Le Jour des morts-vivants

Our rewatching of the original Romero trilogy comes to an end with "Day of the Dead" which is perhaps the most unloved of the three but has some of the best gore moments of the series and a legendary jump scare at the beginning.

With the planet all but lost, a team of scientists and soldiers have formed an uneasy alliance in a large bunker in Florida. Tensions are high between them though, with the soldiers bearing the bulk of losses, trying to capture zombies for experimentation. The situation comes to a head though, when it becomes apparent that chief scientist, Dr Logan (Richard Liberty) is more interested in taming the threat, than eliminating it.

In so many ways, this is the best film of the original trilogy. The acting performances are better than any that have gone before. Lori Cardille in particular is excellent as Sarah, one of the scientists and the lead of the movie. Joseph Pilato, who has a tiny role in "Dawn" has a much bulkier one here, with Rhodes being the chief antagonist. Tom Savini's effects are the best we've seen, with some of the disembowelment that occurs towards the finale being the most striking and still very much holding up 35 years later. The character of 'Bub' is perhaps the most effecting of the entire series, though I do have to admit the idea of the zombies learning is an uncomfortable one and I'm glad that most don't explore that idea.

Plot wise, it could be better though. Initially starting with a big scope, and showing a Floridian town destroyed by the outbreak - it sinks back down into the only real storyline zombie films have, that of man's intolerance of each other ultimately causing our downfall. This might have something to do with the increasing cuts to the planned story, that budgetary restraints forced on Romero. It's the bleakest of the films, demonstrating not just that survival is unlikely, but perhaps even undeserved would this really happen.

That bleakness though speaks to me, and I do enjoy the film. "Dawn" is still my favourite; the score and the location alone see to that, but "Day" isn't that far behind.

"Day of the Dead" is a film that is an unfortunate sufferer of the "Alien 3 Syndrome". And, no, I don't classify those that are affected by the syndrome to be disappointing final entries in a trilogy. To suffer from "Alien 3 Syndrome", you must follow two exceptional films, and the entry that has preceded you must be so exciting and action-packed that when you dare take a grimmer, more deliberately paced approach to your material, you will become universally reviled, with many people failing to notice that you have more than your fair share of merits on your own. In fact, "Day of the Dead" has a LOT of merits - even more than the film that its syndrome is based on. While it doesn't quite approach the greatness of "Dawn of the Dead", it is still an intelligent, first-rate horror effort and stands as one of the best genre films of the 80s.

In this final entry of George Romero's "Living Dead" trilogy, the walking dead supposedly outnumber the humans by a ratio of 400,000 to 1. Twelve people who have devoted themselves to studying and wiping out the zombies hole up together in an underground missile silo, and for all we know, these could be the last twelve living humans on the face of the planet. Most of these people don't capture our sympathy like the foursome who holed up in the shopping mall in "Dawn". Half of them are gung-ho soldiers who seem to take great pleasure in threatening the scientific team, and Romero spends much of the first half focusing on the bickering and intense conflicts between these people. In fact, for over an hour, the hordes of living dead get very little screen time, as the story focuses on the tension between the characters, and the efforts of an off-the-wall scientist to train a captured zombie named Bub to act human. Compared to its predecessors, this long section of the film may seem slow and talky, but it is always interesting and, for the most part, effectively performed by its unknown cast. Besides, it all eventually leads up to a corker of finale when the zombies finally invade the compound, and most of the humans become showcases for the brilliance of Tom Savini, who outdoes even himself in the gore F/X department.

While most of this material is very grim, "Day" ironically has the most hopeful, upbeat conclusion in the trilogy - which, alas, is its only major shortcoming. The quick transition to the final scene is so abrupt and unexpected that the audience feels cheated, leaving the impression that the production ran out of money before the whole climax could be filmed. Indeed, Romero has often expressed his unhappiness about being underfunded for this project, which prevented him from creating a truly definitive final chapter for the trilogy. But while "Day of the Dead" may not quite be the ultimate finish to one of the greatest trilogies of all time, it is still a very satisfying conclusion (at least until Romero gets funding for his long-rumoured "Twilight of the Dead"). It may not be popular among everyone, due to many unfair comparisons to its superior predecessors, but on its own, it is about as good as horror films get.

