With Barbara in the forefront more than she was in the original, Romeros script makes Ben slightly more childish in his squabbles with the petty, cowardly Cooper. In the original, Ben was more clearly depicted as the voice of reason (even if he wasnt always necessarily right) but in the remake, Ben is still heroic and well-intentioned but his inability to temper his rage against Cooper is his undoing (hes also shown to unfairly overreact to Cooper at times, as when he causes the TV Cooper is carrying to tumble down the cellar stairs) while Barbara is the one whos more able to keep her cool. Even Bens idea to board up the house turns out to have been a fatally flawed plan as Romero introduces the idea that all that hammering may have been responsible for attracting a larger group of zombies to the farmhouse as we see zombies aimlessly staggering in the field suddenly become aware of the noise and then turn and walk towards it. Todd fills Duane Jones shoes admirably, though, and he gets a classic moment towards the end as he sits alone in the basement, sees the missing keys to the gas pump, and laughs madly to himself at this last bitter irony.
NOTLD 90 differs from the original most notably in its last act, as characters meet different fates than their original counterparts and we see more of whats happening in the world outside the farmhouse on the morning after. The sympathy towards the undead that Romero developed in Dawn and Day is in evidence here and as we see the grisly circus of undead abuse unfolding through Barbaras eyes (this is essentially the ground level view of what the Dawn of the Dead crew glimpsed as they flew in their stolen news helicopter over rednecks shooting zombies for sport), the closing moments of NOTLD 90 serve as an effective coda not just for this retelling of Night, but for Romeros zombie series as a whole. Even though this is Savinis film rather than Romeros, Romeros screenplay is enough to give it a credible place within the official Romero canon. If anything, this version of Night dovetails more neatly with Romeros sequels than the original does. I hasten to add that this doesnt make it a better film than the original Night, only that it better reflects how Romeros rules of zombie behavior had evolved over time.
Romero would later (thanks to the resurgence of zombie cinema) add to his undead legacy with Land of the Dead (2005), Diary of the Dead (2007), and 2009s Survival of the Dead (with more to come, probably) but whether you think those films are good or bad (and they have divided fans), they feel like they inhabit their own separate space. NOTLD 90 was the last of the Romero-verse zombie films to be made in Pittsburgh, rather than his current base in the Great White North, and it feels like a grave marker for that earlier homegrown era. Ignored or derided upon its original release, the reputation of Savinis film has only grown over the years proving that eventually every Night must have its day.
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