Product: Night of the Living Dead (1990)
Rating: 4.0
Not the Barbara I Remember!
In the 1968 NOTLD (if you havent seen the original please watch before you watch this version) the character of Barbara was a scared, stunned, stereotype of woman. The men were the strong protective ones, while she cowered and Meeped and covered her face. In this 1990 version, Barbara kicks undead bootatie like she was born into it. We think that Barbara (played by pat tallman) is mousy with her giant glasses, muted shoulder pad outfit and the 10 minutes of screaming in the beginning but soon with Bens (Tony Todds) presence of mind she changes into an assertive leader who becomes the lone voice of reason till the end of the movie. This version mimics the original, They even tried to cast people with the exeption of Barbara who looked the same. Bigger budget and color makes this a worthy remake, although to me the black and white one was much creepier. Tom Savini on the featurette explains that they tried to make everything look as real as possible anatomically, when they used dummies instead of stunt people we were not supposed to tell, and for the most part he got it right except for two instancesa) When Barbara's brother is attacked by the cemetery zombie they fall together and his head hits a tombstone with fatal results, you could tell that it was a dummy, the way it bounced instead of just freefalled.b) When Uncle Regis attacks Barbara in the living room and she takes a crow bar to his head its shot from behind Uncle Dead guy, again obviously a rubber Dummy on some sort of Dolly, the crow bar bounces of the head instead of inflicting the type of damage it would usually do with that kind of force.Two more complaints I had were the "mouse" eating incident, where they kept the camera on the zombie too long, long enough to see that the dude wasn't going to eat it. And the ending montage shot in sepia, which I suppose was shot to be artistic but came off instead as an unnecessary final shot.Overall it was a satisfying addition to the "walking dead" genre. The makeup was amazing; the zombie extras were believable in their slow hungry driving quest for human flesh. The "zombie" of the movie award has to go to the daughter zombie, her glazed Skippy little shuffle and braces!! The worst zombie award goes to the Mother she just looked like she needed a Tylenol and a cup o coffee. I wish that Tom would make more like this instead of his upcoming film Vampirates.