| Night of the Living Dead (1990) Released: 1990 MPAA Rating: R Genre: Zombie Nuts and Bolts: As the dead walk the Earth, a group of civilians hole up inside of a Pittsburgh farm house desperate to save themselves from a mass of zombies struggling to break into the sanctuary. Summary: First we meet Barbara and Johnny. Barbara and Johnny are siblings who have traveled 200 miles in an old Mercedes to visit the gravesite of their dearly departed mum. Barb is a mousy little nerd of a woman while Johnny is…well, he's a nerd too; he's just a tad more cynical. As the two are paying their respects Johnny attempts to freak his sister out by creepily droning "They're coming to get you Bah-bar-a." Just as they begin to argue a crusty gooey zombie pops up an attacks them. Barbara tries to stab it with the pin from a wreath display buts ends up stabbing her brother in the hand instead. The zombie turns on Johnny and crushes his face against the cornerstone of a grave. Barb tries to flee but the car pops into reverse and careens into a tree. Now she has to run for her life. As she is running through the fields like July Andrews on crack, more and more zombies come crawling out of the woodwork. She runs until she finds an old farmhouse nestled away several miles off from the nearest town. Once inside she immediately finds Ben (Tony Todd). Ben had retreated to the farmhouse himself after being attacked by zombies at a diner. The two talk shop for a little bit and try their best at safekeeping the house from the zombie hordes. Ben finds a television and channels into a news broadcast. From here, they discover that the only way to permanently defeat these things is to destroy the head. Barbara encounters the zombified owner of the farmhouse Uncle Rege. She cracks the shit out of him with a fire-poker as Ben fights off another zombie with a tire iron. There's also a bit with a disembodied hand that seems to flop about a bit. So now we meet the rest of the cast. Ben and Barbara discover five other people holed up in the basement of the house. We have the Coopers who are apparently a family that was en route to a party or something when their personal misfortunes befell them. Harry Cooper is a whining cowardly self-righteous ass whose daughter had the misfortune of being bitten on the arm by one of the zombies. There is also Tom and his gal-pal Judy Rose. Tom is the nephew of Rege, the owner of the house (Hence the name UNCLE Rege). He had been helping his uncle and his cousin refurbish some of the rooms in the ole homestead. Immediately, Ben and Harry are at odds with one another. Ben wants to board up all the doors and windows while Harry prefers to stay in the basement. The two bitch at each other at great length while the others begin boarding up doors and windows. Ben makes it clear that HE is boss of the upstairs section of the house. Occasionally a crusty tries break through the wall and the gang is forced to beat it back with hammers. Now the problem is, there is only ONE vehicle at the house but it has no gas. There is an old gas pump down the street but a key is required to open it. Right about this time, Barbara begins ditching the nerdette persona in favor of a more ass-kicking motif. She chucks the glasses and trades in the petticoat skirt for a pair of loose-fitting fatigues. She also strips away her blouse in favor of a sheer looking white tang top. (How very Sigourney of her). Barbara is obviously the brains of the operation as she notes to the others how embarrassingly slow these zombies are. She grabs hold of a shotgun and takes two down as they begin to break down the barricade. The gang continues to argue with one another but before long someone turns up a set of keys. Tom and Judy Rose hop in the old pick-up and chug-a-lug down to the gas pump. The zombies chase after them and Tom realizes two minutes too late that he has the wrong set of keys. So what does this idiot do? He levels his shotgun at the padlock on the gas pump and attempts to blow the lock off. Okay…I don't care HOW far south you live. NO ONE is so stupid that they would knowingly fire a double-barrel shotgun at a 5-feet high container of GASOLINE. Do I really need to tell you how this one turns out? Back at the house, Harry's daughter Sarah finally succumbs to her injuries. She turns into a little zombie chick and bites down on her mom Helen. Sarah shuffles into the living room where Ben and Harry are (of course) involved in a shouting match. Ben and Barbara realize that Sarah is now a zombie but Harry won't let them shoot her. Harry shoots Ben, Ben shoots Harry and Barbara shoots Sarah. It's a regular dog-day afternoon up in this motherfucker. Both Harry and Ben survive their respective wounds however. Barbara decides that she has had enough of this Clint Eastwood meets Charles Bronson bullshit and leaves the house. Ben (bleeding to death) goes down into the basement while Harry remains topside to be attacked by some more zombies. Before dying of his wounds, Ben finds the ACTUAL keys to the gas pump and begins laughing maniacally. Barbara meanwhile manages to fight past a bunch of the slow-ass zombies and get to town. She finds that a group of rednecks have been making quite a bit of sport at the expense of the poor zombies. They've actually set up a keg party complete with a bonfire, circus tent and sausage vendors. Each of the hillbillies takes turns tormenting the poor defenseless zombies. Barbara