More Zombies!
I just finished watching the remake of 'Night of the Living Dead'. Mostly I liked it, but once again I prefer the original. I'm not quite certain why; I think it's mostly a mood thing. Black and white movies, I find, are genuinely creepier. This may have something to do with having watched a lot of creepy black and white movies on television at 3 am when I was a kid... no wonder I turned out so morbid.
They changed a few things from the original script that I quite liked: Barbara is less catatonic, which made me want to hit her less (I found her character extraordinarily annoying in the first one)... of course, by the end of the movie she turns into a sort of female Rambo-type character, which made me want to hit her after all, but at least she was more interesting to watch; the zombies in this one were quite slow (though not as slow as in the first one) but rather scarier, possibly due to special effects (and me not being drunk while watching it, which I was for the first one); the random dead people (well, dead person in this one) in the upstairs of the house have, in this version, an explanation for not returning, as the guy has shot himself in the head... it always bothered me in the original that everyone returns except those two upstairs; lastly, the little girl in this movie, once zombified, actually eats her mother rather than killing her with a garden spade, which makes a hell of a lot more sense for a zombie to do.
One thing made me sad, though. In the original, Ben looks out the window and sees the zombies lumbering beside the driver's side mirror as they approach the house. He has time to go inside, panic a bit, yell at Barbara (who stares at him catatonically, just like in the rest of the movie), do a few other things (I can't remember off-hand what, but I remember thinking that the zombies really ought to have eaten them by now), and run back to the window and panic, as he sees... the zombies, lumbering beside the driver's side mirror as they approach the house. I'm pretty sure Romero used the same footage for both scenes. Alas, that scene (scenes?) has been cut in the remake. Pity, it was one of my favourite scenes. I was cheered up slightly by the fact that the characters actually comment on how slow the zombies are, though.
The ending has also been changed. I'm not sure how I feel about that yet. On the one hand, I actually do like the new ending (as well as the old one, let it be said). On the other hand, isn't that like having Psycho's Norman Bates go to a psychiatrist and wind up having tea with the victim's sister and the cop on a sunny spring day instead of the real ending? I've never been sure what I think of changed endings. It bothered me less in the remake of 'Dawn of the Dead' because they'd changed so much of the original story. In 'Night', though, there are relatively few changes.
*shrugs* I don't regret having lost 1.5 hours of my life to this movie, though, and I suppose that's not so bad. It was interesting to compare the two, if nothing else.
I've come to the conclusion that I'm not actually learning anything new about creating an atmosphere of horror from watching zombie movies. I think I've learned all I'm going to. That said, I'm having a fantastic time watching them, so I see no reason to stop now. Besides, I can console myself that I'm getting a lot of knitting done, so I'm not really wasting time.
Besides, I've grown rather fond of zombies...
My other great achievement since my last entry was to make spicy cheese buns. They're very tasty.
Also, I think I've been trained to write an awful lot at this time of year by my five years in university (Pavlov, anyone?). In addition to filling up my latest writing book remarkably fast, I think I've written a novel's worth in lj entries today. I wonder how long this writing-binge during what used to be essay hell time will last...?
They changed a few things from the original script that I quite liked: Barbara is less catatonic, which made me want to hit her less (I found her character extraordinarily annoying in the first one)... of course, by the end of the movie she turns into a sort of female Rambo-type character, which made me want to hit her after all, but at least she was more interesting to watch; the zombies in this one were quite slow (though not as slow as in the first one) but rather scarier, possibly due to special effects (and me not being drunk while watching it, which I was for the first one); the random dead people (well, dead person in this one) in the upstairs of the house have, in this version, an explanation for not returning, as the guy has shot himself in the head... it always bothered me in the original that everyone returns except those two upstairs; lastly, the little girl in this movie, once zombified, actually eats her mother rather than killing her with a garden spade, which makes a hell of a lot more sense for a zombie to do.
One thing made me sad, though. In the original, Ben looks out the window and sees the zombies lumbering beside the driver's side mirror as they approach the house. He has time to go inside, panic a bit, yell at Barbara (who stares at him catatonically, just like in the rest of the movie), do a few other things (I can't remember off-hand what, but I remember thinking that the zombies really ought to have eaten them by now), and run back to the window and panic, as he sees... the zombies, lumbering beside the driver's side mirror as they approach the house. I'm pretty sure Romero used the same footage for both scenes. Alas, that scene (scenes?) has been cut in the remake. Pity, it was one of my favourite scenes. I was cheered up slightly by the fact that the characters actually comment on how slow the zombies are, though.
The ending has also been changed. I'm not sure how I feel about that yet. On the one hand, I actually do like the new ending (as well as the old one, let it be said). On the other hand, isn't that like having Psycho's Norman Bates go to a psychiatrist and wind up having tea with the victim's sister and the cop on a sunny spring day instead of the real ending? I've never been sure what I think of changed endings. It bothered me less in the remake of 'Dawn of the Dead' because they'd changed so much of the original story. In 'Night', though, there are relatively few changes.
*shrugs* I don't regret having lost 1.5 hours of my life to this movie, though, and I suppose that's not so bad. It was interesting to compare the two, if nothing else.
I've come to the conclusion that I'm not actually learning anything new about creating an atmosphere of horror from watching zombie movies. I think I've learned all I'm going to. That said, I'm having a fantastic time watching them, so I see no reason to stop now. Besides, I can console myself that I'm getting a lot of knitting done, so I'm not really wasting time.
Besides, I've grown rather fond of zombies...
My other great achievement since my last entry was to make spicy cheese buns. They're very tasty.
Also, I think I've been trained to write an awful lot at this time of year by my five years in university (Pavlov, anyone?). In addition to filling up my latest writing book remarkably fast, I think I've written a novel's worth in lj entries today. I wonder how long this writing-binge during what used to be essay hell time will last...?