Movies That Suck: The Crazies (1973)

I can already see the fire in the eyes of all devoted George Romero fans when they read this title. If you've been following my blog from its inception, you would know that I think very highly of Mr. Romero. His Living Dead series was the first thing I ever reviewed on here and his original Living Dead trilogy was part of my 101 Favorite Horror Films. I also think that his 1982 anthology Creepshow is a very fun movie as well. But, as with all great filmmakers, the guy has made some turkeys along with his indisputable classics and, in my opinion, The Crazies is one of them. I first heard of it when it was briefly mentioned in the documentary on the Ultimate Edition DVD of Dawn of the Dead in order to shed light on the films that Romero made in the time period between that film and Night of the Living Dead. They showed a brief clip from the trailer, with the guys in the white bio-suits with gas masks gunning down a bunch of people in a field. It looked interesting but I didn't anything more of it until I started listening to Deadpit.com. CK and Uncle Bill told me personally that The Crazies might be one of Romero's non-Living Dead movies that could be worth my time. I finally saw it when I got a used DVD of it at McKay's in Chattanooga. It was only $11.00 but I still felt ripped off. I can safely say that when I watched this movie one night shortly after getting the DVD, it was one of the most excruciating 102 minutes I have ever spent watching a movie. This movie really lives up to its title. It goes way too fast to the point where you have no time to get invested in the lead characters and it ends up being a very painfully boring sit.

One night in the small town of Evans City, PA, two young children are messing around when suddenly, their father goes mad and begins tearing their house apart. They also discover that he killed their mother before he eventually sets the house on fire. Two firemen and the pregnant nurse girlfriend of one of them get the call to come to work when the fire is reported and soon, the military rolls into the town and all of the soldiers are wearing biological containment suits with gas masks. It is revealed that a plane carrying a secret biological weapon developed by the military crashed near the town just recently and the virus, codenamed Trixie, has infected the town's water supply. The virus either eventually kills its victims or renders them incurably insane. The military does everything it can to both contain the virus within the perimeters of the town as well as try to find a cure but the hastily put together operation leads to the deaths of many soldiers and civilians and mayhem engulfs the town. The two firemen and the nurse are briefly captured by the military but they, along with a man and his teenage daughter, manage to escape and attempt to take cover in the hills since they don't trust the actions of the military, particularly the firemen, who are ex-Vietnam veterans. The rest of the film centers on the group's attempts to get away and keep from becoming infected and the military trying to stop the virus from spreading throughout the rest of the country.

This was made in the period between Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead where George Romero was attempting to establish his identity as a director who could do other things besides strictly horror films. Funny thing is that The Crazies, up until Dawn of the Dead, was the closest thing to a sequel to Night of the Living Dead that Romero ever produced. It is similar to his zombie movies in that it focuses on people being turned into murderous creatures, a group of people trying to escape the carnage, and, as with most of Romero's films, it has a good amount of political commentary, particularly on the military and the government (although it's much more blatant here and is more in line with his later films rather than his early work). Unfortunately, as we'll get into shortly, I don't think Romero succeeded in that aspect with The Crazies as he did with his original Living Dead films. With the failure of this film, along with his two previous films, There's Always Vanilla and Season of the Witch, with the exception of a couple of documentaries, he wouldn't make another movie until his vampire film Martin in 1976.

