House of Horror

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).
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