Ugh. You should know things aren't going to be pretty when the first (and most accurate) description of a film is "ugh." Can one even begin a review with an "ugh"? Have I basically assured you this is less a "review" and more "evisceration"? Is that apropos of "proper" film criticism, or have I already guaranteed that the term "proper" has no place in a "blogorium"? Oh well, Retro Reviews are designed to be more, *ahem*, informal than typical reviews here. After all, these are as much about reflection as they are about assessing the film on its relative merits.
Wait, I still have to assess the 1998 John Russo recut, 100% free of Romero input and it shows of Night of the Living Dead on its own merits? By "its own merits," I hope that means I can dispense with a recap of Night of the Living Dead - if you, for some reason, haven't seen George Romero's Night of the Living Dead, then the edited "special edition" created by its writer for the film's 30th Anniversary won't mean a thing to you. Even if you have seen it, it probably won't mean a thing to you, but this review is going to focus exclusively on what Russo was attempting to do, how it impacts the original film, and why it is this version of the film (mercifully) drifted into obscurity because of how readily available copies of Night of the Living Dead are.The first thing you should know if you've never seen the 30th Anniversary Edition of Night of the Living Dead is that John A. Russo, the writer of the film, is perfectly aware there was no copyright on the original film. Romero is aware too, but he's content on simply continuing the story of the "dead" despite the decline in quality as he presses onward. Russo, on the other hand, had bigger plans, ones that bear the particular stench associated with "Star Wars Special Editions," released one year earlier. And this time, Russo slaps that copyright on twice, just so we're clear that this version of NOTLD isn't public domain.
Russo opts to drop 15 minutes of footage (a great compendium of what's missing here) and replace it with 15 minutes of his own, newly shot prologue, flashback, and epilogue material, none of which has any bearing on the original film's beginning, middle, or ending. Newly shot material tends to have this effect, like inserting Boba Fett into an existing (albeit previously unfinished) Jabba the Hutt sequence from A New Hope.
The Night of the Living Dead 30th Anniversary's new footage comes courtesy of Russo's decision to provide backstory for Bill Hinzman's "cemetery zombie": instead of simply being a ghoul that Johnny and Barbra mistake for a graveyard visitor, he's now an executed child murderer being buried in an unmarked grave, which allows for seven minutes of two gravediggers (Grant Cramer and Adam Knox) yammering with a Prison Guard (Scott Kerschbaumer), the family of the murdered child (George Drennen and Julie Wallace Deklavon), and the Reverend Hicks (Scott Vladimir Licina), before Hinzman's coffin is opened and he rises from the dead. Apparently, there's enough time for the gravediggers to escape before Johnny and Barbra arrive, although their truck leaving cuts immediately to their arrival.
I'm going to focus on Reverend Hicks, because Licina's character carries over into two of the other three major additions: a TV interview with Hicks where a zombie bites him on the cheek, and a "One Year Later" epilogue where the Reverend claims he didn't turn because he was "chosen by God" and that the living dead are "demons from hell" the righteous can (and will) overcome. But wait, Ben (Duane Jones) is still killed, only the nihilistic closing is replaced by Reverend Hicks providing a "happy ending."
Licina also wrote a new "score" for this version of Night of the Living Dead, a term I use loosely since it consists entirely of the same keyboard "theme" repeated ad nauseum that manages to rob the film of any suspense it had. Gone is the sparse, hopeless, background of Night of the Living Dead; in its place, a laughable "goth" soundtrack you'd expect to hear tacked on to a Public Domain release of Nosferatu. It doesn't help that Licina sticks out like a sore thumb in the new version: Russo does a perfunctory job of trying to make his new cast look like they existed in 1968, but Licina's Anton LeVay look-alike pulls viewers back into the late 1990s:
Not only is Russo's new dialogue terrible, but the amateurish acting (and terrible ADR while the gravediggers are driving) fail to salvage any of the hackneyed conversations about how "it ain't right" that Hinzman should be buried in a cemetery for "what he done." Worst of all is Licina's Reverend Hicks, and his final, asinine monologue about how "through me, a miracle has been worked*" that not only undermines Night of the Living Dead's bleak atmosphere, but is so stupid, so out of left field, that one wonders what Russo had in mind when he wrote it.
The other addition to the film isn't a negative or a positive, but an unneeded sidestep into flashback territory, ostensibly to include more "zombie" action and half-heartedly bridge the original film with the newly tacked on ending. After Ben recounts the "gas station" encounter with the dead, he barricades the farmhouse while a radio broadcast plays describing an attack nearby, and Russo cuts away to show the undead coming back to life and shuffling around, including a "waitress" zombie:
that is inserted into "crowd" shots outside of the farmhouse later before being killed during Reverend Hicks' attack. It serves no other purpose than to provide more gore, give a few more friends and family of Russo the opportunity to play "living dead" on camera, and removes the audience from the claustrophobic house.
I realize that it's cruel to attack a writer for wanting to go back and revisit a screenplay he co-wrote and make changes, but like The Version You've Never Seen of The Exorcist (which followed two years later) sometimes the director got it right the first time. The 30th Anniversary Edition of Night of the Living Dead serves no purpose, frequently cuts away from the main action for no reason, and tacks on moralizing prologues and epilogues with characters who have nothing to do with the story. It's a total waste of time. Say what you will about Tom Savini's 1990 remake of Night of the Living Dead (I happen to be a fan), but I assure you the Russo re-jiggering is the nadir.
For a while, Anchor Bay's release of the 30th Anniversary Edition was the biggest game in town on VHS and DVD: it had a wider release than most fly-by-night Public Domain copies of Night of the Living Dead, was better publicized, and claimed to have both versions of the film on the disc (it didn't, as the "original" version still had Licina's score overlaying on the soundtrack). Thankfully, Elite Home Entertainment released two better versions of Night of the Living Dead on DVD (one of which was the much lauded Millienium Edition), followed by a higher profile DVD release of the film designed to coincide with Dimension's release of Diary of the Dead on home video. These days, it's much easier to find any of those versions than the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad 30th Anniversary recut.
In fact, I'm going to slap a So You Won't Have To on this review as well, because there's no reason anyone should ever subject themselves to this garbage.
Ugh.
* actual quote.
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