Looking for another reason to love your 4K UHD, Blu-ray, and DVD collection? Special features like commentaries featuring filmmakers, critics, and other film fans. After living for more than a decade elsewhere on the internet, Commentary Commentary has been reborn here at Dread Central and as is fitting for its return from the dead, it’s now all about the horror.
2025 marks the 35th anniversary of Tom Savini’s Night of the Living Dead. It was a much maligned remake back in 1990 and viewed as something nobody wanted, but opinion has turned over the years as more people see and appreciate it. It’s more than just a color update as Savini ups the energy level to deliver a good time for horror fans.
The film was cut for an R-rating on release leaving some of Savini’s bloody bits unseen by fans, but that changes now with the long overdue release of the uncensored version. The new 35th anniversary release offers both the theatrical and uncensored cuts on 4K UHD and Blu-ray, and it comes loaded with extras.
Now keep reading to see what I heard on Tom Savini’s commentary for…
Night of the Living Dead (1990)
Commentators: Tom Savini (director), Michael Felsher (moderator)
1. The uncensored version begins in “glorious” black & white as Savini intended it to be 35 years ago when he didn’t have the power to make it happen. The switch to color when the zombie attacks is “the beginning of my version,” says Savini.
2. Another thing he fixed to the way he originally conceived it? The opening shot of Barbara (Patricia Tallman) and Johnnie (Bill Moseley) driving away from the camera now has their dialogue get lower as they get further away. “Why would you hear them talking loudly when the car is far away?”
3. When George Romero first told Savini that he had gotten funding to remake Night of the Living Dead, the FX master was excited because he thought he was being hired to make zombies again. Romero clarified that he wanted Savini to direct it, “and I think it’s because of my work directing three episodes for his Tales from the Darkside TV series.” Felsher confirms this as he had spoken to Romero about Savini’s remake.
4. That’s a dummy leg “kicking” the zombie in the graveyard.
5. Tallman previously worked with Savini on a Tales from the Darkside episode called “Inside the Closet.” He had wanted her as the lead, but he was overruled and forced to use her solely for stunts. “I met Patti when she was kicking the shit out of her boyfriend in a fight class at Carnegie Mellon University.”
6. Savini points out a little trick at 7:57. Tallman’s character runs to camera barefoot and is about to cross a gravel driveway, but when she stops by the hay with her legs below the frame, an assistant is putting shoes on her feet.
7. The house that Barbara runs to has a nameplate by the door that says “M. Celeste,” and Savini says only one reviewer at the time understood the reference to the Mary Celeste, a merchant ship found floating in the late 19th century devoid of crew or passengers. The ship was completely seaworthy, but a lifeboat was missing—and no one who had been aboard was ever seen again.
8. The farmhouse was located in Washington State and was for sale—house and land included—for $80k. (As a recent homebuyer in Washington, this made me cry.)
9. Savini wanted his actors to look as much like their original counterparts as possible, with the only exception being Barbara, who he knew was going to be different. “She wasn’t going to be a braindead twit.” He compliments Judith O’Dea—the original Barbara—and her performance, but he’s not a fan of the character. Felsher counters later that the original Barbara was “catatonic,” to which Savini replies, “well, isn’t ‘catatonic’ a brain dead twit?”
10. The first gore beat restored for this uncensored version comes at 13:45 as Barbara is trying to pull a fireplace poker out of someone’s skull. They agree that the film was never intended to be an over-the-top bloodbath, but the theatrical release was trimmed into a “sterile” cut that Savini is happy to finally see restored.
11. Savini often says that the film is roughly “30% of what I intended.” He had hundreds of storyboards on his office wall during production, but when Romero saw it he told Savini “that’s great, but you got a six-week movie up here in storyboards, and you got four weeks to shoot it.” He says this uncensored cut is closer to 70%, and he recommends people seek out his book Night of the Living Dead ‘90: The Version You’ve Never Seen for more details on what he couldn’t shoot.
12. Laurence Fishburne and Eric La Salle both auditioned for the role of Ben, but they didn’t look enough like the original actor, Duane Jones. Savini recalls having just ended his Pittsburgh auditions “when Tony Todd shows up, grabs me by the lapels, puts me up against a wall, and says ‘You’ve got to read me, okay?’” Todd landed the role 15 minutes later.
