6/7/15 (Part Two): The Heart and the Loneliest Hunter

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A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night, addicts, Alex O'Flinn, Amirpour, Ana Lily Amirpour, Arash Marandi, atmospheric films, Bad City, based on a short, black and white film, black-and-white cinematography, cinema, death, Dominic Rains, dramas, drug addiction, drug dealers, evocative, fantasy, father-son relationships, feature-film debut, film reviews, films, French New Wave, ghost town, horror films, Iranian-American, isolated communities, Jim Jarmusch, John Hughes, loneliness, Lyle Vincent, Marshall Manesh, Milad Eghbali, moody films, Movies, Mozhan Marnò, romances, Rome Shadanloo, Sam Kramer, set in Iran, Sheila Vand, skateboarders, spaghetti Westerns, street urchin, stylish films, vampires, writer-director-producer

Billed as “the first Iranian vampire Western,” writer-director-producer Ana Lily Amirpour’s A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014) is an endlessly fascinating debut, a thoroughly confident horror-art piece that manages to turn its grab-bag of cinematic influences into something effortlessly cool. More Dead Man (1995) than Only Lovers Left Alive (2013), Amirpour’s film throws gorgeous black and white cinematography, nods to the French New Wave, German Expressionism, the holy trinity of Jarmusch, Bergman and Jeunet and the ’80s youth flicks of John Hughes into a blender and hits “puree.” While the results aren’t perfect, AGWHAAN is still a stunning feature-film debut from an amazingly talented new filmmaker and a necessary addition to the existing bloodsucker canon.

Amirpour’s debut (based on an earlier short) concerns the various residents of the Iranian town of Bad City. A virtual ghost town, Bad City appears to be inhabited solely by drug addicts, prostitutes, pimps/pushers, hustlers and the odd street urchin, here and there. Our humble hero, Arash (Arash Marandi), is a hustler who looks like he stepped straight out of East of Eden (1955): with his white t-shirt, blue jeans, omnipresent sunglasses and vintage muscle car, he’s a classic rebel without a cause. His father, Hossein (Marshall Manesh), is a pathetic junkie who owes a wad of cash to the local pimp/dealer, Saeed (Dominic Rains). For his part, Saeed is a philosophical, if thick-headed, thug who isn’t above taking Arash’s car as partial payment for his dad’s debt, while ruling his “girls” with an iron fist. One such “employee” is Atti (Mozhan Marnò), the sad-eyed, thirty-year-old prostitute who plies her trade on the barren, empty streets of Bad City, overshadowed by the towering oil derricks in the background.

As these various sad-sacks go about their repetitive routines, a new force emerges to shake up the status quo: a mysterious, silent young woman (Sheila Vand) has taken to stalking the streets, doling out death to any who cross her path. When the vampiric girl puts a permanent end to Saeed, Arash seizes the opportunity and attempts to fill the void left by the drug dealer. As Atti and the mysterious girl form a bond, however, Arash finds himself similarly drawn to the enigmatic figure. What does the young woman really want? What does the future hold for Bad City and its shadowy residents? One thing’s for certain: if you have to be out after dark, be sure to stay far, far away from the girl walking home alone…your very life may depend on it!

Lush, hazy, hypnotic and vaguely hallucinatory, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is the kind of film that you wrap around yourself like a cozy blanket, consciously giving yourself up to its warm embrace. While the pacing and visuals often bring to mind a perfect synthesis of Jim Jarmusch and Ingmar Bergman’s respective styles (the scene where the Girl skateboards down the center of the deserted street is framed in a way that turns her into the spitting image of Death from the iconic Seventh Seal (1957), while the film’s numerous long takes and relative lack of forward momentum handily recalls the aforementioned Dead Man), Amirpour’s influences are far more wide-reaching than something as simple as “Indie 101.”