is appalled at this behavior realizing that these pathetic creatures were once real living people. She grabs a bunch of mullet heads and returns to the farmhouse where we find that Ben has finally succumbed to his wounds and transformed into a zombie. They shoot him in the head and begin to search the rest of the house. Barbara finds Harry who is miraculously still alive. She shoots him in the face and tells the others that she just killed another zombie (He wasn't actually in danger of becoming a zombie, she just kills him because he's an asshole. Go Babs! The rednecks collect the dead and pile them on top of a raging bonfire of corpses. Acting/Dialogue: The acting and dialogue fluctuates from character to character. Tony Todd is a fucking Godsend to the Horror genre. He's cool, he's harsh, he's kick ass and yet he's got a sensitive side as well. He makes the character of Ben very 3D and his performance is reminiscent of the original character played by the late Duane Jones. Tony will go on to horror movie immortality when he takes on the lead role in the Candyman films. Patricia Tallman (Of Babylon 5 fame) plays the part of Barbara. Pat brings a layer of depth to the character that was largely unexplored in the first film. Like its predecessor, Barb starts out as this meek and timid house mouse that slowly evolves into a strong woman with a sturdy survival instinct. I'm sure I'm not the only one to notice the similarities between Tallman's Barbara and Sigourney Weaver's Ripley character from the Aliens franchise. Tallman and Todd give the two most standout performances in this project. Then we move on Tom Towles who plays the part of Harry Cooper. This guy over-acts even more than Tim Roth in ape makeup. He is ridiculously self-righteous and his dialogue is so poorly written that it even becomes laughable. Cooper has a segment where he constantly refers to the other protagonists as "Yo-yo's." His character reminds me a lot of Vizzini from the Princess Bride. William Butler doesn't really offer much in the role of Tom. He's pretty much your standard gosh-golly pig-fucking redneck. Katie Finneran (Judy-Rose) is the only character that really gets under my skin. I REALLY hate these chicks that have nothing else to contribute other than screaming their empty little heads off. Screaming has become an over-used and unrealistic characteristic in horror films and Finneran illustrates this point perfectly. I'll bitch more about her later on. Gore: Although Night of the Living Dead has all of the Tom Savini trademarks on it; it is actually light-fare as far as the gore is concerned. The MPAA never ceases to amaze me. Savini's past projects have included scenes so grotesque they would make this directorial debut seem like an episode of fucking Blues Clues by comparison. That is not to say that NOTLD90 isn't gory, but there is a bit of a lack-luster feel to some of it. For the most part, we see throngs of zombies in varying states of decay; some gunshot wounds; autopsy scars, and samples of cannibalism. Nothing like the work we see in Dawn of the Dead when the zombie soldier stands up and his innards spill out onto the floor (Yum!). Guilty Pleasures: Since Judy Rose contributed fuck all else to this picture, you would think that she would at least have the common decency to expose her breasts once in a while right? Instead, all we get to see are a couple of zombie butts. (Male and Female. Hey, who says that Savini isn't an equal opportunity exhibitionist?) The Good: Now this is the way a fucking remake SHOULD be done. (For examples of a remake gone awry just TRY renting the 98 release of Psycho. Go on. I dare ya! I double dog dare ya!) Savini's movie parallels George Romero's 1968 classic in many ways. The storyline is more or less the same, and the character dynamics are fairly similar as well (Barbara's character being the exception). But there are some niggling differences and Savini tells us right away that this NOT our father's zombie movie. The first 'message' to this point that Savini gives us is in the first five minutes of the film. Barbara is standing over the grave of her mother arguing with Johnny. In the background we see this crusty old dude shambling around. In the original, this ended up being the first primary zombie who kills Johnny and chases Barbara to the farmhouse. But in Savini's version, the old guy is just a mourner and sets us up for the 'boo' scene wherein we see the REAL zombie pop in from stage left to attack poor Johnny. From this moment on, we learn not to trust our knowledge of the original as a primer towards understanding the remake. I already mentioned earlier how the MPAA can be a bit finicky at times. With NOTLD90 they decided that they didn't care for the excessive blood used on exit wounds for gunshot victims. So Savini was forced to re-edit certain scenes. In retrospect I think this decision by the MPAA actually aided the overall work. Since most of the zombies would have been of the post-funeral variety, they would likely have had all bodily fluids drained from them during the autopsy stage of zombification. That being said, it actually makes sense that there would be very little blood shown during the gunshot sequences. Even though Romero isn't behind the camera, his influence can still be felt throughout this movie. Savini's film succeeds in capturing the tension and hysteria of the original while also managing to stand on its