Between Night and Dawn

Between his feature debut Night of the Living Dead and the sequel Dawn of the Dead, Pittsburgh-based filmmaker George Romero directed three non-zombie films, only one of which was in the horror genre. Romero turned to the counterculture and social commentary in There's Always Vanilla (1971), about a would-be hippie (Raymond Laine) who returns home to Pittsburgh and falls into a romance with a model and actress (Judith Streiner) who ends up supporting him even as he criticizes her for "selling out." More ambitious but less successful is Season of the Witch (1972), a domestic drama with a feminist perspective. Jan White stars as the dissatisfied wife of a college professor, a woman who turns to witchcraft to escape her dreary suburban life and try to find an identity beyond being "Jack's Wife" (which was Romero's original title). Neither film was widely seen, so Romero returned to the horror genre with the thriller The Crazies (1973), about a small town that turns mad and violent after an experimental military virus is accidentally unleashed in the local water supply. Here, Romero reworks themes of normalcy being turned into a nightmare, only as a paranoid thriller. Of interest to fans of horror and Romero, this set also presents an interesting look at independent filmmaking before there was an American independent film culture. Presented as a Blu-ray/DVD Combo set, extras include audio commentaries, behind-the-scenes featurettes, new and archival interviews with Romero and his cast and crew, and a longer alternate version of Season of the Witch. [Note: all three titles will also be separately available on Blu-ray on Mar. 13.] Recommended. (S. Axmaker)