Product: Night of the Living Dead (1990)
Rating: 3.0
Held together by good action, suspense, and Todd's acting
I'll admit that I have never seen the original version, but this Night of the Living Dead remake is not bad, although it undeniably could have been better.Fans of the original know the plot. Johnny (Bill Mosely) and his sister Barbara (Patricia Tallman) are visiting their mother's grave in a cemetary isolated in a rural area. When they arrive, everything is normal. It's a sunny day and it's bright and warm until Johnny is attacked by a dead man. He's killed and Barbara takes refuge inside a house. A man named Ben (Tony Todd) arrives and along with five other people in the basement of the house, they must hold off the cannibalistic zombies that have somehow awaken and refill the gas to Ben's truck, the only means of transportation they have.The first fifteen minutes of Night of the Living Dead are truly frightening. The film wastes no time into getting into its action and immediately we are plunged into a peaceful world that's turning dark and claustrophobic quickly. There's the eeriness in the whole house when Barbara enters and the fact that there are zombies lurking inside is even scarier.This film has no lack of action as we continuously watch Ben, Barbara, and the other hold off the zombies with rifles and anything they can use to disable the zombies' brains, which is the only way to kill them. The film moves at a very fast pace, yet has time to develop the characters, thus making us care for Ben and Barbara, and making us hiss at the zombies and Cooper.The make-up and special effects are pretty good. They may not live up to the standards of the technology we have now, but the zombie design is easily the best since Day of the Dead.The real problem in this film lies in the acting. Most of the actors are stale with the major exception of Tony Todd. He delivers a good performance as the likeable hero Ben. He's a brave and strong guy who doesn't panic in a situation, but instead takes charge. Ben is definitely one of the best heroes in horror film history, thanks to Tony Todd's performance. This is a man who deserves better work rather than horror sequels like Candyman 3. Patricia Tallman is okay in her role as Barbara. The main problem in her performance stems from the fact that her character change from coward to amateur zombie slayer is a bit difficult to swallow. The rest of the performances, coming from Tom Towles and company, don't fare as well. At times, they try so hard to look scared they come off almost laughable. If better performances (or actors for that matter) had been placed beside Todd and Tallman, this film would have been considerably better.While the last 30 or so minutes of the movie has a large amount of frantic tension and action the ending is a disappointment and lacks some logic behind it. Even if the acting didn't live up to the suspense, at least the ending could have been made with more intelligence and logic. It's not a dumb ending if that's the feeling I'm conveying, it's just the fact that it could have been improved or even changed significantly. If you don't want to know how it ends, then by all means, do not look at the box cover of the VHS version of this movie. Either just rent it quickly or watch the DVD rendition.Night of the Living Dead is full of action, suspense and good scares, and if the acting and the ending could have lived up to all those good qualities, this would have been considered an excellent remake, if not a horror classic itself. As it is, this film is pretty good and decent and it probably won't disappoint most horror fans.