Rather, Amirpour has taken a range of different styles and influences and made them all work towards a common goal: in this case, the goal being the film’s all-encompassing sense of foreboding atmosphere. Along with the more traditional indie influences, there are several strong, direct nods to the ’80s youth films of John Hughes (the lovely scene involving Arash, the Girl, a mirror ball and the White Lies’ song “Death” is one of the best examples but certainly not the only one), as well as a strong Spaghetti Western undercurrent (the wonderfully evocative score, locations and sense of big, empty spaces is pure Leone, through and through). On paper, Amirpour’s debut might sound like a rather head-scratching gumbo but the results speak for themselves: thanks to the Iranian-American filmmaker’s deft touch, everything comes together beautifully, giving the film the sort of unifying style befitting something like Jeunet’s exquisitely-crafted fantasias.

While the evocative score and beautiful cinematography (Lyle Vincent, who also shot the upcoming Cooties (2015), is an absolute wizard with a camera) help to give the film a sense of dreamy unreality, the acting keeps everything from dissolving into just another morass of pretty images. Marandi is a suitably cool, aloof “antihero,” while Manesh brings enough genuine regret to his portrayal of the sad-sack, aging junkie to make his character decidedly more complex than he might have been. Rains brings an interesting, almost empathetic quality to his portrayal of the sleazy pimp/dealer, calling to mind a less outwardly insane version of Gary Oldman’s iconic Drexl.

Most impressive, however, are Mozhan Marnò as the melancholy Atti and Sheila Vand as the titular vampire. In both cases, the actresses do a tremendous amount with as little as possible: Marnò is able to express entire worlds of sadness and sensuality with nothing so much as a half-smile and a look from her piercing eyes, while Vand’s portrayal of the Girl is nothing short of ethereal and completely alien. In many ways, Vand’s Girl is similar to Scarlett Johansson’s Female in the similarly eerie Under the Skin (2013): other-worldly, curious, nearly mute and of constant interest to the males around them, the Girl and the Female could certainly share a common bloodline, even if their ultimate goals differ wildly.

Amirpour’s hazy film is many things (seductive, sad, odd, cool and hypnotic being but a few) but it also manages to nail one of the most important aspects of any horror film: when necessary, the film is also genuinely scary. Although the Girl’s attacks have a tendency to rely on some decidedly stereotypical musical stings and old-as-the-hills “scary voices,” the pacing, framing and sense of impeding dread are all masterfully executed, resulting in some great, unique scares. The scene where the Girl stalks a young street urchin is a virtual master-class in how to build and execute: the fact that Amirpour also manages to throw in a clever reference to Fritz Lang’s child-killer classic M (1931) is only frosting on a very tasty cake.

Despite being thoroughly impressed by A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, there were a few elements that let a bit of air out of the proceedings. The aforementioned vampire stereotypes are problematic only because the rest of the film is so clever: at times, relying on the same stock clichés as other vamp films does more to pull Amirpour’s film down than it does to unite it with a common cinematic sensibility. I was also less than on board with the more verite, handheld-shaky-cam style of certain scenes, usually those involving Hossein’s drug use and withdrawal pains. Not only was the handheld style a distinct step-down from the gorgeous cinematography but the “drug scenes” had a different flow and pace that jarred against the rest of the film’s more dreamy atmosphere. In truth, all of these moments could have been cut without damaging the rest of the meticulously crafted narrative.

All in all, Amirpour’s debut feature is a real showstopper, the kind of film that kicks in the door and practically demands your undivided attention. While her debut was set in Iran (although filmed in California), Amirpour’s next film will, apparently, be a “dystopic love story, set in a cannibal compound, in a Texas wasteland,” featuring the combined talents of Keanu Reeves, Jim Carrey, Giovanni Ribisi, Jason Mamoa and the always amazing Yolonda Ross. In other words, it looks like Amirpour is going to continue her fearless genre-splicing. I’m willing to wager that her next feature will grab the world by the scruff of the neck and shake it silly. If it’s half as impressive as her debut, I’ll be the first person in line.

