When analysing any remake two factors have to be considered. The first is that it is essential to acknowledge that all films – originals or remakes – are made to generate revenue. This is particularly the case with remakes as they already have an established fan base and therefore an existing audience. The second factor lies with the changes, elaborations or differences that occur between the original and remake. It is here that critical readings can be made, not just on a superficial level but on the more complex level of attempting to understand the appropriate nature of these reinterpretations.

George A. Romero’s seminal Night of the Living Dead (1969) may be one of the few films to have being remade twice, as well as being released as a colourised version and was adapted for the stage. Its first reincarnation appeared in 1990 under the assured and subtle direction of Tom Savini and then remade again, this time in 3D, in 2006 by Jeff Broadstreet. Coinciding with Broadstreet’s version of the film was the premiere of the stage play, performed by The Gangbusters Theatre Company (Los Angeles, 2006) and directed by Christian Levatino. Such recurrent interest in the film suggests that Romero’s film is one of, if not the most, seminal modern horror film. It also raises a more obvious question of why this film – out of all the other acknowledged classics – warrants such a sustained need to be remade.

It could be argued that interest remains with Night of the Living Dead because the contextual values of the plot, the characters and dialogue can function within any time frame. Taking the notion of the siege as its premise, Romero brings together seven radically different people within an isolated farmhouse as they attempt to defend themselves against an increasing threat, the rising of the carnivorous living dead. By examining the film from these perspectives the potential for metaphor and social commentary becomes apparent - the hordes of the undead can be contextualised as the return of any repressed or minority group, whilst the blatant racial tension between black protagonist Ben and racist Harry Cooper is still as relevant today as it was back in 1969. This, coupled with the roles filled by catatonic Barbara and the young couple, Tom and Judy, offers a contemporary writer or director a healthy cross section of society to manipulate and mould to fit their specific agenda.

At the risk of debasing Night of the Living Dead’s metaphoric potential, there is another possible reason why this film was remade – financial gain. In his book The Zombies that ate Pittsburgh (1987), author Paul R. Gagne suggests that the film has made in excess of $30 million. As cynical as this may seem, there needs to be an acknowledgement of this because of an incident involving the original film. When Romero’s final cut was transferred to 35mm for its theatrical release, it was titled Night of the Flesh Eaters but the production team were contacted by a lawyer whose clients had already made a film using that name. The title therefore had to be changed, first to Night of the Anubis and then, finally, to Night of the Living Dead. This title was added to the prints but whoever completed these titles failed to put a copyright notice on the film and, as a consequence, Romero and production company Image Ten lost thousands of dollars of revenue over this one mistake.

The instigating factor for remaking the film in 1990 came from screenwriter John Russo:

“Three years ago we heard rumours that an outfit in Texas was preparing to remake Night of the Living Dead. At that time I was exhausted from battling Hal Roach over the unauthorised colourisation of the original and I was not ready to get into another fight again. So I thought: if we could pull the original team back together – at least get George’s consent on the picture – we could make it a go, do our own remake. So I asked George if, even if he wasn’t interested in working on it, he would not block the film – he’d love to do it. It wasn’t as easy as one conversation; it took three years to pull ourselves together to make this film.” [1]

Romero took on Executive Producer and Screenwriter roles, basing the remake upon the original 1969 script (co-written with Russo) and steadily reworking it so that it functioned as a revised version as opposed to a blatant remake. Because of this, the primary difference between the two films is the rewriting of the character Barbara. In 1969 she quickly slipped into a catatonic state, unable to communicate or respond to the increasing threat of the undead. In the end, suddenly galvanised into action, she attempts to help fend off another undead assault only to be attacked and bitten by her own brother, Johnny.

In Romero’s revisions, the 1990’s Barbara begins the narrative in a similar manner to her 1969 counterpart but, instead of regressing into catatonia, she is becomes a positive force, an active, capable and strong person. The 1990’s Barbara becomes a continuation of the character Sarah from Day of the Dead (1985): as a scientist Sarah is written as someone who is fully aware of the situation, one who has a strong ethical stance and is driven to search for a practical solution to the undead threat. As an individual person, Romero writes her as a mature, sexual and capable woman. And, when the undead attack or bite, she proves herself to be an aggressive and effective survivor. The 1990’s Barbara demonstrates all of these qualities, consistently proving herself and consistently proving that for all the protective and macho posturing of Ben and Cooper, she is the most mature and masculine of them all.

