Night of the Living Dead - The 1990 Remake!

Night of the Living Dead (1990)
(including comparison with the 1968 original)

Tom Savini, make-up artist for many classic horror movies and bit-part actor on a few occasions (perhaps most notably as "sex machine" in Rodriguez's "From Dusk Til Dawn"), was asked by George Romero to direct the remake of Romero's classic "Night of the Living Dead". I'm not convinced he was the best choice as it has rather a made for TV feel to it. Still, there are some very good aspects too.

Rewatching the original. Or trying to...

Before reviewing this, I felt it was very necessary to rewatch the original. Getting out my copy of the original Romero movie, I was surprised to see that many things were not as I remembered them. I saw the film first on TV, but I had definitely watched my DVD copy at least once too. I seemed to remember the movie getting started very quickly with "they're coming to get you Barbara" being one of the first few lines of the film. I'm still not sure whether I was right about that, but the version on my DVD starts with two random people transporting an executed criminal's body. They are transporting it to the graveyard where the victim's disgruntled relatives and a crazy preacher are waiting to bury it.

So what's going on with my DVD? Well it turns out that the box set I bought with Romero's first three "Of The Dead" movies, "Night", "Dawn" and "Day" does not have the original cut of "Night". This is the 30th Anniversary Edition (and yes, there's only one version of the movie on the DVD). I first realised that it might be the DVD cut rather than my memory that was dodgy when I checked out the imdb boards and found no one had considered my queries about the mad preacher guy. Towards the end, the preacher is not changed by a zombie bite, so I figured that people would have discussed this. I tried searching the internet more widely and that's when I came across this video from the "GuyWithGlasses" website. Before you click on the following link, do be aware that the presenter of the video is extremely irritating (presumably thinking he's funny), however the video nevertheless shows you exactly what was added to the 30th Anniversary Edition.

Link for video discussing changes made to the "30th Anniversary Edition" of "Night of the Living Dead".
And you thought the new Blu-Ray Star Wars alterations were bad.

So, as I understand it, the changes to the 30th Anniversary Edition are as follows:
- New soundtrack music which sounds akin to "Halloween"'s tinkly piano. I quite liked it.
- A dull intro featuring some particularly horrendous acting from the angry hillbillies.
- New scenes featuring an over-acting mad preacher guy.
- Also (I cannot be any more specific about this without revealing spoilers), I think the "shocking scene at the end" involved a little more ambiguity in the original cut. Here it seemed more likely to be an intentional act rather than in the original where the action looked like it might well be an honest mistake.

Hopefully we can add to this list the scene where Tom is talking to Judy and telling her how she "always got a smile" for him. Of the scenes that don't appear to have been identified as an addition, that was definitely the worst acted.

Back to the remake: The Protagonists

In the original, Duayne Jones played the role of "Ben". Ben is the take-charge black man who turns up to help Barbara and in the original he ends up becoming the main protagonist because Barbara is stuck in a shock-induced stupor for the whole film. In the remake Ben is played by Tony Todd, who people might also know for his work as "Bludworth" (the mysterious black undertaker from the "Final Destination" movies) or as the ruthless mercenary in "The Rock". Neither of those other roles will really give you much of an idea of how great he was in this NOTLD remake. What's more, the script doesn't have him punching a woman either, which to my mind is a good improvement. (Yes, I know in the original it might be argued that Ben was stopping Barbara from running out and being eaten alive by zombies, but she didn't seem to be putting up enough of a fight to warrant being knocked out by a punch to the face. *gulp*)

Tony Todd as Ben:


Not only is Barbara not incapacitated by shock all the way through the movie, but she's actually quite a badass. Sure, she starts off a little freaked out and she's unwilling to speak for a while, but it turns out she's a fantastic shot with a rifle. And I'm not sure if this version of Barbara became iconic, or if her look just seems familiar because of the Resident Evil games. Does anyone else see the similarity? (Images below)

Jill Valentine from "Resident Evil" (videogame) and Rebecca Chambers from "Resident Evil 2" (videogame):


Patricia Tallman as Barbara:


Badass women with guns are sexy. Is that a sexist thing to say?

The villain?

So anyway, people who have seen the original will remember the character of Harry Cooper. He constantly complains and he's very selfish. However, in this new version the character of Harry Cooper is downright evil, perhaps to the point of being a caricature. Still, the performance is great. Not to give too much away, but the new ultra evil Harry Cooper is somewhat vital to the remake's new ending.

Still, this movie also carries on the tradition of trying to make the zombies seem less like the villains. "We're them and they're us." That's a line from towards the end of the remake. If anyone can tell me what the hell that means, I'll be really grateful.

Problems with the remake

Okay, I was going to say that the acting is better than the original, but that was before realising that most of the worst acted scenes in the original were randomly added for an anniversary edition of the movie. As such, the acting is actually pretty good in the original and I'd say it's similarly good in the remake. Presuming that scene between Tom and Judy belonged in the original movie then I think acting-wise the remake comes out looking better.

What doesn't work quite so well is the zombies. I'm sure the make-up is probably better in the remake, but unfortunately being able to see it in full colour makes it rather less effective. The bit where a zombie eats a mouse is great and there are some neat touches like a zombie wandering around with a knife in his chest. However, in the end the zombies don't really look like they're dead. (Oddly, perhaps the most dead-looking zombies are from Fulci's "Zombie Flesh Eaters" which I'll review in the near future.) That said, there's a rather neat scene where Barbara is shooting anywhere but the head of a zombie in order to demonstrate to the others that zombies really are the dead walking. Now that bit was cool. :)

What's more the dialogue in the original tells of the dangers when the zombies build up. We are told in the original that the zombies can knock over a car if there are enough of them. In the remake we are actually told outright that while the zombies are spaced out you could just run past them and you'd be okay. That's not very good for building up tension. On top of that, there are scenes where people manage to run about past zombies and are remarkably lucky not to get bitten. While this initially has you concerned for the characters' safety, you eventually start to feel cheated when you realise just how much running around in the open they can do without getting scratched.

Also, the music is a problem. In the video I linked above, I heard a lot of ranting against the music of the version of NOTLD I watched. However, the fact is that the music in this remake is a great deal more dated and isn't as good at building up tension.

Overall opinion

The remake of NOTLD doesn't have such effective direction and the changes to the script don't always help either, however the acting is good and the new ending is effective. This might not be as good as the original, but it's still better than a lot of zombie movies out there and it's different enough from the original to be counted as a zombie movie well worth watching in its own right. This is a solidly good movie, even if it's no masterpiece.

B- (Solidly good movie)
(x-posted to candycorncomm)