Night of the Living Dead (1990)

**½
Can a small band of overwhelmed people in a farm house fend off the Living Dead?!?!? How about getting along with themselves?!?!





A late Saturday night with Tom Savini's Night of the Living Dead ( well what's left of it not clipped from what would have rated it into choice few theaters at the time in the 90s, as allowances of violence where waning) offers slight alterations on the masterpiece it wants to respect but update to the time it was made. Patricia Tallman as the loud but fierce version of Barbara, all tough talk and eventual swift action. Tony Todd tries to board up the house and build stability with those who also make an abandoned farmhouse their holdup spot as the Dead reanimate with the taste of flesh willing them for human food. Except for Tom Towles who devours the scenery as the zombies do fresh human cattle, the cast mostly react to the anxieties and pressures of a mad situation spiralling out of control. He and Todd fight from the moment they meet until the end when they start shooting at each other. Towles is the heinous self-serving tool who insists on going in the cellar...it is the obvious place of security, right?


I was a bit disappointed with Savini's zombies, the makeup, particularly. Not sure exactly what it is but they just seem rather ghoulish, whereas Romero's zombies just felt realistic and offered a certain under-the-skin eerieness because they just resembled us so much (even those with rot and decay). And the carnage is missing. Something anarchic that shows how it all could come crashing down in quick escalation. Maybe I can't put my finger exactly on it, but it seems as if this film escalates immediately on Mr. Cooper's first contact with Todd's Ben. Maybe it was all a bit more subtle, building to a volcanic eruption where it all implodes dramatically. It seems very little time it takes before the shit hits the fan. Maybe it was my own observation, and others feel differently.