players who have passed on include Jack Hawkins in 1973; Nigel Green in 1972; and Patrick Magee in 1982. Before all key players in this project die, a retrospective on the making of the film--interviews, at least, with participants like Michael Caine and Mangosuthu Buthelezi--should be compiled for a new collector's edition DVD. At the time of writing, Sir Michael Caine (age 69) seems to be enjoying the afterglow of his prolific career in cinema and dabbles in restaurants, and Dr Buthelezi (age 74) is Minister for Home Affairs in the Government of South Africa. James Booth (age 69) continues on stage and screen.

Michael Glover's book, "Rorke's Drift" (Wordsworth Editions 1997) is recommended reading for anyone with a detailed interest in the historical background.