The 1990 Night of the Living Dead is the rare remake that is the equal of and in some ways an improvement on the original. Don’t get me wrong, I love the original. It’s one of my all-time favourite movies, and it broke so much new ground, but in terms of production quality, it’s a better-made movie. See my review of the original here

Plot

Spoilers — lots and lots of spoilers

Night of the Living Dead follows a young woman named Barabara who travels with her brother to her Mother’s grave. They encounter a creepy old man who mumbles to them that he is sorry, then another man comes up to them and kills Barabara’s brother. It is clear the other man is a corpse as his suit is slit all the way up the back and he has embalming scars on his back.

Barbara flees and finds a farmhouse. She is nearly catatonic with fright by this point. She encounters a bloated corpse in the house. More zombies come in as does a living person, a black man named Ben (played by the always brilliant Tony Todd). Ben and Barabara manage to clear the zombies out of the house, although Ben does the bulk of the work.

It is soon revealed that there are other people in the house. The Coopers are a family unit. Harry is the father, a seriously unpleasant man. Helen is the mother; she is meek and shows signs of being abused. Sarah, their daughter, has been bitten by a zombie. There is also a young couple, Tom and Judy Rose.

Ben and Harry clash instantly; Ben believes that the cellar is a death trap because it has no exits. The main floor is the best option with the basement as a backup. Harry thinks the cellar is safest. As the two argue, Barabara keeps talking about how slow the zombies are.

The group hatches a plan to make it to Ben’s truck and fuel up at the farm’s gas pump. It’s locked, but they grab a key ring. Ben, Tom, and Judy Rose take the truck while Barbara prevents Harry from shutting himself and his family in the cellar by keeping him at gunpoint.

Ben falls out of the truck on the way to the pump. It turns out that none of the keys fit the p, so Tom shoots the lock, causing gasoline to spray everywhere. The truck explodes, killing Tom and Judy Rose. Ben hightails it back to the farmhouse where Harry has grabbed the gun from Barbara. Sarah has turned and is now a zombie. Sarah kills Helen quickly; meanwhile Barbara and Tony engage in a gunfight with Harry. Harry is attempting to protect Sarah and Barabara and Ben are trying to protect themselves. Harry and Ben are wounded. Ben flees into the basement, and Harry flees upstairs. Ben sits down in the basement and sees the gas tank key hanging up. He laughs bitterly. Barbara leaves, taking advantage of the zombies limited mobility. She joins up with a militia group who are destroying and burning zombies.

The next morning Barbara and the militia members make it back to the farmhouse. The militia members encounter Ben who has turned in the night. They shoot him. A few minutes later Barbara encounters Harry, who is still living. She shoots him in the head and tells the militia that they have “another one for the fire.”

The movie ends with Barbara watching zombies burn in a fire.

Changes to This Version

In the original movie, Barbara is incredibly weak. She is either screaming or in a borderline catatonic state. In this new version, she is the hero. She is strong an capable. It helps that she is played by Patricia Tallman, a much more capable actress and one that is more physically imposing, than the original Barbara.

The basic plot is almost the same. There are minor differences, but the storyline is lock step with the first one. The quality of the special effects, the use of colour film, the sound and set design, those are all upgraded but not upgraded like crazy. This is still a small independent horror movie.

Romero was very heavily involved with the new version. He was screenwriter and producer.

Cast

The new cast were better actors than the original. This is partially because the reputation of the original and of Romero himself brought in actors.

Patricia Tallman as Barbara

Tony Todd as Ben (in this case both the original actor and the new one are brilliant)

Tom Towles as Harry Cooper

McKee Anderson as Helen Cooper

William Butler as Tom

Katy Finneran as Judy Rose

Heather Mazur as Sarah Cooper

Bill Mosley as Johnny (Barbara’s brother)

Russel Streiner as Sherrif McLelland. He played Johnny in the original. This is an uncredited role, but he deserves mention for having been in both movies.

That’s pretty much it for major characters. A few of those are pretty minor as well. Notice that I didn’t mention Sherrif McLelland anywhere else. This was not a big cast, although there were a lot of extras.

The Director

Tom Savini directed the movie. He was Romero’s go to special effects guy, especially for zombies. He missed out on the original film as he was serving as a combat medic in Vietnam. This movie is his only directing credit. He clashed quite heavily with the studio and has stated that only about forty percent of his film was in there.

Special Effects

Tom Savini was an effects guy. When you put a special effects guy in the director’s chair, the effects are going to get extra attention. The thing is, they are understated. Savini decided he wanted to go super realistic for this movie and used stuff like autopsy photos to craft his zombies. It shows in the film. The zombies are disturbing.

Critical Reception

At the time of release, critics hated the remake. As time has passed, it is often recognized as a brilliant movie, a great work of art, and fitting tribute to the original.

Why it Was Made

Well, money was a significant reason for the remake. Due to several issues around the release of the original Romero made almost no money off of it. He sued the distributor and won, but they had gone out of business, so it didn’t get him much. He also wanted to make sure that if there was a remake, he was at least partially in control of it.

He has also said that it was the movie he wished he made back in the sixties. The elements of female empowerment were one of the biggest reasons for this. He may have stumbled into social activism via zombie movies, but he embraced it fully and completely.

My Verdict

This is my favourite zombie movie. Despite all of the issues with it, despite massive studio cuts, despite compromises and missteps, it is an incredibly tense movie from start to finish with a tone that never lets you rest, never gives you a moment of peace until the end, and then it’s a disturbing sort of peace. Maybe I’m just strange but I like movies that leave a lingering sense of unease, that stay with you after the credits. The 1990 Night of the Living Dead does that for me.

Yes, it didn’t change filmmaking forever, it wasn’t original in the way the first one way, but damn it’s a good movie! Romero and Savini deserve so much credit for what they managed to create.

The thing I talked about in the review of the original, how zombie movies have become b-movie fodder, basically joking campiness — this was another step away from that. A movie that took zombies seriously and presented a world that was dangerous, realistic, and brutal.

Watch it. I suspect you will find that it is much better than the critics gave it credit for when it first came out.