13. He didn’t get the director of photography he wanted as Rob Draper was unavailable, but he auditioned DPs and found Frank Prinzi. Savini was happy with the man’s work but wishes he wasn’t quite as meticulous as that slowed down their pacing with fewer setups per day which resulted in some sequences getting trimmed from the schedule.
14. One of two shots Savini had planned but didn’t get to shoot would have featured Tom (William Butler) catching on fire at the gas pump and igniting the truck. Another would have shown a spider crawling onto Barbara’s hand as Harry (Tom Towles) creeps out of the basement with the imagery being a metaphor/foreshadowing of the character himself.
15. Savini was caught up in a divorce while filming which had him depressed and stressed, and Towles suggested that “now is a good time to watch Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer.” Savini had yet to see the film and luckily didn’t take Towles’ advice as it would have only magnified his depression.
16. Butler landed his role after sending in an audition tape that was shot by Viggo Mortensen, who was roommates with Butler at the time.
17. Todd had suggested that Ben should kiss Barbara, but Romero nixed the idea.
18. Various zombies are played by the film’s accountant, a movement instructor they hired and then mostly ignored (as the movements were just too exaggerated), a Fangoria editor, a U.S. Treasury agent who gave Savini his Federal Explosives License, and even a guy that Savini saw eating breakfast in a diner in the town where they were filming. The female zombie at 41:17 is actually the woman who owned the farmhouse at the time.
19. He wishes, in retrospect, that he had held a meeting before filming began to show the whole crew his episodes of Tales from the Darkside. Savini thinks it would have earned him respect that he doesn’t feel he ultimately had while working on the feature.
20. Felsher asks if he was influenced by any other films (aside from Romero’s original), and Savini says yes, “Lolita.”
21. Asked if he had a directorial project he would have wanted to tackle had this film been a success, Savini answers without hesitation, “my dream project, The Most Dangerous Game.”
22. Another gore bit restored for this cut sees Mr. McGruder fall through the door and have the back of his head blown open with the rifle at 51:35.
23. Noted cartoonist Gahan Wilson is one of the zombies at 1:03:02, but Savini has no recollection as to why he was on set.
24. The best of the restored gore gags hits at 1:03:25 with a zombie’s head exploding in pretty great fashion after being blasted with a shotgun.
25. Savini did makeup effects on John Landis’ Innocent Blood, and the first time they met, Landis told him “Hey, I saw Night of the Living Dead. Great girl.” It was a reference to Tallman, but when Savini told her she replied, “Well, he’s never hired me.”
26. The last unfilmed sequence that Savini mentions is what he had planned as part of the original ending. Barbara returns to the house, sees movement in the attic, and heads up there. She stares into a full-length mirror, sees Harry peek out to say “you came back”, at which point she shoots him through the mirror, shattering the glass and making her image appear fractured. “That’s the moment that she becomes one of those raiders.” Both Ben and Harry are dragged to the fire, and we watch them burn as the end credits roll.
27. For all of his woes during filming, the commentary ends with Savini singing the praises of pay-or-play contracts like the one he had with New World Pictures that expired shortly thereafter. He had been set to direct an adaptation of Stephen King’s Graveyard Shift from a script by Clive Barker (!), but it never happened. Still, he went to the studio’s offices after this film’s premiere, and they handed him a check for $125k “for directing Graveyard Shift.” That, my friends, is a good deal.
Quotes Without Context
“You said Red Shit Pictures, you know that?”
“Not only did this zombie burst in, but color burst in!”
“They wouldn’t let me shoot a closeup of food cooking on the stove.”
“They just cut the hell out of this thing.”
“I think of makeup effects as magic tricks.”
“My hands got slapped constantly.”
“They cut every exit wound in this movie.”
“I swallowed a lot of crap to keep my name on this movie.”
There are a few gaps here and there, but for the most part, Tom Savini’s commentary for his Night of the Living Dead remake sees him talking up a storm about the production. His regrets and frustrations at the time are still evident, but it’s clear that he’s come a long way in seeing the film through a more objective lens. He points out the additional footage as noted above, and you can feel his pride returning. Good movie with a good commentary.
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