Night of the Living Dead
(1968)
Vs.
Night of the living dead (1990)
By Jasmine Casimir
“They’re coming for you
Barbara.”
George A Romero dazzled
audience and future filmmakers with his classic Night of the Living Dead in
1968, birthing a new genre of horror, soon to create and maintain a solid cult
following. As you all may know, it was then remade in 1990, directed by Tom
Savini. The following is a comparative look at both films.
We begin with the
classic and familiar storyline of siblings visiting a graveyard. Soon after the
quick introduction to our first characters, seemingly queued onto screen by
Johnny with the infamous tagline, the two are greeted by a man who appears to
have just risen from the grave. Johnny is killed instantly, and Barbara flees to
a nearby house where she meets Ben, and eventually two couples: one with a
“sickly” little girl.
Taking a break however
from my synopsis, which I am sure you can make up from there without
continuation, I do want to point out the main merit of the original. Although
pretty much only a technicality by way of “they didn’t have the technology yet”
was, for starters, the black and white film and the lack of noise-assault. This
did two things: it choked down much of the aural and visual horror in a way
that made these aspects less cheap and obvious, and it did not force one to be
on edge, by way of scary sounds the whole time. The horror was in the actors and
situations as is arguably the way it ought to be. It was genuine, organic, and
in that sense, much more “spooky” than overtly visually terrifying.
Back to the plot and
characters. It’s possible that this is all due to my
post-second-wave feminist upbringing, but the fact that the entirety of
Barbara’s personality was boiled down to constant, irrational, screaming,
whimpering, sad-sack in the corner was so irritating that I spent equal amounts
of brain power trying to ignore her as I did watch the rest of the film. Granted, this was just a reflection of the times, it was a distraction, as that character
archetype always is.
I do also want to point
out that the little girl character, once transformed into the living dead, was
much more jarring and creepier due to lack of over-done gore, the film quality,
and the lack of brain-punching sounds. I don’t think many film “monsters” have
left as big of an impression on me as that little girl, with the subtle, dark,
sunken-in eyes, appearing from dead silence with that iconic facial expression
as she ceases munching on her father’s dead corpse to kill her mother with a
trowel.
Taking a gander at the
1990 remake now, we are greeted with the familiar scene of siblings, brother
killed instantly, pretty much follows the original plot pretty damn well,
including the line, “They’re coming for you Barbara,” in the same oh-so-spooky,
foreshadowing manner. Barbara wasn’t so much of a waste of sobbing, hysterical
oxygen, taking on an equal lead to Ben. Which, although a fundamental device
to the original, it was not uncomfortably irritating for me to watch. This
film, apart from a few other very minor adjustments, such as divulgence of
clarification, was pretty much the same. Per usual, I will not give away any
endings. I did have moral obligation to stand and applaud to the switching up
of the ending, which gave one hell of a nod to the original but also to the
character-facelift of our leading lady.
All in all, despite the
fact that the Night of the Living Dead remake was basically just the original
with minor alterations, it was not, in my opinion, the abomination that some
people feel that it was. I will admit, I am a bit of a purist and generally
lean much more heavily to the original. That being said, the remake did not
reek of over-cautiousness (despite the strong similarity to its predecessor) or
do that hideous, terrible, hateful thing where they leave out really important
stuff and invent new scenarios that just screw the original story line. Both
films are worth merit in my book and take up equal playing time in my VCR, and
maybe you’ll think so too.
- Jasmine Casimir