Indie filmmakers Mike Watt and Amy Lynn Best have announced that their decade-in-the-making zombie opus THE RESURRECTION GAME will make its official DVDebut April 30 as a 10th Anniversary Edition, and passed on the cover art and details.

Written and directed by Watt, who produced with Best and Bill Homan, the 16mm-lensed GAME is set in a future where the dead walk, but are more or less an accepted if irksome part of life. The central characters are a private detective (Ray Yeo), a scientist (Kristin Pfeifer) and a couple of bickering zombie exterminators (Best and Homan), who discover a conspiracy involving the reasons for the undead outbreak; Francis Veltri, Jasi Cotton Lanier and Debbie Rochon co-star.

“We went back to the original neg-to-DV transfer,” Watt says, “and discovered that a lot of the digital archiving glitches were present from the outset. We still cleaned it up to the best of our ability, with a new color-correction pass and a new audio mix taken from the original on-set quarter-inch recordings, professional digital compression and the whole nine yards. It looks better than ever, and the 16mm colors really pop on this transfer.”

Supplements on the disc, which features motion menus hosted by undead pitchman Necro-Phil, include:

• Audio commentary by Watt

• Audio commentary by Watt, Best and Homan

• 40-minute documentary featuring interviews with the filmmakers and other horror folks

• Never-before-seen behind-the-scenes footage and rushes

“While Amy, Jeff Waltrowski, Henrique Couto and I were archiving 60 or so hours of VHS footage shot on set,” Watt notes, “we discovered a number of tapes that we hadn't seen since the day we’d shot them, including snippets of things that were originally meant for the final cut that got lost along the way. So it was fun to see that stuff again.”

Not only that, but if you send in a proof-of-purchase from the disc’s cover, you’ll get a second disc with a bunch of additional extras, including a rare investor’s video, unseen trailers, a never-before-seen alternate opening and the original, widely bootlegged VHS workprint. “That’s the version most people were familiar with,” Watt says. “This ugly, ‘Robot Epilepsy Theater’ thing I shot off a Steenbeck monitor. But when we asked fans what they’d most like to see on a second disc, this is what they asked for. Grease pencil marks, stuttering picture, chattering soundtrack and all.”

THE RESURRECTION GAME retails for $19.99, but it can be pre-ordered for $15 (including shipping) at the official website of Watt and Best’s Happy Cloud Pictures.

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