Day of the Dead (1985)

director: George A. Romero

writer: George A. Romero

starring: Lori Cardille, Terry Alexander, Joe Pilato

genre: Horror

After his two success in the past with zombies, Day Of The Dead didn't turn out to be the same. In script stage it was to be a 7 million dollar Gone With the Wind of zombie films. It happened to be 5 million dollars less, with an heavily re-written script that in the end was for most people too violent, too loud and quite too different to the beloved slapstick nature of Dawn of the Dead that most people fell in love with.

Day of the Dead deals with the zombie assault on one of the last military establishment still operable.In this establishment the government sent some military, scientists and civilians to study the zombie problem and try to reverse it. Sarah (Lori Cardille) the lead character is the most levelheaded of the group. Stuck down there with her are a drunk radio man, crazy bunch of machismo soldiers leaded by Rhodes (Joseph Pilato) and the lead scientist Logan or Dr. Frankenstein. But as more people die and things get tighter and patience wheres thin, they will have to rely on each other or die.

The theme of this film is the that, failing to work together is more dangerous than the actual threat of zombies. It was internal feuding and a failure to cooperate which led to the mutiny and total breech of the underground base in the film. The casual viewer might not realize that the zombies posed very little direct threat. Throughout Romero's films you see his views on how humans deal with problems and that there not capable of solving them.

The film received least enthusiasm from the three films. Romero's original vision for the film was ambitious but accepted a prohibitively small budget in exchange for the production company tolerating an un-rated film. If he had chosen to go for an R rating he would have had seven million dollars to work with, but aiming for an unrated, he was given a mere three and a half million. The original script was considerably more complex and ambitious with most of the elements and huge sequences moved to his fourth zombie film Land of the Dead.

After a dark but with underlined humor throughout Dawn of the Dead, Day became the darkest and most violent of his Dead movies. One of the main reasons the film failed also the fact that it had more talking and people screaming than the other films. Romero though despite the changes still furthers the evolution of the zombie as we see with zombie Bub (Howard Sherman). He shows intelligence and recollection of objects from when he was human, also showing emotions.

Day of the Dead despite its faults is a good movie in its own right. Personally i think you have to watch it over three times to really get into it. Because there is a lot of overacting, cheesy music and the overall tone of the film puts you off upon first viewing. But afterwards you have much more fun, enjoying the overacting and the screaming and you go with it.

Personal Rating:

Review by Paul