In 1985 this zombie movie virtually went by unnoticed except for many Romero fans. It was virtually dead a week or two after it hit the theaters. Many attribute its failings to the other many horror films released that year including "Re-Animator", "Fright Night", and "Return of the Living Dead". All these movies were R though and day was not. Romero stuck to his guns and made a very gory movie. Unfortunately, when dawn was released there were still many independent theaters, but by 1985 the chains had taken over and one thing chains do is not show movies like this. So it went by unnoticed and those that did notice it usually had nothing good to say about it other than the zombies looked really good. So suffice to say, I wasn't expecting much when I bought this movie except the zombies would look good. However, I am happy to report that I was very pleasantly surprised. Granted, Dawn was still a better film as it had more likable characters than the ones featured in this film. This would be the final Dead film George Romero would do until Land of the Dead was released, but I do not count that one as part of his original trilogy as they seem to belong together because Night showed us the humble beginnings of the zombie outbreak, Dawn showed us the zombies beginning to overrun us and this film shows us a bleak world where the zombies now outnumber the living 400,000 to one.

The story has a group at the beginning flying a helicopter in the hopes of finding some survivors. All they find is the dead and quite frankly, any survivors out there would be better off keeping their mouth shut as they do not want to go back to the facility this group belongs to. It is like a bunker and in it we have scientists who have no clue what they are doing, army people in a rush to leave said facility even though there is no indication there are any people left, two civilian guys just doing their jobs and Bub the most awesome zombie ever! Tensions are running high in the facility as the army people want to leave and there is a lot of arguing; however, things take a turn for the even worse and the zombies that are topside begin to lick their lips!

This film has great looking zombies and it does a good job with its setting. Originally, George wanted to do something much larger in scope, but could not get the funding so he had to scale back immensely which is why we sadly on get the one shot topside in the city and get to see how much the zombies have taken over. Everything in this film is rather good, except the characters! Seriously, Bub who is a zombie is the most likable character and then civilian guys. Everyone else just wants to yell and rant and this film is not a good one to watch when you have a headache! The good news is that this creates a finale where you really want to see a few of these guys eaten and suffer, unlike Dawn where you just kind of get a random motorcycle gang out of nowhere.

So this film is good, just not as good as Dawn as this one just does not have the action of that film and for a good portion of the film the only thing you have to look forward too in between the shouting matches between the scientists and evil Bono are the Bub scenes. It does help build up the finale and like I said, you really want to watch these guys get eaten, but it also tends to get annoying as no one really seems right. That is just the way it goes though, mankind is pretty much lost here and so why worry about trying to cure something that cannot be cured when you can just try and live out your life the best you can.

While not quite up to the levels of Night or Dawn, Day Of The Dead still packs a story line that is just as relevant to day as it was in 1985, and boasts performances that are better than it should be. I really loved Lori Cardille here, and I'm surprised she didn't do much, much more than this.

It has one of the best openings in horror movie history (and Dr. Tongue is likely the most impressive zombie in any of these films), but it does drag just a little bit in the middle. The antagonists (of which there are more than one), aren't your typical mustache twirlers, and Romero gave them some depth and nuances that actually made most of their actions completely believable.

The climax more than makes up for the middle drag, and I love how Romero injected his undead with both horror and humor. A must for not only Romero fans, not only zombie fans, but horror fans in general.

It's a scandal that such a brilliant film as "Day of the dead" has been overlooked for so long, and still pretty much continues to do so. In fact, being an avid horror movie consumer and favoring zombie movies especially, it is only now that I've been lucky enough to get a copy of this. I'm so glad about that! "Day of the dead" is, to my mind, not only the best of all Romero's zombie flicks, but also in the top three of all zombie movies ever made. It has every single asset that I consider desirable for a zombie film to be perfect: a claustrophobic environment with little realistic ways out, characters pushed to the limits, paranoia, darkness (literal darkness as well as an obscurity, a density of word, thought and mindset that clearly reflects the apocalyptic world that they now live in), powerlessness, lots of quality suspense, and gore. Many of those elements are missing in an awful lot of zombie movies.

"Day of the dead" is also ahead of its time (1985) in special and makeup effects and, beyond that, in the general pessimistic mood that is now sadly a reality. There is nothing funny, redeeming, thrilling about the new world dominated by zombies; the heroes of this show do not make a point of killing zombies as if it were some sort of hunting expedition with lots of adrenaline. They are simply the last humans standing, a group of scientists and military who happen to have survived so far (how, and why them, is never told), and trying to live another day in an underground facility (which is one of the best settings ever devised in a horror movie). Some kind of science project or experiment is also taking place, with a Dr Logan leading it (great character, that one), but this doesn't leave for much optimism. Basically, the gray, primary, claustrophobic setting, the rivalry between the military and the scientific communities, and the sickness and nightmares that ail the heroes let us know early on that we're in for a gloomy tale.

"Day of the dead" is also worth watching because it introduces elements that are completely original in the genre, and have still (to my knowledge) either not been used at all, or have been so only recently.

My score is a resounding 10/10!