NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD

Barbara and her brother Johnny go to the cemetery to visit a relative's grave, but they are attacked by some zombies. Johnny loses his life in the struggle, while Barbara manages to reach an apparently uninhabited farm. Shortly afterward, a young man named Ben, who is black, knocks on the farmhouse door and proposes to barricade themselves inside to avoid the attacks of the zombies that, meanwhile, are surrounding the farm. The two fugitives will soon discover that there are five other people hiding in the house's basement, but instead of helping each other, tensions will arise among the house's inhabitants. This is the remake of the 1968 film of the same name, directed by George A. Romero, a true cornerstone of the horror genre, famous for revolutionizing and reinventing the figure of the zombie and for closing the era of gothic-modern horror, paving the way for postmodern horror. This remake, directed by the special effects wizard Tom Savini (already responsible for the same effects in "Zombi," "Creepshow," and "Day of the Dead"), is rather faithful to the original, although some changes were inevitably made: among the most radical is certainly the temporal shift of the action to the 1990s; the complete reduction of the character Barbara; a totally different ending and, from a certain point of view, more optimistic. What perhaps stands out the most is the character of Barbara (here played by an effective Patricia Tallman): in Romero's film, Barbara was a weak and defenseless girl, shocked by the situation and unable to react either physically or psychologically; in this remake, Barbara is a strong and combative woman, much more similar to an Agent Ripley on a mission on Earth than to a girl scared of zombies. The change was made to be up-to-date: if in 1968 one expected a girl to react in that manner, in the 90s, after more than twenty years of feminist struggle for the redefinition of sexual roles, it was likely that one would opt for an androgynous and masculine prototype of the same character. As for the ending, the variations are quite acceptable, introduced to bring some novelty to the 1968 version. The character of Ben, played by Duane Jones in Romero's film, is here portrayed by the excellent Tony Todd, who will become known in the horror landscape mainly for the character of Candyman. Savini's direction is diligent, although it does not stand out for particular merits; Romero, for his part, limits himself to appearing as a producer and co-screenwriter. The dose of violence present in the film is rather low, especially when compared to the 1968 film; originally, Savini had planned many scenes on the edge of splatter, but Columbia imposed cuts on him to distribute the film with at least an "R," otherwise he would have been assigned an "X," that is, the most severe restriction present in the US market (that attributed to pornographic films, so to speak). In conclusion, "Night of the Living Dead" by Savini is a good zombie film, smooth and with excellent special effects, although the comparison with Romero's prototype is inevitably embarrassing. It can nevertheless be considered a successful zombie movie. Curiosity: the actor Russ Streiner, who played the character of Johnny, Barbara's brother, in Romero's film, appears at the end of the remake in the role of a zombie hunter, in addition to being the co-producer of the film.