Romero begins his remake in the same way as his original, with Johnny driving Barbara to the cemetery. As they drive through the desolate landscape, brother and sister bicker about their deceased mother. As the argument develops, Johnny accuses Barbara of being afraid of their mother. She immediately denies this but Johnny pursues the accusation by commenting that “She damn near drove you into a convent” and then “When was the last time you had a date?” Johnny’s implication of repression becomes all the more apparent when Barbara steps out of the car: bespectacled, she wears a blouse buttoned up to the collar over which she wears a pink knitted cardigan. Her heavy woollen skirt hangs below her knees.

As they approach their mother’s grave, Johnny continues his taunts until, inevitably, the first of the undead attacks, grabbing then clawing at Barbara. Both fall to the ground, Barbara’s glasses knocked from her face as they do so. As she tries to defend herself, Johnny attempts to pull the zombie off but his attempts are hampered by Barbara who, throughout the brief struggle, manages to both accidentally kick her brother’s face and stab his hand. As the struggle continues Barbara loses her cardigan, the top buttons of her blouse come undone and her shiny black shoes come off. The attack ends with Johnny managing to drag the undead person off his sister only to slip on one of her lost shoes and, as he falls, break his neck on a tombstone.

This opening sequence, although reasonably similar to the original, has great importance to the revised Barbara. Her life, up until this point, has clearly been dominated by her mother to the extent that her confidence and sexuality have been suffocated. During the opening struggle the clothes of her repression – the glasses, the cardigan, and the concealing blouse – are all stripped from her and her brother killed. Symbolically the dead have inadvertently undressed her of her repressed state.

Her outward appearance again changes after she has entered the farmhouse where she effectively kills a large lumbering zombie. Almost immediately after this, Barbara puts on a pair of combat boots, then, later takes off her skirt to put on a pair of trousers and, finally, takes off her blouse and so spends the rest of the film just wearing her vest top. With these clothes, her short cropped hair, defiant gaze and a newly acquired shotgun and revolver, the 1990’s Barbara suddenly resembles that archetype of strong and independent females, Lieutenant Ellen Ripley (Alien, Ridley Scott, 1979). Although this outward transition clearly externalises the internal transition Barbara is undergoing, the crux of her revision remains more with her perceptions of the living dead than her new found masculinity.

To the other survivors the undead are a terrifying and unexplainable force, a force which renders them incapable of action and only serves to bring to the surface their own repressions and anxieties. For Barbara these undead people are nothing more than a threat. Because of this emotional distance Barbara quickly realises the undead can be easily overcome: whilst Ben and Cooper bicker over the merits and detriments of barricading the house or hiding in the basement, Barbara looks out of a broken window and sees only individual, shambling cadavers. As she correctly surmises, all the group has to do is walk past them and out to safety. Predictably, when this idea is proposed, it is scoffed at by both men who, by now have forgotten the zombie threat and seem intent on only defending the homestead and vying for patriarchal dominance. In the end a wounded Ben struggles down into the basement whilst a terrified Cooper hides in the attic, leaving Barbara on her own. Taking one last look at Ben and realising his fate, she calmly and confidently walks out into the fields of the undead. Although she levels her revolver at the zombies she does not shoot them, instead dodging or pushing them away.

As she gets further from the farmhouse an undead mother stumbles towards her, a toy doll cradled in her arms. Barbara stops, lowers her gun and watches the pitiful creature. Before it can lunge at her, she pushes the undead woman away. She begins to sob and in an act of pity (as opposed to a defensive act), Barbara shoots the woman in the head. It is perhaps worth noting that this is the only zombie Barbara kills in the field.

This single death is significant within the film for the execution of this maternal figure (and her symbolic child) potentially signifies the death of both Barbara’s repressions and the death of the family. This death reflects the death of her own mother, the woman who has repressed her into matriarchal submission. As Barbara raises her revolver to the undead mother she is symbolically raising her revolver to her own mother and her imposed, destructive influence. The mercy killing becomes a cathartic act as the symbolic mother is killed, once and for all, by the person who was most repressed by it. Barbara is now free to become who and what she wants to be.

With this reading in mind it is worth briefly exploring an earlier scene in which Barbara shoots Coopers undead daughter: as she stumbles around the room, Ben insists that Cooper shoot her but he is unable to. Ben raises his shotgun to shoot but it jams. As he tries to discharge the cartridge from the chamber, Barbara steps forward, cold and emotionless, and executes the girl with a single bullet to the head.

It is a brutal moment but for Barbara the daughter is already dead and all that remains is a potential threat. It is again her ability to recognise the inhuman in what others see as human that steadily and aggressively sets her apart from the other survivors. Yet, for all this, it is when she encounters the undead mother that Barbara’s emotions come to the fore. Given this, a further potential reading becomes apparent: within Romero’s 1990 script nothing is sacred and nothing is safe – love, social values and family all mean nothing in the face of the rising dead. All are rendered void as emotions become the downfall of any potential survivor. It is of significance then that Barbara quickly sheds her emotions - like she shed her repressed clothing – and replaces them with a level headed professionalism. As she says to Ben after she has easily killed the large, lumbering zombie, “I’m not panicking. You told me to fight so I’m fighting.” It is perhaps then no surprise that by the narrative end, out of the seven people barricaded in the farmhouse, Barbara is the sole survivor.

