So here is fan composite number four and it was possibly the easiest one I have done so far. I took the video from the German DVD release of the film and, with thanks to Marc, added an English audio track from the Dutch VHS release. I am very happy with the results. It is far superior to the grey market release on the Eurovista label as The Dead are Alive. This release had terrible picture quality; the print was damaged, faded, cropped and missing footage. The audio was equally poor and the disc suffered from an authoring glitch where the DVD would skip to the main menu during the all important final scene.

The film itself is rather underrated. Professor Jason Porter (Alex Cord who would later star in the eighties television show Airwolf), an archaeologist examining an Etruscan tomb becomes involved in a series of murders that bear similarities to ancient Etruscan rituals. Porter, an alcoholic prone to blackouts, is identified as a suspect and attempts to find out who, or what, is behind the murders. Though it suffers from awful dialogue (“does the idea of an Etruscan burial ground turn you on?”) it is still an enjoyable giallo that is different to other gialli from this particular period. Even though Alex Cord has a good on-screen presence he is rather wooden here and his tash proved to be an annoying obstacle when trying to synchronise the audio with the picture. John Marley, who famously woke up to find a horses head sharing his bed in The Godfather (1971), is deliciously over the top here. Riz Ortolani’s main theme is reminiscent of his wonderful theme from Cannibal Holocaust (1980).

Below are some screenshots taken from my fandub DVD and these are compared with shots from the Eurovista release:

Next up on my list of fan composites will be either a fan sub of the Czech DVD of Anima Persa (1977) or a fan dub of the Italian DVD of Sergio Martino's The Scorpion with Two Tails (1982). I might also be working a complete composite of one of my favourite gialli Death Laid an Egg (1968) (expect a post on this soon) and a DVD than combines the fan dub and fan sub of Violent Rome (1975). There is also a possibility of a HD version of my favourite giallo but I will need to confirm the possibility of this.