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 undead. Johnny loses his life in the scuffle, while Barbara manages to reach an apparently uninhabited farm. Soon after, a young man named Ben, who is black, knocks on the door of the cottage and proposes to barricade themselves to avoid the attacks of the zombies that, meanwhile, are surrounding the farm. The two fugitives will soon discover that in the basement of the house there are five other people hiding, but instead of helping each other, tensions will arise among the inhabitants of the house. This is the remake of the 1968 film of the same name, the directorial debut of 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 while 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 quite faithful to the original, although some changes have inevitably been made: among the most radical is the temporal shift of the action to the 1990s; the complete reduction of the character of Barbara; a completely 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 the effective Patricia Tallman): in Romero's film, Barbara was a weak and defenseless girl, left 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 the 1960s one expected a girl to react in that way, in the 1990s, after more than twenty years of feminist struggle to redefine sexual roles, it was likely that one would opt for an androgynous and masculine prototype of the same character. Regarding 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 scene mainly for the character of Candyman. Savini's direction is diligent, although it is not remembered for any particular merits; Romero, on the other hand, limits himself to appearing as a producer and co-writer. The amount of violence present in the film is rather low, especially if compared to the 1968 film; originally, Savini had planned many scenes on the edge of splatter, but Columbia imposed cuts on him so that the film could be distributed with at least an "R", otherwise it would have been assigned an "X", i.e., the most severe restriction present in the US market (that attributed to pornographic films, to understand). 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 still be considered a successful zombie movie. Curiosity: the actor Russ Streiner, who in Romero's film played the character of Johnny, Barbara's brother, in the remake appears at the end of the film in the role of a zombie hunter, in addition to being the co-producer of the film.