This text has placed great emphasis upon Romero’s revised rendering of Barbara and the readings this potentially generates. Yet, potentially at odds with this reading, is the manner in which director Savini chooses to render the undead. Within this version of the film there is a firm insistence on the director’s part that “these aren’t zombies, they’re dead persons.” [2] This approach is evident in their physical visualisation (each one is clearly a unique person as opposed to the generic mass of Romero’s previous Dead films) and is compounded by certain narrative actions and dialogue. This is most evident within the young couple, Tom and Judy, with Tom stating “I couldn’t have killed Uncle Rege” whilst Judy screams “You’ve just killed Mister Coulter!” as Barbara once again defends the farmhouse through excessive violence.

Although this sense of undead individuality heightens the film’s realism (and therefore its horror) it also serves to potentially work against Romero’s revisions of Barbara. She perceives them as a present threat and not as a past identity as the others do. Although this does imply a tension, by the narrative end it works in Romero and Savini’s favour for the undeads individuality generates their revised symbolic power: having survived the night, Barbara stumbles upon a group of redneck survivors who take her back to their camp. She surveys the scene with a dawning realisation as she sees that the undead have been captured and put into pens to be tormented and beaten. Others have been strung up by their necks and hung from trees, their thrashing bodies used for target practice. Barbara looks on in horror as she whispers “They are us and we are them”.

In some ways Barbara’s response to the living dead can be equated with Barbara’s response in 1969: unable to cope with the death of her brother and then the hordes of the undead, that Barbara retreated into a mute, emotionless state. In 1990 Barbara may be galvanised into action by the threat but her psychological perception of it is still of emotional detachment. The implication here is that whatever her response, Barbara can only deal with it and can only function against it if her emotions are suppressed. This in itself makes a further connection between Day of the Dead’s Sarah and the 1990’s Barbara as the actress who played Sarah, Lori Cardille, says of her character,

“One of the more interesting things about Sarah… is the fact that she’s always pushing emotions aside, because the only way to survive the film’s environment is to suppress a lot of feelings. When her emotions do come out, it is very powerful.” [3]

The 1990’s Barbara’s emotional suppression can of course be equated to her repressed state at the start of the film and the implied matriarchal domination. But perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this version of Barbara is that she moves through the narrative as a professional – cold, calm and calculating. Rarely does she show emotion, pity or compassion and when she does – killing Coopers daughter or shooting the undead mother – it is perhaps out of the necessity for survival above all else. This reading is given further weight within the film’s revised final scenes: returning to the farmhouse to rescue Ben, Barbara and a posse of rednecks find him undead and kill him. Hearing the noise, Cooper comes down from the attic and is greeted by a stern faced Barbara. Without hesitation, she shoots him in the head. The rednecks rush into the room to help but Barbara casually turns towards them and says “Another one for the fire.” Whether she killed Cooper in revenge for Ben’s death or merely because of his empty patriarchal posturing remains ambiguous. Either way her repressed emotions are given form in violence and, now, murder. Because of this it can be suggested that Romero’s revisions may seem positive but by the narratives end they do nothing more than replace one repression – 1969’s Barbara’s catatonia - with another.

For all of these revisions, Savini and Romero’s film occupies an uneasy ground for it is neither a remake nor an entirely new film. This ambiguous status does not necessarily detract from the film itself for Savini’s direction is unobtrusive and places great emphasis upon the characters and their dilemma as opposed to the potential gore and unrelenting violence the narrative so obviously offers. So controlled is his direction that his version of Night of the Living Dead mutes potential metaphors and meaning and instead opts for a more drama driven approach. This, of course, can only add to the tensions between characters and the situation they are inevitably going to find themselves within. Because of this, Night of the Living Dead 1990 is one of the few successful Horror remakes for it attempts – like David Cronenberg’s revised version of The Fly (1985) – to make something new which extends the filmmakers preoccupations. For this alone, Savini and Romero should be applauded.

Endnotes

1. David Kuel, Zombie Holocaust (Fear, No. 21, September 1990) p.25

2. ibid p.26

3. Paul Gagne, The Zombies that ate Pittsburgh (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1987) p.156

Bibliography

Jamie Russell, Book of the Dead (Surrey: FAB Press, 2005)

John Russo, The Complete Night of the Living Dead Filmbook (Pittsburgh: Imagine Inc., 1985)