This started out as a simple project in April 2022 to transfer the 1981 UK Vipco uncut pre-cert VHS release of Zombie Flesh Eaters (AKA Zombi 2 / Zombie) to standard definition Blu-Ray, as more of a one-off nostalgia project. I saw it as a teenager and it brings back happy memories. The base artwork has long been a favourite of mine, so as a package I thought it worth doing a proper transfer, along with designing artwork.

As this single film only took up around a quarter of the final Blu-Ray disc, in September 2022 the set was expanded to add in three other films; Shogun Assassin, The Rise & Fall Of Idi Amin, & Zombie Nosh. Alongside these, number of original and custom made Vipco trailers were also added.

It's worth saying up front that this is purely a preservation project of these specific tapes only. They're the standard UK versions in VHS definition quality and this set is not an upgrade on any other retail or fanmade release. You should only get this set if you want a high quality digital presentations of these source tapes.

I first saw Zombie Flesh Eaters in my early teens. I was able to rent the 1992 Vipco BBFC certified & censored VHS version from the large council library in town, which at that time had a fair size VHS rental section. I fondly remember a number of the other titles available including Shogun Assassin & Zombie Nosh; hence their inclusion here. While I first saw The Rise & Fall Of Idi Amin much later, it has also been included here as I really liked the film.

Back while still at school, I started a full time summer holiday job doing landscape gardening through a family friend. During this period, for a few weeks I worked with a guy who was heavily into horror films. After a couple of long conversations about horror films, many of which I hadn't seen at that point, he promised to get me uncut bootleg copies of a couple of decent movies. A few months later (and a long after he stopped working at that job) he finally dropped over two VHS tapes, one containing uncut laserdisc transfers of Zombie Flesh Eaters & The Evil Dead (which had Japanese subtitles) and the other with Cannibal Ferox & Cannibal Holocaust. This was the first time I'd seen the stake-in-the-eye sequence uncut, and it didn't disappoint! The Blu-Ray front cover is a rough replica of the original Zombie Flesh Eaters VHS cover, although the main poster artwork has been expanded to be as wide as I could construct from various internet sources and scans, and the VHS's overlaid text has been removed. The original VHS cover does actually have a spine title, but it's very small and hard to make out against the light background. I did create a spine title which you can see right at the top of this page, but left it off as I thought it wasn't in keeping with the originals' seeming lack of spine title. The reverse side is a similar replica of the Shogun Assassin VHS cover. The disc art, again, is a very rough replica of an original tape label, albeit with all the contents' titles. All the artwork used layered overlays & backgrounds to make them look yellowed and aged. The VHS transfers were done with my latest 2022 capture setup; JVC HR-S7600 VCR to DataVideo TBC-1000 Time Base Corrector to ATI TV Wonder 600 USB all via S-Video. The VCR is set to EDIT mode, which removes all smoothing filters applied by the VCR itself. That does give quite a grainy image, which then has noise reduction applied using the excellent ABSoft Neat Video filter in Adobe Premiere, along with the Digital Anarchy Samurai Sharpen filter just to sharpen up the details. That workflow combined with a top notch quality tape can give results approaching S-VHS or BetaCam transfers. While the Vipco tapes aren't exactly top notch quality, the result is still very decent.

While Zombie Flesh Eaters & The Rise & Fall Of Idi Amin are direct transfers of the pre-cert tapes shown here, along with the post-cert Dutch uncut Zombie Nosh, Shogun Assassin is an amalgamation of two transfers; Vipco's 1981 VHS pre-cert VHS, and Vipco's 1992 Cult Classics re-release VHS. This is because the quailty of the pre-cert tape is fairly poor (I was informed that they're all the same). The 1992 release is much better quality, but despite the rear cover text stating that it was uncut, I found it was actually censored (or pre-cut by Vipco) by 28 seconds.

00:04:28:04 to 00:04:48:04 - Sword embedded in attacker's head
00:47:49:22 to 00:47:52:23 - Sword embedded in attacker's head
00:52:38:04 to 00:52:38:16 - Master Of Death bleeding claw-face wound
00:53:13:20 to 00:53:18:09 - Master Of Death iron-fist-in-face wound

So these censored shots were replaced with the full shots from my uncut pre-cert transfer, re-creating the uncut pre-cert version, all in the best VHS quality I can assemble. It's worth adding that Shogun Assassin was released uncut on VHS only a few years later, I guess Vipco were just trying to ensure it passed at all, by pre-cutting their 1992 BBFC submission. By comparison, this was still ten years before The Evil Dead was released uncut in the UK. On starting the September 2022 upgrades, I had expected that collecting together a number of original Vipco VHS tape trailers to add in to this project, would be as simple as collecting together the source tapes themselves. This turned out not to be the case. I found that none of Vipco's pre-certs had trailers, and for their post-certs, they only ever had three VHS trailers they used across all their VHS releases; Zombie Flesh Eaters, Shogun Assassin, and The Psychic Killer. I was later told that as Vipco had to pay the BBFC to classify each new trailer they used, they just got three passed, and used them again and again to save money. This presented me with a challenge as I wanted at least one trailer in between each film; that would have been at least four. I was able to transfer the three official trailers simply enough, then created two more from scratch; The Rise & Fall Of Idi Amin & Zombie Nosh. I did this by taking their respective theatrical DVD trailers, and replacing each shot with the corresponding shot from my VHS transfers, creating what would have been Vipco trailers, had they made them.

On comparing Vipco's The Rise & Fall Of Idi Amin pre-cert tape, to the US DVD release, the US version is edited slightly differently. It has a short history-lesson intro, and the end credits are removed. I wanted to include that intro on my set, as I always liked it, and thought it made a a good addition. The Vipco trailer I recreated has the US intro playing beforehand.

I did spend a good while trawling through Vipco's pre-cert, post-cert, and even DVD releases, and watching each titles' trailer to find more to add in. For just about everything else I looked at, I either found while some might have been well known Vipco releases, the trailers were not that enjoyable to watch (such as Driller Killer), while other titles were not well known Vipco releases and so their trailers' inclusion here would have seemed out of place. Upon inserting the disc, each film will play in order with chapter stops, preceeded by one or more trailers. While I created a main menu, this would only be seen if the viewer watched right to the end of the disc, or pressed the 'Menu' remote button. This menu allows the viewer to select between the four films.

The disc includes a PC accessible BD-ROM folder. Among other items, you'll find an MP3 copy of my 2010 Zombie Flesh Eaters Composite Score, various artwork, posters and cover scans from around the world, as well as high quality 600dpi scans of the covers & tapes from the Vipco releases themselves. In July 2022, I spent two days heavily modifying the Vipco UK pre-cert VHS trailers for Zombie Flesh Eaters & Shogun Assassin; combining them into one trailer. This was created to be included in future DVD/Blu-Ray projects as an an advertisement for this set. The modification involved re-creating both trailers' shots from scratch using movie footage, along with replacing & replicating the soundtrack (less the voice-over), as well as recreating the Vipco end title card; allowing me to change the text. While this trailer might only get a handful people interested who would not have been otherwise, it's really just a fun side-project. It's 18+ on YouTube due to violent content, so you might have to click & log-in to view it. If you're interested in any of my fanmade projects, you can contact me via email at , or through the Rob's Nostalgia Projects Facebook page. Check out & 'like' that Facebook page to see the latest in-progress updates to any current projects, and check out my Wants List to see if you can assist me with any future projects or upgrades.