156 - Night of the Living Dead (1990)

    Something is making the recently deceased re-animate, and attack the living.  A handful of survivors hole up in a farmhouse, where they argue with each other, and try to figure out how to survive the evening, and find help.
    This was a remake that was directed by Tom Savini.  The story is effectively the same as the original, but the characters have been changed a bit, and the arguments play out differently.  Some people really have a lot of contempt for this version, but I've always thought that it was an important companion piece to the original version.
    As I've gotten more discerning about movies, I've felt a little more disappointed with this version.  The ideas are still great.  Some of the performances are strong, and are over-the-top in just the right way.  There are two roles that are the exception.  Tom, and Judy Rose are both just horrible.  She spends most of her time screaming.  They have some stilted dialogue, but otherwise, they only exist in order to get killed off.

    I have a collection of other thoughts about watching this movie though.  This disc was released by Twilight Time, which put out a limited run of 3000 copies.  They price at a premium, and after shipping, it was about $34 and change.  It's usually worth it though - if you think you'll want a copy of the movie, the prices shoot right up.  They released a Blu-ray of Fright Night, which usually commands about $100 on the secondary market.
    So I preordered this disc.  I was happy to get it.  Then I started reading a bit more about it online.  It has a blue tint, making most of the movie really, really dark.  Then I saw some other reviews claiming it wasn't so bad.  Now that I've seen it, I can say that they're both right.
    The movie starts off looking fine.  Then once the first dead appears, the blue tint kicks in.  By the time Barbara is trying to get away in the car, it's not right.  There's too much muddy black on the screen.
    So I make a bunch of adjustments to my picture settings.  I pick the brightest, most vivid mode possible.  Then I bring up the brightness.  It makes the picture a bit better, and most of the rest of the movie still has the blue tint, but it isn't as powerful.  The strength of it varies, and it's hard to tell if I was just getting used to it.
    Regardless, the print used in this, despite any approval from anyone in authority, is not right.  The darkness of shots doesn't make it more scary, or somehow more mysterious.  It just makes it hard to tell what I'm seeing.