Derided upon first release and championed with some benefit of hindsight, the truth rests somewhere in the middle for Night of the Living Dead (1990).
A beat for beat retread of George A Romero’s transcendent 1968 original, the only key differences are Tony Todd in the Duane Jones role, and Patricia Tallman’s channeling of her inner Ripley to give Barbara more agency as a STRONG FEMALE CHARACTER (say that phrase with the Scottish brogue of top-notch YouTuber, The Critical Drinker).
Does this affect the price of tea in China at the end of the day?
What the new Night does have is a bit of coda social commentary with warden/convict dynamics between captured zombies and their hillbilly captors.
While effective, this also seems forced as screenplay writer George A Romero already gave us this kind of moral ambiguity through undead Bub’s emotional intelligence and Frankenstein monster pathos in the superior Day of the Dead.
There are a more than a few things that work in the original Night of the Living Dead’s favour too.
The film had DIY graininess, which gave it a newsreel feel – fitting amidst the difficult racial politics of the time. And the originality of the first effort cannot be overstated: Romero is the zombie genre’s prime mover, the pebble that caused the ripple to torture an undead metaphor.
The 1990 Night of the Living Dead feels like a colorized version of 1968.
The frenetic pace and cheesy tone seem a bit…off. But it’s still entertaining.
*** (out of 5)
Check out the Really Awful Movies podcast about Night of the Living Dead!
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