Man, I tell you–the release into the public domain of Night of the Living Dead has just opened the floodgates for all sorts of imitators and outright ripoffs. But one of the stranger, more unique, and more ambitious such remakes has to come from the folks at Wild Eye Releasing, who sent over a copy of Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated for us to review.

Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated is, basically, Night of the Living Dead. The key difference here, of course, is that this time, it’s set in a whole new style. Over a hundred different artists have all gotten together to redo the classic Night of the Living Dead in various styles of art.  It’s not so much animated as it is the soundtrack with a slew of stills laid over the original footage. Sometimes, the pictures move in the full animated style, but this isn’t always the case. Meanwhile, we get the complete Night of the Living Dead story, in which brother and sister John and Barbara come up to their father’s grave to lay out a wreath, the same day the time changes. And this is when the first true Zombie Apocalypse begins. Barbara manages to escape and finds a lonely farmhouse…but this is only the start of her troubles. What she finds waiting in there will be almost as horrifying as what was waiting outside. And what happened to her brother John? You’ll find out, right here.

Really, though, the term “animated” is applied loosely here. At one point, puppets were involved. Another featured what might have been a Ken doll. I think clay was involved.

And that’s the strange thing. First, you’re dealing with a chunk of cinematic history here; when this thing showed up back in 1968, it was actually rated X originally. It would have been showing in only porn theaters if it hadn’t been for a truly gutsy–even for now!–decision to offer it to theaters unrated.  And now, you’re watching it as portrayed by cartoonists and sculptors and people who watch way too much Robot Chicken.

It has a certain charm; not only is this the classic horror romp we all know and most of us love, but it’s also a wholly new look at the whole thing. And that goes a long way. Some of it is pretty comical–unintentional or otherwise–and some of it is actually scarier than the original. The art style lends an extra startling quality to the proceedings.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated an eight out of ten for doing something gutsy with old material to make a truly impressive homage. If you liked Night of the Living Dead, you owe it to yourself to check out the reanimation.