MPAA Rating: R/Genre: Horror/Starring: Tony Todd, Patricia Tallman, Tom Towles, McKee Anderson, William Butler, Katie Finneran, Bill Moseley, Heather Mazur, Russell Streiner/Runtime: 88 minutes

I think it is safe to say that in the world of movie magic, few things are tougher to pull off than remaking a slice of cinematic pie that is a bonafide classic and having the remake be seen either on the same level of acclaim or even worthy of being compared in the same breath as the original. This is hardly surprising though dear reader since most of the time whenever we as movie lovers are hit with one of these remakes, the typical product we get turns out to be either a) an outright train wreck that proceeds to demolish the vast majority of (if not all) the fond memories you may have involving the first time you watched the original film or b) it’s something that tries to take things in a new direction only to wind up forgetting what made the original source material so iconic and/or endearing to fans of this particular genre in the first place thus becoming a train wreck of a different sort. Yet every so often, a remake comes along that manages to do perhaps the one thing that you weren’t planning on and, despite its flaws, actually manages to surprise you and be both fairly decent and respect its source material rather than drag head-on into the mud. I bring this up because the 1990 take on the iconic zombie film Night of the Living Dead is one of those that could have gone really bad and left an iconic film with a blemish on its legacy that, hard as it tried, it would never be able to clean off. No this slice of cinematic pie is not that bad and no it is nowhere near as great as the original. What it is however, thanks in large part to surprisingly good work from the cast and crew as well as throwing in enough surprises to make this a distinct viewing experience yet still by and large the same nightmare that horror fans all over first became riveted to the edge of their seats by all the way back in 1968…..

The plot is as follows: Night of the Living Dead begins its haunting tale by introducing to a young woman by the name of Barbra and her brother Johnny as they travel by automobile from the city of Pittsburgh all the way out into the seemingly picturesque countryside in order to visit the gravestone of their mother and pay their respects. It isn’t long however before this idyllic day is turned into a nightmare when, out of nowhere, the pair are attacked by an unusual individual and, in the resulting melee, Johnny is brutally killed. Barbra however manages to get away and runs away to an isolated and seemingly abandoned farmhouse where she proceeds to lock herself in. Soon thereafter Barbra, who is now in a state of shock, finds a man named Ben has managed to get in after escaping several other of these humanoid creatures, and is in the process of ensuring their survival by taking care of all the doors, windows, and other miscellaneous openings inside the house. While in the middle of taking care of that however, the 2 discover 5 more people hiding downstairs: these individuals consist of Harry Cooper, his wife Helen, their sick little girl Karen, and a younger man by the name of Tom and his girlfriend Judy respectively. However right from the moment they meet it seems, Harry and Ben begin butting heads over just whether the basement or the rest of the house is the best place to hide out from the menace of an unknown origin. So as the night goes on, the tension between the two men continues to grow to the point of no return all whilst the house and its occupants find themselves under a form of siege by an enemy that not only is increasing in number as the minutes tick by, but that truly is the stuff that nightmares are made of….

Now if the aforementioned plot synopsis sounds even vaguely familiar in any way then that is because it’s supposed to be familiar. In fact that is the very plot synopsis I gave when I reviewed the original Night of the Living Dead from 1968 awhile back (so all you people screaming plagiarist can relax now). Yet despite the fact that this slice of cinematic pie is operating with the exact same narrative as its more celebrated predecessor did you should not fear that this is just going to be that same exact movie except in color a’la Gus Van Sant’s ill-advised and understandably despised/spit on remake of Psycho from 1998. Rather, this is an area where this film actually manages to earn my respect to a degree since it uses the same narrative, but then at the same time manages to throw just enough wrinkles in throughout to make this enough of a different viewing experience than what came before. Therefore by doing so this film is able to ingeniously throw out the possibility of you being able to predict just how this movie is going to wrap things up thus making it feel a degree of fresh that it might otherwise be lacking had it gone and just made the same movie all over again except in color.  In addition, I guess I should also point out that the makeup effects for this are surprisingly good. I mean I get that a chunk of this could be attributed to the fact that this slice of cinematic pie has horror makeup maestro Tom Savini at the helm, but even so I mean it’s almost like Savini saw what Romero and his team did in 1968, colorized it, and then had his makeup team make them look both way more gnarly than Romero could have conjured up and also slightly scarier as well.

Now another key arena where this film does just as well if not better than the original, shocking to say I know, is in the cast that has been brought together to bring this take on this nightmarish world vividly to life. By that I don’t mean that the cast in the original from 1968 was bad by any means; in fact, I would say that the fact that they were “unknowns” actually helped to sell the documentary-style of the film from 1968 thus making it feel less like a movie and more like this was something that actually happened. To that end, whilst this film’s cast isn’t exactly A-list actors they are a little bit more recognizable than the original cast, but they all still do a great job at becoming their respective characters especially Tony Todd as Ben and Patricia Tallman as Barbra who I feel it could be said might just give portrayals than the original cast members did with those respective parts. Better than the work done by the actors though is the fact that they are, especially Tallman and her portrayal of Barbra, are aided immensely by the fact that Savini and co. want there to be more depth with the characters than there may have been the first time around. As a result, we get characters who have more layers to them so that whilst some may be more cowardly, despicable, take-charge, or just decent they all manage to let their inner humanity shine through thus making it easier for us to understand where they are coming from even if we don’t exactly approve of how they choose to handle things that go down in this particular film.

All in all as I said at the beginning of this review, remaking a bonafide classic in any genre of movie magic is always a difficult thing to do. Not just because you run the risk of failing miserably and thus unjustly tarnishing a legacy that you had no business or right to do so in the first place, but also because you run the risk of infuriating everyone from die-hard lovers of the original who know it by heart to the point that they can quote it at will all the way to the casual moviegoer who is just fed up with the lack of creativity being pumped out by the land of movie magic and who would rather see something novel instead. Yet when a remake is done right, it is most assuredly worthy of praise both because of the gamble that was involved and because it managed to be its own thing whilst giving audiences exactly what they wanted. To that end, the 1990 remake of the iconic horror classic that is Night of the Living Dead is one of the more curious remakes I have seen in a while let alone one found in the horror genre at that. This is because unlike the vast majority of films like it I didn’t find myself either groaning, bemoaning, or even decrying quite a bit of what this film has to offer. No it was not going to ever live up to the original and frankly, aside from Dawn of the Dead in 1978, I would be surprised if this movie had seeing as so many of the others had tried and been unable to. At the same time though, there is a fair amount to actually like and even respect about this film. Indeed not only does this movie have zombies that would make Romero proud and also feel like a streamlined version of the original whilst throwing enough wrinkles in the narrative to prevent you from being able to predict just where it is headed, but it also fixes issues with the original that result in the characters becoming more three-dimensional people, Barbra especially, rather than just horror movie archetypes we’ve seen a million times. Thus when you take all of those factors and also throw in surprisingly decent work from the cast and from iconic horror makeup legend Tom Savini at the helm, this is one Night that whilst not as terrifying as the one from 1968 is still pretty darn chaotic and worth hunting down and watching at least once. On a scale of 1-5 I give Night of the Living Dead “90” a solid 3 out of 5.