31 Days of Halloween - Day 31: Night of the Living Dead (1990)

For the last few years I always do a 31 days of Halloween month. The past few years I re-read all the original Goosebumps books and before that I'd watch 31 horror movies. However I realized every single time I watched 31 Horror movies I exclusively picked ones I enjoyed. I decided to do something slightly different. I composed a list of every horror movie I owned and put them in alphabetical order. Then using a random number generator I generated 31 numbers and watched the movies that corresponded with those numbers. Some are great films and others… well… are less than fun let's say. I hope you enjoy!

Day 31: Night of The Living Dead (1990) (Movie #340)

I always loved this remake. It does the things I want to see in a remake. It sticks to the original as closely as possible but still does it's own unique twists on things. The plot is simple enough. The dead raise from their graves and a group of strangers find themselves hiding out in a house together trying to figure out what's going on and how to survive.

The script follows the original pretty closely until about halfway when they make one major change that (a) improves the film and (b) makes this it's own unique version of the story. Barbara toughens up. In the previous movie Barbara (at best) was a screaming prop, in this movie she raises up to the insanity and becomes a leader.

This lone element not only changes the tone of the film but also the ending (for better or worse) to the original. The biggest issue with this remake is that is loses some of the racial commentary in the previous film. HOWEVER I also question how intentional that was originally or if people saw it and Romero just went along with it.

All in all this was a fun and quick little film to end this years 31 Days of Halloween. I lucked out. 

Matt Kelly is the host of the popular podcast The Saint Mort Show, a frequent contributor to Geekscape.net, the founder of Chords for Cures and the co-writer/co-director of the upcoming comedy Describing the Moon. He also loves it when people surprise him with purchases from his Amazon Wishlist… just saying.