10/16/14 (Part One): A Haunting We Will Go

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1960s cinema, 31 Days of Halloween, based on a book, black and white film, cinema, Claire Bloom, film reviews, films, ghosts, haunted house, haunted houses, Hill House, horror movies, Jan de Bont, Julie Harris, Lois Maxwell, Movies, opening narrator, paranormal investigators, poltergeists, repressed sexuality, Richard Johnson, Robert Wise, Rosalie Crutchley, Russ Tamblyn, Shirley Jackson, The Day The Earth Stood Still, The Haunting, The Haunting of Hill House, The Sound of Music, Valentine Dyall, voice-over narration, West Side Story

Long held as one of the greatest haunted house stories ever, Shirley Jackson’s classic novel, The Haunting of Hill House, is a masterpiece of mood, a subtle examination of the very nature of fear that relies more on unsettling impressions than outright scares. It’s a treatise, in a way, on the manner in which all humans are, to a greater or lesser extent, “haunted” by their own pasts, powerless to resist the myriad phantoms and specters of the mind. It’s a book in which the suffocating atmosphere of fear is strong. even if very little appears to actually happen before our eyes…as the best writers and filmmakers have always known, what takes place in our minds is infinitely more terrifying than anything physical we can be shown. When given the option, our imaginations will always find new and unique ways to put the screws to us.

Robert Wise’s The Haunting (1963) stands as the first and, arguably, best adaptation of Jackson’s book, standing head and shoulders above the far sillier CGI extravaganza that was Jan de Bont’s 1999 version. As befits the source material, Wise’s film is a subtle, low-key affair that relies heavily on sound design and an outstandingly creepy location to make its point: despite featuring a number of highly effective setpieces, The Haunting is anything but a typical thrill ride. Despite possessing a surplus of atmosphere, however, Wise’s version of the material is almost sunk by an unnecessary, constant and rather irritating voice-over narration, courtesy of lead and focal point Julie Harris: her take on Eleanor is often more of a chore than a blessing, leaving the rest of the cast and atmosphere to do all the heavy lifting. Due to this issue, Wise’s version of The Haunting ends up being sporadically entertaining, a film that I can honestly say I respect more than actually like.

Hewing close to the source material, Wise’s film begins with a short discussion of the origins of Hill House, which features the frankly awesome proclamation that “whatever walked at Hill House walked alone.” We’re then introduced to our industrious cast: the kindly, inquisitive Dr. Markway (Richard Johnson), who heads up the paranormal investigation into Hill House; Eleanor (Julie Harris), the ridiculously high-strung member of Markway’s group who once experienced poltergeist activity; Theodora (Claire Bloom), the relentlessly nasty ESP expert who bullies Eleanor as if her life depended on it and Luke (Russ Tamblyn), nephew to the house’s elderly owner and along as a representative, of sorts.

Once the crew of ghost-hunters get to Hill House, things begin to proceed in ways that should be immediately familiar to anyone who’s ever read or seen anything relating to haunted houses: things seem to move out of the corner of one’s eye, strange noises abound and the house is full of inexplicable cold spots. These subtle moments end up being the film’s greatest asset: Wise is able to wring maximum impact out of scenes that feature nothing so much as an incessant banging, similar to how Paranormal Activity (2007) gets so much mileage out of opening doors and slamming cupboards. As the group continues to investigate the phenomena, it becomes abundantly clear that much of the spectral activity seems to center around Eleanor: her agitated state of mind and extreme neurosis appears to be giving the house and its “inhabitants” a nice little jolt of pure paranormal power. When Dr. Markway’s disapproving wife, Grace (Lois Maxwell) shows up at the house, uninvited, she inadvertently sets off a chain of events that will ultimately prove the old adage “There are some places people just shouldn’t poke around in.”

