Skippy's Movie Reviews, #14: Night of the Living Dead (1990 remake)
What do you do when you've got a classic, if outdated, horror movie? Simple: you remake it for the 90s! That's exactly what George Romero and Tom Savini set out to do here. While the same basic plot and execution of the 1968 film were retained, Savini directed this time around, and there were plenty of new twists and turns:
First and foremost, this Barbara was no weak, whimpering ditz. This Barbara kicked ASS! She was superior to the 1968 Barbara in both mind and body. Even in her first scene, wherein she successfully fought off a zombie, one could tell that this was a competent and capable heroine. For this feature alone, we can recommend this movie as a vast improvement to its predecessor. But...from there she went on to kick ass and take names. Even Ben knew that Barbara could fight. She paid attention to everything, had key shotgun blasts when it counted, hammered boards in place while everyone else was arguing, came up with plan B when it was needed...what a gal!
Barbara was played by the actress Patricia Tallman, who as far as we can tell was never in anything else.
Inventory of other cool things, listed in approximate order: Colonel Sanders zombie attacks...cheap Barbara up-the-skirt panty shot...zombie streaker...Uncle Regis takes a dive from the staircase...zombie gets run over and bent in half by truck...crowbar through forehead...poker through chest...Judy scaring a zombie away by screaming...enraged goober zombie...Cooper stealing the TV while everyone's fighting zombies...Judy goes goofy and loses all accumulated cool points...and the mightiest death of all, the final one (we can't spoil it for you, but let's just say that Barbara did the coolest thing of the whole movie.)
Reviewers' Quote #1: "When the living dead are outside and the TV's dead, don't waste time watching it."
Reviewers' Quote #2: "This Barbara has everything." "She proved her usefulness...the other Barbara never could have done that."
Another thing: this movie's zombies were much, much more capable than the original movie's. They moved faster, seemed to show intelligence, and generally were just more dangerous than in the old movie.
We give this one a well-deserved B.