Trivia / Night of the Living Dead (1990)

• Awesome, Dear Boy:
  • Tom Savini had wanted to do the special effects on the original, but his Vietnam service put a stop to that. He agreed to direct the remake precisely for this reason.
  • Patricia Tallman initially didn't want to play Barbara, feeling she couldn't live up to Judith O'Dea. But then she read the script and saw Barbara becoming an Action Girl - signing on straight away.
• Banned in China: Banned in Germany anyway.
• Cast the Expert: Who better to play a Barbara who gets Xenafication and fights zombies than stunt woman Patricia Tallman?
• Channel Hop: The film was released by Columbia Pictures, and is now owned by Sony. It had a rare (but controversial) US Blu-ray from Twilight Time (a region-free Australian disc from Umbrella Entertainment was more easily available) before Sony released it themselves.
• Creator Backlash: Tom Savini has called the production "the worst nightmare of my life" - as he had so many ideas he wanted to explore. But George A Romero was "away in Florida writing", and two incompetent producers kept clashing with him every which way.
  "The movie is about forty percent of what I intended. It would be a much better movie if I had got to put in all the stuff I really wanted to do. Then the MPAA hit us hard. You know with my name on it and George Romero they were waiting for us. And they made us cut some more stuff so it's kind of a sterile film with mine and George's name on it and that's not what the fans expected."
• Executive Meddling:
  • Some shots of gore and violence had to be cut to secure an R rating.
  • Inverted in one case; Tom Savini pushed for Barbra to become an Action Survivor in this remake.
• Money, Dear Boy: This remake came about because of the infamous copyright mistake with the original - which led to George A Romero seeing little in the way of profit from such a Sleeper Hit. He had won a lawsuit against the distributor, but they went bankrupt before he could collect any money. He was also worried that someone else might do an unauthorized remake and, when he heard 21st Century Film Corporation were interested in doing one, figured he may as well get one going.
• Promoted Fanboy: Tom Savini was a huge fan of the original and had hoped to do the effects work for it, but was in Vietnam at the time.
• Reality Subtext: The female zombie that walks through the field and then turns to face the house when she hears the sound of hammering. She's played by the woman who owned the house used for the production.
• Refitted for Sequel:
  • The scene of the zombies being lynched was scripted for the original film, but cut due to the racial tensions in America at the time.
  • Barbra becoming the sole survivor was an early idea for the original too.
• Role Reprise: In the European French dub, Med Hondo reprised the role of Ben from the 1968 film.
• Throw It In!:
  • The house used for filming was owned by a man with a taxidermy hobby, so they left all the stuffed animals on the walls for the film.
  • The autopsy zombie in the graveyard wasn't scripted and was thought up last-minute by Tom Savini.
  • The zombie who comes through the window after Barbara shoots Mr Magruder was a cab driver Tom Savini took a ride with. Thinking he would make a good zombie, he asked him to appear in the film.
• Vindicated by Cable: The film was panned by critics and only did so-so business at the box office, but has slowly gained a cult following over the years, and its critical reception is more positive now.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Laurence Fishburne auditioned for the role of Ben. Ving Rhames was also considered for the role. Rhames would at least get to star in Dawn of the Dead (2004).
  • An early idea was to have the film start out in black and white, and then slowly add colour.
  • A planned scene was to have a female zombie break through the window, and Barbara would hallucinate that it was her mother. She would say "where's Johnny?" and then turn back into the zombie. In the final film this was replaced with the zombie Barbara first shoots in the chest and then the head.
  • Tom Savini toyed with the idea of showing a shooting star at the beginning of the film, hinting at the original explanation for the zombies: a crashing Venus probe causing radiation.

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