For the most part, The Haunting is an extremely well-made, subtle and effective film. Wise, a Hollywood veteran of such iconic films as The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951), The Sound of Music (1965) and West Side Story (1961), is an assured hand behind the scenes, keeping the tension high and the atmosphere thick. The house, itself, is a fantastically creepy affair: the actual haunted house is one of the most crucial aspects of any haunted house story and Wise’s depiction of Hill House is a real showstopper. The film also features several nicely realized setpieces, including the iconic scene where Eleanor thinks that Theo is holding her hand when, in fact, the other woman is actually all the way across the room: who, then, was holding Eleanor’s hand? It’s a truly great, scary moment, the kind of intelligent fright that we just don’t get enough of in modern horror films.

With so many things in its favor, then, why do I find myself so lukewarm regarding The Haunting? I’ve always had an affinity for subtle, “old-fashioned” horror films and haunted house stories are some of my all-time favorites (Shirley Jackson’s original novel was a staple in my childhood reading list). Due to these factors, The Haunted should be one massive home-run from start to finish. The main issue with the film, unfortunately, becomes Eleanor’s highly unnecessary voice-over narration. Harris’ portrayal of Eleanor is already a bit problematic, since she approaches it in the same way that Nicholson approached his version of Jack Torrance: she already seems unhinged when the film begins, leaving precious little breathing space before she’s full-on bat-shit nuts. On top of this, Wise pours on some thoroughly unnecessary voice-overs that find Eleanor waxing mundane about any number of subjects: there are times when her voice-overs approach the likes of “I think I’ll walk over here and see what’s going on before I walk over there and see what’s going on,” which becomes especially torturous when repeated ad nauseam.

I can’t recall how many times I was wrapped-up in the film only to have one of Eleanor’s stupid voice-overs haul me kicking and screaming back into reality. When a film’s entire impact is derived from its atmosphere, any attempt to wreck that mood is not only questionable but completely mind-boggling. To make matters even worse, the character of Eleanor becomes almost the entire focus of Wise’s film: getting stuck with an unlikable character is one thing…getting stuck with an unlikable protagonist for the entirety of a film is a whole other ball of wax, entirely.

Ultimately, I wanted to like The Haunting much more than I actually did. The atmosphere and mood are nicely realized, the location is great and the reliance on subtle chills versus overt shocks is always appreciated. Despite these pluses, however, I found myself constantly irritated by Harris’ performance (although, to be fair, I also found Claire Bloom’s Theo to be a thoroughly ridiculous character, such an unrepentant bully as to be one “Ha ha” away from a Nelson Muntz) and the unnecessary use of voice-over narration to spoon-feed information in the most obvious of ways. While I can state, unequivocally,  that Wise’s version is miles above de Bont’s, I can’t help but hope to one day see a version that gives Jackson’s source material the respect it deserves. As it stands, however, The Haunting is a decent, if flawed effort, full of rich atmosphere but nearly scuttled by a tedious lead performance that makes the film a bit of a chore to get through.

7/27/14: A Real Case of McCarthyism

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1950s movies, alien invasion, auteur theory, based on a book, black and white film, Body Snatchers, Carolyn Jones, cinema, clones, Communism, Dana Wynter, Don Siegel, dopplegangers, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, invasion, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Jack Finney, Jean Willes, Joseph McCarthy, Kevin McCarthy, King Donovan, Larry Gates, McCarthyism, Miles Bennell, Movies, paranoia, pod people, remakes, sci-fi, sci-fi-horror, small town life, The Body Snatchers, the Red Scare, Tom Fadden, Virginia Christine, voice-over narration

What if the people around you, including your family and loved ones, started acting odd? Not tin-foil hat, playing-fetch-with-an-invisible-dog odd, mind you…nothing that obvious: more like a subtle, slightly out of your line of sight kind of odd. Maybe they seem a little out of it…a little too unemotional and disconnected. Perhaps you’d try to tell someone else, let them know that Uncle Johnny didn’t seem quite like himself or that your next-door-neighbor suddenly seemed a little different. What if nobody believed you because everyone was suddenly acting strange, including all authority figures? Where would you turn, at that point? Would you “give in” and join the masses or would you resist, standing alone against everyone else? More importantly, however…how could you be really sure that the problem wasn’t that YOU had suddenly changed? How can you tell when you’re just paranoid…and when you’re right?

