Day of the Dead

'Day Of The Dead' is one of the greatest sleepers in the history of horror movies. A flop when originally released almost twenty years ago, its reputation has slowly increased over the years, and now is generally regarded as a classic. I certainly underestimated it for a long time. In my opinion Romero's 'Night Of The Living Dead' and 'Dawn Of The Dead' are two of the greatest horror movies ever made, but I always thought that 'Day...' was a bit of a let down. But after watching it again for the first time in several years (via the highly recommended double disc "special edition" DVD) I must humbly eat my words. This is a GREAT movie! Romero and special effects Tom Savini do wonders on a limited budget, and the movie is full of suspense, a claustrophobic atmosphere and plenty of gore. It probably flopped the first time around because it's so bleak, but now that's one of its strengths. Interestingly Romero features a strong female protagonist (Lori Cardille) and a strong black supporting character (Terry Alexander), something not all that common in horror movies. Both actors give good performances, the soldiers led by Rhodes (Joseph Pilato) are all suitably ultra macho and deranged, and it was cool to see John Amplas ('Martin') in a supporting role, but the two stand out performances are by Richard Liberty ('The Crazies') as Dr. Logan (who the soldiers refer to as "Frankenstein"), and Howard Sherman as Bub, the zombie he has tamed. The sequences between Logan and Bub are just terrific and add a whole new level of pathos to the movie. The only negative comment I can make about 'Day Of The Dead' is that it brings home the depressing fact that George Romero hasn't made a truly outstanding movie in close to twenty years. I really hope he makes his long threatened fourth Dead movie 'Dead Reckoning' and that it turns out to be his masterpiece. But whatever happens he has already carved his name out in horror history as the creator of three classic zombie movies that just get better and better as the years go by.

Day of the Dead is George A. Romero's third Zombie film and it's by far my favorite. It has a lot of great social commentary on how we view the people with power and how corrupt that system can get. I enjoy the characters and the practical effects are absolutely amazing. Bub is probably my favorite Zombie in a movie because the character is pulled off so well. The entire movie has a lot of building tension that leads into one of the best third acts in any Zombie film. And just like with Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead I really can't find anything I dislike about this movie.

I'm giving George A. Romero's Day of the Dead a 9.8/10.

Months after the first dead rose from their graves, the world has seemingly become overrun. Deep in a storage bunker in Florida, a group of soldiers and a group of scientists have formed an uneasy alliance in order to try and discover something that can help reverse their spread. However Dr Logan is not making the progress that the soldiers require and Captain Rhodes becomes increasingly impatient and erratic as a result. Things continue to worsen as the zombies gather above and Logan's work gets more worrying.

Having seen and enjoyed (if that's the word) the remake of Dawn, I decided to re-watch the three originals on their own values. While I had seen the other two before, this was the first time I had seen Day and assumed that it would be bigger than Dawn was (in the same way as Dawn extended the ideas from Night). In that regard I was a little disappointed to find that the film stayed on a rather small scale and didn't manage to really convince me that the world was actually over on the surface of the earth. However this is not to say that it is not a good story in itself, because it is, albeit very different from both Night and Dawn. To me it lacked the social commentary that was to be found in Dawn but it is still tense, gory and gripping. The claustrophobic nature of the bunker and the battling characters means that tension is easily created even when the zombies are distant and seemingly pose less of a threat than the humans do to one another. The film is a little weak at points – the medical experiments are given too much time and the character of Bub is not clear as to his reasons for being included as much as he was. I didn't like the idea of Bub, the film didn't seem to know what to do with him other than using him to fill out the story – Logan's progress with him seemed such a waste of time that, even if that was the point, it didn't work.

When the gore comes it is very hard to watch and a little sickening at times – bodies are ripped into and ripped apart in full bloody colour – as a horror it succeeds because I was looking a way quite a lot of times! Even though Shaun of the Dead has made fun of these slow zombies recently they still manage to be very effective here – I personally find them scary as they are relentless and simply wish to kill. True, the fast ones are scarier but these ones are too. The cast are more than just victims and are reasonably well drawn and acted. They have to be engaging or else the tension between them wouldn't work and, while hardly totally real people they still are good enough for a horror movie and they are not just fodder to rip apart – even if they are clearly penned as 'goodies' and 'baddies'.

Overall this is not the best of the trilogy but it is still a good horror film. The tension between the characters creates as much of a threat as the zombies do – even if some of the plot isn't that good. It all builds well to a gory finish that really only lacks teeth because both the film and the actual ending both fail to really show just how bad things are and never convinces that the world has come to an end in the way that the whole trilogy suggests it has.

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.