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.