This, of course, is the basic setup for Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), the first of several filmed adaptations of Jack Finney’s sci-fi classic, The Body Snatchers. Coming as it did during the maelstrom that was McCarthyism and the “Red Scare” of Communism, it’s pretty easy to read both Finney’s original novel and Siegel’s original adaptation as commentary on the insidious nature of the communist infiltration of America during the mid-’50s (or, to be more accurate, the perception of certain high-ranking members of the U.S. government as to said subtle “invasion”). While there’s certainly nothing wrong with this reading, I’ve always felt that Invasion of the Body Snatchers was more a cautionary tale about the dangers of assimilation and the problems of “group think,” namely humanity’s inability to turn down any opportunity to “join the mob,” than it was explicitly about communism. Regardless of the particular focus, however, one thing is abundantly clear: Finney’s original tale of clones, pod people and alien invaders has proved remarkably resilient and has become part of the cultural zeitgeist in a pretty substantial way.

IOTBS’s begins with a wrap-around story (added later, against Siegel’s wishes, and easily the worst thing about the film) that introduces us to our hero, Dr. Miles Bennell (Kevin McCarthy), currently under a psych hold at the hospital. No one seems to believe Miles and the story we’ll see is his frantic explanation of events to one of the attending physicians, in order to convince them that he;s not bonkers. It’s an old-fashioned kind of affectation, similar to the whole “it’s only a dream” cliché, and exists purely to give the film a happy ending (the studio demanded the additional scenes after Siegel’s original cut was deemed “too bleak” for the general public).

Miles has been on vacation for a few weeks and returns to his small town of Santa Mira, California, to find that things have been a bit strange in his absence. Plenty of folks have been getting sick, according to his assistant, Sally (Jean Willes), but everyone refused to see the other town doctor or tell Sally about their issues. To compound the mystery, Miles’ old flame, Becky (Dana Wynter), comes to him looking for help: her friend, Wilma (Virginia Christine), has somehow become convinced that her uncle, Ira (Tom Fadden) is actually an impostor. According to Wilma, Uncle Ira looks, sounds and talks just like he always did but there are small, almost imperceptible differences: namely, the “spark” seems to be gone and Ira seems strangely emotionless. Becky has tried to convince her friend that she’s being unnecessarily paranoid, to no avail: she wants Miles to use his authority as a doctor to set Wilma straight.

After running into his psychiatrist friend Danny (Larry Gates), however, Miles comes to realize that there may be more going on in Santa Mira than he originally thought: some sort of “mass psychosis” is causing people to believe that their loved ones are actually impostors. The shit really hits the fan, however, when Miles gets a call from his good buddy, Jack (King Donovan): turns out that Jack has found some sort of “unfinished man” at his house, a seemingly dead (or comatose) creature that looks just like a human, minus things like fingerprints and distinct facial features. At first, Miles and the others seem rather blase about the whole thing (the body is just kept lying on a billiards table and they all sort of poke around it, as if it were roadkill rather than an unformed body) but an overnight development suitably shocks them: the body now looks exactly like Jack, right down to a recent cut on his hand. When Miles finds a similar “double” of Becky, in her basement, one thing is abundantly clear: extreme strangeness is afoot.

