Romero’s ‘Night of the Living Dead’ is the Most Remade Film in History
By: Felipe M. Guerra
Tags: Features, Horror, Movies, Zombies, Film

A common misconception in lists of the “most remade movies of all time” is considering remakes to include different adaptations of the same source material; forgetting that the new Batman with Robert Pattison isn’t a direct remake of the earlier Christopher Nolan or Tim Burton movies, but a new version of the same character. Or that the dozens of films about Count Dracula aren’t remaking Tod Browning’s 1931 classic starring Bela Lugosi, but rather more or less faithful adaptations of Bram Stoker’s novel.

Thus, when we disregard these versions/adaptations as true remakes, one title remains arguably as the most remade in history: George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead.

Filmed in black-and-white outside Pittsburgh, with a cast of unknown actors and a small budget, this 1968 independent film told the story of a group of people trapped in a farmhouse under attack from a growing group of resuscitated corpses.

Horror and violence are often used for social allegory, and Living Dead’s characters represented a microcosm of America at the time. The African-American protagonist is shot and killed in the end just for the colour of his skin. It became an instant classic and one of the most imitated and referenced movies of all time — having practically invented the modern flesh-eating zombie.

A rare color photo from the filming of the original “NOTLD” © Jeff Carney

Another well-known fact is how the film fell into public domain due to a shameful mistake: its original theatrical distributor failed to place a copyright indication on the prints when he changed the original title of the film (“Night of the Flesh Eaters”) to “Night of the Living Dead”!

And so, because of that silly error, now anyone can distribute it without paying any rights to the filmmakers. Until 2019, for example, Amazon listed more than a hundred editions of Romero’s film released by different distributors — including 130 on DVD and 12 on Blu-ray.

The problem with the rights also allows directors to freely remake Romero’s masterpiece without having to pay anything to anyone, resulting in a large number of new versions of the original — 14 to date, although three are still unreleased, two appear to be stuck in development hell, and a new one has just been announced.

Let’s take a look at them to see what has already been done with George Romero’s seminal classic…

Tom Savini’s Remake (1990)

The first remake came in 1990, when those involved in the original film began to fear that some malicious producer could do the same thing before them. Distributed by Columbia Pictures, this new version was relatively successful upon release.

In an October 1990 interview with Fangoria, Romero said the motivation was purely financial, so those involved in the 1968 film finally earned some money:

“We got really ripped off on the original release. I’m very sympathetic to the idea of ​​the investors on that film, who have a stake in the new movie, finally getting to make some money. If the remake can help that, then that’s great”.

Romero served as executive producer on the 1990 remake and helped to update the script for a new generation. The film was directed by Tom Savini, the SFX wizard who, at that point, had been working as a technician in Romero’s movies for 14 years. As a result, the zombie makeup and the bloody scenes were updated for horror fans of the 1980s.

The revised script also took the opportunity to change some aspects of the classic: Barbara (Judith O’Dea), the submissive and frightened girl in the original, became a brave heroine (Patricia Tallman) who fights against the undead as efficiently as men. And the black protagonist Ben (Duane Jones in ‘68, Tony Todd in ‘90), has a different fate at the end.

Tom Savini and the zombified version of Tony Todd filming the remake

Although the final product is respected by fans of the original and horror geeks in general, Savini considered it a traumatic experience and bowed to never direct again. According to a 2014 interview in Daily Dead, the budget of $5M, although much higher than was spent on Romero’s movie, didn’t allow him to shoot all the scenes he intended, and the MPAA demanded many cuts.