Day of the Dead

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.

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.

'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.

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.