Review: Night Of The Living Dead (1990)
Director: Tom Savini
Romero’s Night Of The Living Dead is a milestone in (horror)film history but Tom Savini ‘s remake is not.
In fact it’s sort of sad to think that people actually thought a re-make was needed. The original film may have been in black and white, but that helps resonate the terror much better.
This re-make, like most, tries to give the storyline a few twists to ’improve’ the original. But to be honest the deviations form the original script are just awful. Either you stick with the old or you make a new one, but this just seems wrong.
O-mr. Romero, why did you try to polish up something so effective?
Savini, know as ‘the Godfather of Gore’ almost did the special make-up effect on the original Night Of The Living Dead but was sent off to Vietnam. Afterward he did the make-up effects for Martin and a dozen of other horror films.
Savini did the make up for the original Dawn of the Dead and played the role of ‘Blade’ (the leader of a biker gang). Afterward Savini worked on most of Romero’s movies.
When you re-make you are bound to suffer comparison, so here goes…
In the original film the Barbara character is conservative, innocent and traumatised screamer with allot of over the top acting – yet it is allowed because she represent the archetypical damsel in distress and all the frightened female viewers immediately identify with her. In the new version Barbara tried to pull a ‘Lt. Ripley’ on you which really just seem weird.
Another key scene, which is one of my personal favourites, is when the little girl starts attacking her mother in the basement. Besides the mythological reference and moral tension of the scene Romero added a really unexpected sound effect to the mother’s fatal scream which really made it stick in your head. The re-make version of this dramatic scene is just plane weak.
The news-reports that informed the characters of the massive scale of their peril in the original have been reduced to a few seconds of background noise in this version.
Also the ending is different and to be honest it’s a sloppy ending to a sloppy movie.
Had they slapped a different title on it, the story might have been different. So on one hand I’d like to abolish any star donation to this film because I love the orginal so much more, than again if you suffer a sudden stoke of amnesia and forget the original, the re-make is an ok film.
The zombies however are done very nicely. Some are depicted in very original situations (junky with his O.D shot still dangling on his arm) but the acting is not too convincing.
It just doesn’t pack the same punch as the original and it doesn’t radiate the sheer doom and panic Romero’s first masterpiece still does.
All hail (Old) Romero !
Reviewed by: LordLeviathan, added August 17 2005
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