Surprisingly, however, the police seem decidedly nonplussed by the whole thing, waving off Miles’ concerns and cueing him in to the fact that there might be a deeper conspiracy going on. Sure enough, Miles, Becky, Jack and his wife, Teddy (Carolyn Jones) are witness to something truly horrific: weird, alien seed pods are spitting out the half-formed proto-humans. Putting two and two together, Miles and the others realize that they’re in the midst of an alien invasion: somehow, the seed pods are cloning the residents of Santa Mira, replacing them with emotionless doubles like Wilma’s Uncle Ira. Who can the friends turn to, however, when everyone seems suspiciously emotionless? When everyone, including law enforcement, seem like alien clones, it’s up to Miles and the others to resist and get the word out to the rest of the world…before it’s too late.

Siegel’s version of IOTBS has always been hailed as a sci-fi masterpiece and there’s quite a lot to like here: the pod scenes are always creepy and suitably icky, there are plenty of well-staged, intense chase sequences (Siegel, after all, was the gritty action-auteur behind such classics as The Killers (1964), Dirty Harry (1971) and Escape From Alcatraz (1979)) and there are several pretty unforgettable images (one of the very best is the bit where Miles kills his own clone with a pitchfork). It’s also quite obvious that Siegel’s film has influenced modern-day filmmakers: the scene where Miles and Becky try to pass themselves off as “pod people,” in order to pass through the clones unnoticed, should be rather familiar to anyone who’s ever seen Shaun of the Dead (2004), while the notion of Miles and Becky taking pills in order to prevent falling asleep couldn’t have passed by Wes Craven unnoticed. The film maintains a fairly tense, claustrophobic atmosphere and Siegel’s original, “downer” ending may be old-hat in these pessimistic times but surely would have been a strong jolt of pure moonshine back in the mid-’50s.

While there’s a lot to like here, however, there’s also quite a bit that doesn’t work. The aforementioned wraparound story is fairly awful and clichéd, while the musical score is always overbearing and too “obvious”: in certain ways, IOTBS is scored like a silent movie, with all of the bombast that the descriptor entails. I also never felt like the romance between Becky and Miles caught heat: it always hovered somewhere between silly and (ironically enough) emotionless, which allows Becky’s latter-half declaration that “I want to love and be loved! I don’t want a world without love!” to come across as both sarcastic and kind of sad.

It’s also kind of difficult to figure out just what the “rules” for the pod people are: sometimes they’re emotionless, sometimes they form mobs of shouting, angry people…sometimes the clones act normal, sometimes they don’t…sometimes the very act of falling asleep is enough to get someone “replaced,” sometimes it isn’t. Without a clear establishment of these basic guidelines, IOTBS comes across much less like a “hard” sci-fi film and more like a drive-in feature (not necessarily a bad thing, to be honest, but still a thing).

Quibbles aside, however, Siegel’s version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers is always entertaining and, frequently, more than a little creepy. The suffocating feeling of paranoia is a palpable thing and when the film is firing on all cylinders, it’s pretty unstoppable: the scene where pods are handed out to the town-members, in preparation of a larger scale invasion, is a real corker and there’s the very real sense that IOTBS features a fun-house warped version of a Norman Rockwell painting. Kevin McCarthy is a suitably fun, if occasionally over-the-top hero and if the rest of the cast ends up a bit generic, they all provide fine, consistent support. The black and white cinematography is also quite nice, if not quite as evocative as something like The Bad Seed (1956): it’s fairly workmanlike but gets the job done. As far as the various film versions of Finney’s story go, I’ve always been more partial to the 1978 version (they always have me at “Donald Sutherland”) but Siegel’s original is a close runner-up. If you’ve never seen the original, give it a shot: the film might feel a tad bit “old-fashioned” today (and that’s coming from someone who tends to place somewhat excessive emphasis on older films) but there’s still a lot of value here.

After all, as our world becomes smaller and more homogenized, it’s increasingly easy to see the notion of “pod people” as being a little too close for comfort: to paraphrase Pogo: we have seen the pod people and they is us.

