Much like almost every horror fan out there, I've seen "Night of the Living Dead," and had my cherry busted by it when I was five. Since being in the public domain, Romero's movie has been open to many, many re-workings, one of which occurred in 1990 when his protégé Tom Savini got the wild idea to remake "Night of the Living Dead," and you know what? It wasn't bad. In fact his remake stands as one of the better remakes of a Romero film to date, and Savini enlists much of the same dread and horror and instills it with a bleak tone of greens and dark blues to invoke a film that's quite gritty, bleak, and hopeless even in spite of changing a lot of character actions and increasing the tension. It also helps that he enlists the talents of special effects guru Gregory Nicotero to turn the walking dead in to shambling harbingers of death that I still have difficulty looking at to this day. The song is almost like what you've heard in the original. Barbra and Johnny are driving to the grave of a recently deceased relative, Johnny taunts Barbra about the walking dead, lightning strikes and Barbra is attacked by one of the shambling corpses they mistake for a funeral goer.

The 1990 remake manages to increase the tension and violence by making the zombies much more gruesome, so the zombies that looked like sleep walkers in the original, now are just monsters who are mangled, and often times disfigured. While many devotees of the original will have a problem with this since Romero's whole idea for making the zombies mostly average looking to act as a metaphor for us, Savini's intent is to tell a scary story first and leaves the social commentary as a backdrop. If you can accept that, then you'll enjoy what he puts down for us. The zombie in the opening of the film is much more disturbing to watch and Savini manages to quite sharply relive the events from the 1968 film by speeding the pace up a bit.

Depending on how you want to see this new version. Savini provides a controversial alteration by taking Barbra and transforming her in to a warrior woman who takes it upon herself to fight back mid-way in to the movie. Another brilliant casting decision involves Tony Todd as Ben, and he grabs on to the role and makes it his own. True no one can remotely top Duane Jones' strong groundbreaking performance, but Todd makes this character in to a likable anti-hero, one who has seen more than anyone has in the entire house explaining a horrifying story that takes place in a diner that leads him in to the house, while couping up with other survivors holed up in the basement of the farm house, all of whom have their share of stories and are nursing to health a girl who was bitten by a zombie. Most of the film involves the same tropes as the original. Ben and Hooper argue and bicker, they can never stop long enough to focus on the real enemy, Johnnie and his wife try to keep the peace and Barbra learns how to become Xena, by shooting and bashing the walking dead whenever possible.

While Savini's version of the horror classic is lacking in social commentary, even characterization, and a gut puncher of an ending Romero brought to the genre, this 1990 remake is about as good as it can be... especially if you saw "Night of the Living Dead 3D." Savini offers up his own twist on Romero's premise with gore, disturbing special effects, sharp performances, and a gritty bleak atmosphere that keeps this remake admirable and entertaining. If you can detach yourself from the original, you may just have a blast with this one.

• Tom Savini's originally wanted to start the film in black-and-white, then slowly adding color.
• The film was banned in Germany when it was released.
• Laurence Fishburne and Eriq La Salle both auditioned for the role of Ben.