Night of the Living Dead starts as brother & sister Barbara (Patricia Tallman) & Johnnie (Bill Mosley) visit their recently deceased mother's grave, there they are attacked by one of the living dead & Johnnie is killed although Barbara manages to escape on foot to a nearby farmhouse. There she is attacked by more of the living dead but a man in truck called Ben (Tony Todd) arrives & helps her, the truck is out of gas & they have no choice but to stay put. Then out of the cellar some more people emerge, together they decide to board up the house to try & keep the flesh eating living dead outside as they desperately try to come up with a plan of escape, as the night draws on tensions in the house escalate & the cannibalistic living dead outside rapidly grow in number...<br /><br />Directed by Tom Savini this is absolutely brilliant remake of the George A. Romero classic Night of the Living Dead (1968) who actually turns in the screenplay for this, made years before the recent Hollywood fascination with horror remakes, The Hills Have Eyes (2006), The Omen (2006), The Ring (2002), Dawn of the Dead (2004), The Wicker Man (2006) & Black Christmas (2006) to name just six of the top of my head this '90 version of Night of the Living Dead is how it should be done & I thought it was a great film on many levels. The script stays pretty faithful to the original which to be fair I haven't seen in a number of years so the exact details of it are a little hazy, it starts out almost scene-for-scene although it changes things at the end. This treats the original material with respect & adds it's own ideas without drastically altering things which is how a remake should be I suppose, I really liked the ironic ending where the heroic Ben was in fact wrong & if they'd listened to the selfish Harry they would have all been rescued. The character's are very strong here & I particularly liked Ben who gets some really good dialogue as he tries to explain things from his own perspective & what he has seen prior to meeting Barabra. The film moves along at a great pace, it's never boring, it's as plausible as any film can be featuring flesh eating zombies, it's really nice to see a pretty intelligent horror film with good adult character's rather than annoying teens & a well thought out script.<br /><br />This was the directorial debut of special make-up effects man Tom Savini & it perhaps comes as a surprise that this Night of the Living Dead remake is pretty tame in the gore department, there aren't even many gory head shots, there's a severed hand, a few rotten zombies & not much else but the story compensates. To be fair the filmmakers were forced to cut some of the gorier stuff to get the rating that they wanted, however there is a documentary on the DVD release with some of the gore shots that were cut out. There's a nice tension to the film, the in fighting between Harry & Ben together with the ever growing hordes of zombies outside.<br /><br />With a supposed budget of about $4,200,000 this is very well made with good production values, impressive special make-up effects & very good acting especially Todd.<br /><br />Night of the Living Dead '90 is a top film, it's how remakes should be done & is a fantastic homage to original that is a great film in it's own right. Definitely well worth a watch.