5/19/14: Everything Old is New Again

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Bill Moseley, black and white film, cinema, color vs black & white, film reviews, films, George Romero, horror, horror films, isolated estates, isolation, Katie Finneran, McKee Anderson, Michael Haneke, Movies, Night of the Living Dead, Patricia Tallman, practical effects, remakes, special effects pioneer, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the living dead, Tom Savini, Tom Towles, Tony Todd, William Butler, zombie movies, zombies

As a general rule, I’m not a fan of film remakes, especially remakes of classic or iconic films. I can see the merit, to a point, in remaking a bad or compromised film, especially if you were a fan of the original…sort of a take two, if you will. Remaking a well-made, well-received film, however, seems completely pointless. I’ll go to the grave stating that no modern audience member will die if they’re forced to watch something that’s more than a few years old. I promise: sitting through a black and white film or something from any of the various decades before 2010 will not cause internal bleeding, memory loss or phantom limb syndrome.

With that being said, however, I’m a little more ambivalent when it comes to filmmaker remaking their own films. While this seems like kind of an odd, specific situation, it has happened a few times, usually when a popular foreign director makes the transition to Hollywood films: German misery merchant Michael Haneke remade his original Funny Games (1997) as an American version in 2007; Takashi Shimizu remade Ju-On (2002) as The Grudge (2004) for American audiences;  George Sluizer turned Spoorloos (1988) into The Vanishing (1993); and Ole Bornedal’s Nattevagten (1994) became the Ewan McGregor starring Nightwatch (1997). In each of these instances, the originals were popular films, especially on the festival circuit, which prompted American remakes to capitalize on the buzz (although it’s interesting to note that Haneke waited a decade between his versions of Funny Games): the thought, it seems, is that American audiences aren’t big on reading subtitles, since some of these films are only different by virtue of the language spoken. The 1990 remake of George Romero’s iconic Night of the Living Dead doesn’t really fit any of these bills but it’s also the furthest thing from something like the modern remakes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Friday the 13th, since Romero produced, wrote the screenplay and handpicked the director: special effects pioneer Tom Savini.

If you’ve never seen the original Night of the Living Dead (1968), your first move should be to go watch that, right away: I’ll wait. All done? Excellent. Here’s what you saw: a raw, visceral, black and white nightmare that’s equal parts siege picture and sly social commentary, the kind of film that features a child consuming her mother and a black hero (in 1968, no less) who survives the zombies only to be shot dead by rednecks. It’s an independent film in every sense of the word, featuring a bunch of amateur filmmakers wearing as many hats as they can pile on their heads and going for broke in a way that only hungry, young artists can. It’s an unmitigated classic, almost singlehandedly responsible for nearly 50 years of zombie movies.

Remaking a film like Night of the Living Dead doesn’t seem like such an impossible task: after all, the first film was a crude, zero-budget production where local business people who donated funds took on roles as zombies, newscasters, police, etc. It was a black and white film that required gore effects at a time when that just wasn’t the norm. With all of the advances in filmmaking technology, special effects and computer-generated effects, making something like Night of the Living Dead in this modern era should be easy. The problem, of course, is that Night of the Living Dead was a labor of love: it was a real film that became a classic, similar to Hooper’s original Texas Chainsaw or Cunningham’s Friday the 13th (1980). Catching lightning is a bottle twice is no easy feat: manufacturing impact and meaning is impossible.

For the most part, Savini’s remake of Night of the Living Dead isn’t drastically different from Romero’s original but there are a few subtle changes/differences. The film still takes place in an abandoned farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, although the place now looks like a cross between the Sawyer homestead in Texas Chainsaw and Norman’s taxidermy-crammed residence in Psycho (1960). We still get Barbara but Patricia Tallman’s version is a huge improvement from Judith O’Dea’s original: this Barbara is no catatonic babe-in-the-woods but an ass-kicking “final girl,” more Ellen Ripley than doe-eyed victim. Her character development feels very organic, although the scene where she trades her skirt for a pair of pants seems a bit on the nose. Ben is still here but Tony Todd’s version is more of an angry, shouty bloke, not too far removed from Tom Towles’ obnoxious Harry Cooper. This version of Harry manages something that I’d always felt impossible and actually makes the character more repellent and crude: as portrayed in Savini’s version, Harry Cooper is a Jersey Shore-meathead, a ridiculous character who’s just one “You’ze guyz!” away from being a complete stereotype.