own as a singular piece of work. The most captivating scene is at the end when we see the rednecks taking shots at the zombies as if they were at a rodeo. They even have a half-ass wrestling ring outside where these stalwart lumberjacks can take turns impressing their friends and family by executing the Sleeper Hold on an unsuspecting corpse. Savini does a good job at portraying a certain subtext in this movie. The most reoccurring theme is not only that of man's inhumanity towards man but also man's intolerance towards anything that he doesn't agree with. If you watch closely, you will notice that only Helen and Sarah are done in because of zombie attacks. Harry kills Ben, Barbara kills Harry and Tom and Judy Rose manage to kill themselves through the most idiotic means possible. I actually like this angle quite a bit and prefer over the stereotypical death-by-zombie method. Another aspect of this film that I enjoyed was Savini's manipulations of perception. Savini goes to great lengths to de-personify the zombies. On the surface all we see are shambling two-dimensional 'monsters' that are entirely lacking any sort of personality, motive or focus. But at the end, he turns the tables on us and reminds us that the 'monsters' in this movie are actually the people that we see every day in our normal lives. The Bad: As much as I like the ending to NOTLD90, I feel it is also mishandled a bit. The theme that Savini is reaching for here is palpable enough as it is. But it becomes heavy handed when we include Barbara's expositive dialogue, "We're them and they're us". Maybe I'm just being nitpicky, but that line came off as a bit too preachy for my tastes. I'm probably just PMSing. Now, there's one quality in this flick that is pretty much a constant in all Romero-related zombie movies. At no point are we ever given a straight-up viable origin for the zombie condition. For some, this may become a rankling omission of much-needed information; for others, it merely heightens the mystery. Ultimately, we don't really need to know how the zombies came to be, but I don't think the film would have suffered if they had simply provided a few lines of exposition during the news broadcasts. They also don't go into great detail as to how the zombies multiply. If you go by the Return of the Living Dead school of thought, you could theorize that zombies create one another once a zombie bites a living host. But NOTLD90 suggests something a bit more viral. At no point does a zombie ever bite Ben, but we all see what happens to him even after he locks himself up in the basement. This leads me to believe that there is something funky in the air. Again, not really a complaint but a little confirmation on the subject would have been nice. Most of my other criticisms were covered in the Acting/Dialogue section. Tom Towles is simply ludicrous as Harry Cooper and I can't even take him serious enough to cheer for his demise when Barbara busts a cap in his melon. But the worst of all is that goddamn Judy Rose. Now while I realize, that the part doesn't present much of a challenge since the character has very little to do, I would at least expect some convincing looking facial distortions or stricken gasps of anguish. But no, when all else fails they all resort to panicked shrieking. There are two ways to portray a horror movie female victim. There is the right way and then there is the wrong way. When a big pus-faced slack-jawed knuckle-dragging zombie busts through your window I expect a person to issue a spine-tingling shriek. But after the initial shock, I expect these would-be victims to act the way a REAL person might act. A real person wouldn't continue to scream at the top of her lungs at every given turn. They would have muffled sobs or labored breathing or maybe they would swear incessantly. There's no natural instinct that says we must automatically belt out a banshee cry every time something doesn't go our way. For good examples of horror victims performing the CORRECT way…check out Halloween or Hellraiser; minimal screams but maximum output. Little Judy Rose could learn a thing or two from Jamie Lee Curtis. The one thing that I find humorously ironic in this movie is that Barbara perfectly points out the film's most grating weakness. These zombies are slower than a decathlon at the Special Olympics! How these guys could seriously freak anyone out is beyond me. Any one of them could have simply packed up their shit and walked to the next town. But instead, they go nuts trying to board up the house and shield themselves away from a horde of critters that are about as threatening as the supporting cast from Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. In lieu of this leap of logic, I find it difficult to take the plight of these characters all that seriously. In trying too hard to be like Romero, Savini actually shoots himself in the foot. Ultimately, Night of the Living Dead is far from being an absurd or empty project. It is a slick colorized upgrade from the classic George Romero indie flick and I think it deserves more respect than it typically receives. Great Lines: "They're so slow! We could walk right past them. We wouldn't even have to run." --Barbara referencing the zombies. "They're us. We're them and they're us." -Barbara philosophizing about the treatment of the zombies. Overall Rating: 7 out of 10 severed heads |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |