Review: Day of the Dead

Progressing on from “Dawn of the Dead”, zombies now outweigh humans 400,000:1. Our setting is a giant underground facility, our protagonists the various military and scientific personnel living there. Scientist Dr. Logan (Richard Liberty) is attempting to find out what causes the dead to rise again as zombies. He hopes this will lead to an eventual domestication of zombies, but the doctor himself is showing signs of mental unbalance, leaving one to question his rational thinking as it relates to his work. He has a zombie guinea pig of-sorts (Howard Sherman), and while he conducts experiments on/with the zombie, and acts increasingly loopy, military hard-arse Captain Rhodes (Joe Pilato) and several of the overworked men at the base start to question the point of this research, let alone their orders to protect the scientists doing the research. Things seem ready to boil over from the inside, let alone having to worry about the zombie horde above ground, ready to invade. Lori Cardille (whose dad had a role as a newscaster in “Night of the Living Dead”) plays another scientist, one of the more level-headed characters in the film, along with Terry Alexander and Jarlath Conroy as Jamaican chopper pilot John (happy to not ask questions or worry about facts or data), and hard-drinkin’ techie McDermott, respectively. G. Howard Klar plays one of the more disruptive military goons, whilst a young Greg Nicotero plays another guy at the base.

Nothing in the world of zombie horror is ever going to touch the brilliance of George Romero’s first two zombie flicks “Night of the Living Dead” and especially “Dawn of the Dead”. The fact that this 1985 third entry into Romero’s “Dead” series is one of the best zombie movies ever made says more about how crap most other zombie movies are than it does about how good this film is. It doesn’t entirely come off, but at least Romero has taken the series to a logical and relatively interesting third stage. It’s certainly better than writer-director Romero’s later “Diary of the Dead”.

The first film was all-out horror, the second combined an apocalyptic zombie scenario with large helpings of gory action and social satire. This one scales things back on just about every level, and is much more of a contemplative, dialogue-driven film. The cast handles this in uneven fashion, but lead actress Lori Cardille is a better actor than anyone from “Dawn” not named Ken Foree, whilst Joe Pilato is luckily a decent actor because he gets most of the long speeches. Despite an exaggerated accent, Terry Alexander meanwhile, plays easily the most interesting character, along with Jarlath Conroy as the token drunk. Bringing up the rear easily is a frothing-at-the-mouth G. Howard Klar, who is terrible.

The pace is slower and the action isn’t plentiful enough, but for my money the only real problem with this film concerns some seriously stupid human behaviour throughout. The worst example being what Richard Liberty’s character is doing throughout the film. It’s stupid, dangerous, and ultimately somewhat pointless. I’m a pacifist, but I honestly didn’t see any point in trying to fix things so man and zombie could peacefully co-exist. Interesting, perhaps, but stupid. So that kinda took me out of the film more than I would’ve liked, because although the way Liberty’s character is portrayed in the film eventually shifts, it’s a dopey bit of character behaviour that still takes up too much time. Fix that and the pacing, and I’ve honestly got nothing to complain about, really.

We start off with a really strong opening that suggests a natural progression of the story since “Dawn”. The Carpenter-esque throbbing synth score by John Harrison is good, too. The makeup by Tom Savini has had a technical upgrade since “Dawn”, but I have to admit the rawness of the FX work in that film was part of its charm. It’s the kind of film I love to watch because it makes me want to get out there and do it, too. It seemed like fun. This doesn’t have that same sense of zany fun, but that is necessitated by the story, really, which deals with an even more dire situation for humanity. It’s still pretty damn gory, even by this series’ standards, so if you like your Tom Savini gore, he serves up quite a bit for you, if not quite frequently enough throughout the film. I certainly don’t think the supposed budget restraints really had a negative impact on the film, at least not as it relates to gore or makeup. Look out for a seriously young-looking Greg Nicotero, who thankfully only has an acting capacity here, as I tend to find KNB EFX to be phony-looking and CGI-oriented. **** SPOILER WARNING **** Also look out for his disembodied head in one surprisingly decent bit of animatronics by 1985 standards. **** END SPOILER ****.

It’s an interesting film, but lesser than its predecessors. It’s not great. It’s too talky and some of the plot elements are silly. Underrated by some, overrated by others, at least it’s not dull.

Rating: B-