This, then, isn’t a carbon-copy of the original, aside from the obvious color vs black and white issue. While many of the ideas and themes from Romero’s original have been kept (Romero did, after all, write the screenplay for the remake), there are many aspects that have been changed completely. The horror of Barbara confronting her own zombified brother has been done-away with in the remake by having her come across his already dead body: it robs a chance for some genuine emotion from the story and feels like a surely missed opportunity. Whereas the original had Ben survive the ordeal only to killed by humans the following morning, the remake does away with this, as well: Barbara is the final survivor and Ben emerges from the house as an obvious zombie, only to be shot and killed by the rednecks. This is a subtle but big difference: in the remake, there’s no mistaking Ben for a zombie and the kill is just about as necessary as you get. In the original, however, it’s never made clear whether Ben is killed because the trigger-happy rednecks think he’s actually a zombie or because they see an opportunity to kill a black man without penalty. Barbara is the one, in the remake, who gets to use the zombie apocalypse for her own ends: when the loathsome Harry Cooper emerges, unscathed, Barbara calmly and coldbloodedly shoots him, proclaiming him another zombie. In this instance, there’s no mistaking her intent, as with the rednecks killing Ben: she means to get vengeance for Harry’s assholery. Whereas the final scene in the original finishes off Ben’s character arc, the final scene in the remake finishes off Barbara’s character arc: a different focus for a different era, as it were.

For all of the subtle differences between the two versions, both Romero and Savini’s Night of the Living Deads are remarkably similar. For my money, though, the original still has more impact: there’s something that’s undeniably sad, lonely and terrifying about the original and I can’t help but feel is has something to do with the black and white. The cinematography in Savini’s remake is often quite good, don’t get me wrong, but it’s never very evocative. There’s very little atmosphere in the film and it functions much more as an action film than an honest-to-god horror movie. The effects and makeup in the remake, as expected, are excellent, although I found quite a bit of the prosthetic work to be a little rough: there’s one damned rubber hand that seems to make an appearance everywhere and it never looks like anything more than a cheap haunted house prop. I was actually surprised to find that the effects work and gore seemed a little tamer in the remake than the original, something which made no sense to me until I read that Savini’s remake was severely edited to earn an R rating: that makes a lot more sense. Still, what’s here is suitably excellent, although there isn’t anything groundbreaking. Careful observers might also note that the ending seems to prefigure Romero’s later Diary of the Dead (2007), with zombies being used for target practice and as opponents against human wrestlers/fighters.

Ultimately, Savini’s remake stands as a well-made but, ultimately, rather pointless exercise, aside from the obvious benefit of putting more funds into Romero’s coffer. Since his copyrighting issues with the original film resulted in the almost complete loss of any exhibition revenues, it’s only fitting that he would get a “second chance,” as it were, via the remake. Some of the changes strike me as worthy: It’s always refreshing to have a more feminist take on female characters in horror films, so the remaking of Barbara as strong heroine strikes me as a great, welcome change from the original: I always found the original character to be one of the weakest, most pewling characters in cinema. At the end of the day, however, Savini’s Night of the Living Dead is still the same film about a small band of survivors trapped in a farmhouse by the living dead that Romero’s was. Romero’s film may have been the more impactful, personal and iconic of the two but that should be a given: a perfect copy of a Picasso will never be worth as much as a Picasso…unless you don’t know it’s a copy, that is. Savini’s film is obviously a copy but, in this case, that’s probably alright.