Night of the Living Dead: 30th Anniversary Edition DVD Review
I really wanted to simply put “Shit Sandwich” as my review for this movie, but I also thought of this: The updated version of Night of the Living Dead takes a low budget 1968 movie and brings it down to the low budget level of 1998. So, I suppose I must go on.
I never thought that acting in older films was very good. It was never very natural or realistic to me. I just sort of accepted it. They were acting and they looked like it. Well, over the years, the standards have risen. John Russo has stayed true to form by hiring hacks that couldn’t act their way out of a soiled paper bag to act in the added scenes to his 1968 film. These scenes do not add anything to the movie, in fact, they detract from it.
The film starts with two guys loading a simple pine casket into a truck while a prison guard looks on . They’re going on and on about the bad things the dead prisoner had done and how creepy they were. Then they name drop Beakman’s diner, the diner that Ben mentioned being at in the original 1968 film. They drive their truck to a cemetery where they pull up to a priest and a couple who are supposed to be the corpse’s victim’s parents. You see, they’re all there to watch the burial. There’s not even a hole yet, but they have shovels. Because that’s how funerals go: a priest and people that hate the deceased watch a couple of grave diggers work for hours before spitting on the grave and grabbing a bite at the local diner. Anyway, they open the casket, like you do, to reveal a guy heavily made up to look like Bill Hinzman, the original cemetery zombie. He twitches and comes to life and attacks the grave diggers who drive away. Then the movie continues from Barbara and Johnny parking in the cemetery. There are a few superfluous zombie scenes throughout the film, some sort of car crash victims rising form the dead, but mostly just more wandering zombies. Then, at the end when daylight comes, the priest is interviewed by a reporter while zombies are shot in the cemetery. The priest is attacked by the Bill Hinzman zombie, to which his only defensive moves are to spout priestly god shit about hellfire and damnation. He is subsequently bitten on the cheek just before the victim’s family comes to his aid with a shovel in one of the most poorly choreographed scenes ever. The priest can be quoted as whimpering “Ah. My face”. The movie continues on as normal with the hunters shooting zombies and Ben getting shot before, yet another new scene is added. This scene takes place a year later as the same reporter interviews the priest about his survival of the zombie bite. He goes on and on about god’s will and being the receiver of a miracle. The reporter leaves as he has a fit of religious babblings.
In addition (or subtraction, depending on how you look at it) to the added scenes, they also added a new crappy keyboard soundtrack. It’s PAINFULLY obvious that they did not have the original components of the film to work with. The new soundtrack is only there when there’s no dialog to get in the way. They just stripped all of the sound off of those parts, added the crappy keyboard soundtrack and added whatever footfalls, rustling, shambling, or other incidental sounds that would have to appear to make it look right…yet it doesn’t. There are a few parts where they get a little daring and actually put the music over where there is small amounts of dialog. At these points you can hear the little snippets of the original score as the dialog plays out. There are also a few parts where the new score cuts real short so someones dialog can be heard, along with the original score.
For some reason, they also expanded the news reports on the radio and television. At one point they actually redundantly report on Ben’s account of seeing the zombies attack the tanker truck near Beakman’s diner. In fact Beakman’s diner is mentioned so much throughout the film, it’s as if Beakman’s diner had paid for the advertising.
The new stuff on the video is definitely a detraction given that it’s poorly shot, poorly acted, poorly scripted, poorly composed, poorly applied and poorly executed in all manners. The only thing done well in this movie is getting across that the zombie in the casket is the same as the original cemetery zombie, Bill Hinzman. I don’t mean to imply that it was done well, it’s just obvious that that is what they were trying to get across. The new stuff is simply a distraction.
There is no reason you need to see this version.
None.
I’m pretty sure that was Hinzman reprising his role, not some hack who looks like him.
I disagree about the quality to some extent. It’s nowhere near as good as the original cut, but if you watch it with a grain of salt, you can envision that this is what Russo would have done had he held full reigns back in 1968.
For once I can second one of Jef’s famous trashings. Good job.
outburst: So let us compare what Russo and Romero was envisioning while co-writing NotLD. The script was based upon a story by Romero, and emcompassed what we came to know as The Dead series. That would be Romero’s vision for the movie. Russo on the other hand would go on to produce the ridiculous little film Children of the Living Dead. Infact, that piece of zombie droppings would be the reason for the 30th Anniversary Edition of NotLd, since it introduces Abbot Hayes as the first zombie (”Cemetary Zombie”). His version of NotLD is a prequel to CotLD.
The Millenium Edition is the way to go.