Day of the Dead
Day of the Dead
Tagline: The darkest day of horror the world has ever known…
Released: 1985
Starring Lori Cardille, Terry Alexander, Joseph Pilato, Jarlath Conroy, Antoine Dileo, and Sherman Howard
Directed by George A. Romero
Written by George A. Romero
Format: VHS
Distributed by Anchor Bay
VHS Release Date: May 26, 1998
Premise: In this third and final shocker in the legendary trilogy from writer/director George A. Romero (NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, DAWN OF THE DEAD), a small group of scientists and soldiers have taken refuge in an underground missile silo where they struggle to control the flesh-eating horror that walks the earth above. But will the final battle for the future of the human race be fought among the living or have they forever unleashed the hunger of the dead? Lori Cardille, Joe Pilato, Richard Liberty and Howard Sherman star in this controversial classic with groundbreaking gore effects by Tom Savini and featuring the most intense zombie carnage ever filmed.
If there’s one thing that rarely gets old in the horror genre, it’s zombie films. Yes, they do get over-used in movies and yes sometimes it doesn’t work out, but all of us monster-lovers and gore hounds love those undead brain-munchers just the same. While many directors have careers in depicting the undead on celluloid (and have inspired interest in plenty of today’s rookie filmmakers to take up the genre as well), the godfather and possibly the messiah of zombie films would most definitely be George A. Romero. Romero has a great selection of films, most specifically his Dead series. While the series was chock-full of hot zombie action, what really made them different from other horror flicks were the side stories of the human characters who try to survive as well as satirical stabs at our culture, such as the consequences of mass hysteria in Night of the Living Dead (1968) and consumerisim in Dawn of the Dead (1978).
Plot Breakdown (spoilers): The third film in the series was released in 1985, Day of the Dead. While the sequel took place sometime after Dawn, Day took place on a military base possibly far far away from the city where the infamous zombie-infested mall stood. Also, in the second film the numbers of the walking undead were rising but still had a good number of humans defending themselves from it, but in this installment a rather large percentage of the United States (or possibly the whole planet) has been infected and only several soldiers and a few scientists are left to fight against them. The basic plot of the third film is that survivors of a militia and scientists are stranded and have to defend themselves from the zombies that are not only clawing at the fence that surrounds the base, but also underground, where they also capture the flesh-eating creatures for a (mad)scientist to experiment on. The mad examiner, Dr. Logan, is working on a series of experiments where he tries to contain the small percentage of humanity left in the monsters in order to find a way to not destroy the dead, but to tame them much like you would tame a dog (rather, a dead dog who might be more interested in tearing out your throat and eating it than playing fetch).
The Good: What I really enjoyed about Day was that the zombies in this installment finally look like real zombies, as in being rotten with their eyeballs or innards flopping out of their skulls and rib cages rather than just being painted up with gray pancake makeup and splattered with red poster paint, like previously in Dawn. The gore is also much more realistic and delightfully disgusting, such as the final (and satisfying) demise of Captain Rhodes. You can all thank special makeup effects master Tom Savini for his fine work on this segment, which won a Saturn Award in 1985 for its makeup. It also gave viewers a moment to think of what the world would be like if they were able to tame zombies and make them more human much like Dr. Logan’s experiments (even if the outcome would be as disasterous as that of a George Orwell novel).
The Bad: Unfortunately, what the film lacked was the humor that Dawn had and is actually the most sombre chapter of the Dead series. While it made the story somewhat more realistic and frightening, most of the fans prefered the quirkiness and oddness that they loved in the previous film. I also found the soldier characters to be charicatures and stereotypes of real soldiers, as in being obsessed with showering something with bullets and believing the female scientist Sarah should be barefoot and pregnant and grab them a beer. I’d honestly go easy on a scientist if I were you, especially if she has a collection of mysterious chemicals she could inject you with while you’re asleep or if you just got your arm gnawed off and needed medical attention.
Final Comments: Overall, Day of the Dead isn’t a horrible film. It has its faults, but it still stands out from other zombie movies and eventually led to Romero’s Land of the Dead and now his new project: Diary of the Dead (which is sadly being released after Cloverfield, another DV horror film that came out recently). As long as Romero releases another Dead chapter we’ll probably be crowding in line just like the real undead to see it in theaters. I know I’ll obviously be in line, keeping an eye out for that zombie with the bucket of popcorn.
– by contributing reviewer Spooky Angel
Recently