My biggest problem with The Crazies is the pace. This thing moves like a car rolling out of control down a hill. It opens with a quickly with an already infected man trashing his house, murdering his wife, and finally setting the house on fire. From there, we're hastily "introduced" to the characters and the situation and the plot is set in motion. You would think that would make the movie exciting and fun but it doesn't. A movie can be boring because it goes too fast as well as because it's too slow and that's what happens here. Moreover, we're introduced to the lead characters so quickly and learn only the basics about them, if that, before they're thrown into the situation. I know Night of the Living Dead had the situation start off quickly from the beginning but we still had lulls to get to know the characters so we could root for them as they tried to face down the zombie menace. This movie's pace is so frantic that we don't have any time to grow close to the characters and therefore, what happens to them means nothing to us. On top of that, after the opening cemetery scene, Night of the Living Dead let us see how dire and serious the zombie outbreak was becoming, with more and more zombies showing up at the farmhouse that served as the main setting of the film as well as news reports on the radio and TV about how the outbreak is happening everywhere. We don't get anything like that in The Crazies. Before we know what's going on, the military takes over the town and starts hunting down and killing the infected people while we only learn about the gravity of the situation from fast-paced, hard to hear dialogue from the military and government officials. Show us, Mr. Romero, don't tell us. On top of that, as if the pacing of this movie wasn't enough to make it completely batshit insane, the editing is nuts too. Most of the cuts don't seem to last longer than ten seconds, if that, and there are also moments where there is insane inter-cutting between a government official describing something and what he's describing being put into action. There is a way of doing that and making it work but it just comes across as clumsy here, as if the editor, which is Romero as well, is having a stroke. The structure also gets monotonous and tiresome after a while. A reviewer on IMDB said it best: the movie repeats scenes of the leads trying to escape the military, the army officers arguing with each other about how ass-backwards the operation is and how nothing is going right, the lead scientist who is trying to find a cure arguing with the Army officers that he doesn't have enough resources or time to do his work properly, and government officials in Washington trying to keep themselves from being publicly embarrassed over and over again to the point where you feel like the story is not progressing at all. In short, the film is just an incomprehensible, fast-paced mess.

Not only are the characters so hastily introduced that it's hard to care for them but it doesn't help that the acting isn't the best either. Lane Carroll (who never worked again after this movie and before it, appeared only in Hercules in New York, Arnold Schwarzenegger's first film, and Romero's There's Always Vanilla) and W.G. McMillan (who's actually appeared in a lot of stuff, mostly TV work, since although this was only his second film) play the film's lead couple, Judy and David. There's not much to say about them. David is the most level-headed member of the on the run civilians whereas Judy really doesn't do much except act as a nurse at the very beginning of the movie before they go on the run (her doctor actually advises both her and David to try to escape the military). Judy is pregnant with David's baby, they're very much in love, and they're determined to make it out alive. But, Judy eventually succumbs to the virus and is killed by a posse, dying in David's arms. Also, in an ironic twist of fate, David develops a natural immunity to the virus but at the end of the movie when he's finally captured by the military, they don't bother doing an immunity test on him. I did find that to be a wonderful bit of sad irony: a potential cure is right under their noses and they don't even know about it or care to check. There's also Harold Wayne Jones (who only appeared in a few other films and TV stuff, including Romero's Knightriders, after this) as David's friend, Clank, who is part of the same fire brigade that David is and also served in Vietnam, same as him. He kind of looks like David and I wonder if that was intentional, that it was meant to be another link between the two, even though their personalities are different. It's hinted at in his first scene that Clank also has feelings for Judy and is maybe a tad bit jealous that she didn't pick him as a lover. He's also much more hot-headed and impulsive than David, which is acerbated when he contracts the virus. He starts gunning down soldiers left and right and acts in a kind of schizophrenic way. He even goes so far as to attack David near the end of the film when he realizes that he and Judy tried to leave him behind. He's eventually killed by the military. Again, while the acting by these three characters is not bad, it's still amateurish and, again, coupled with how hastily they're introduced, makes it hard for me to really care for them.

Now Artie and his daughter Kathy are two characters that I can honestly say I didn't like. Artie is played by the late Richard Liberty, who would go on to play the mad Dr. Logan in Day of the Dead. While Liberty's performance in that movie is wonderfully entertaining in how over the top it is, here he's playing a creepy, sleazy man who has lost his wife and is left with only his daughter, whom it is revealed he has sick sexual feelings for. I don't know if it's because he thinks she's his wife in his delusional mind, judging from how he calls her by his wife's name at one point, or if he just harbors sick fantasies about her period, although it's probably as a direct result of the virus, but whatever the case, he actually attempts to have sex with her. He's stopped by Clank but still, that's just messed up. Personally, I wonder if Artie already had these sick thoughts and the virus just brought them up to the surface. In any case, he hangs himself after his rape attempt is foiled. Now, Lynn Lowry (who appeared in stuff like I Drink Your Blood before this and would go on to be in David Cronenberg's first feature film, Shivers, and Paul Schrader's remake of Cat People) annoyed the crap out of me as Kathy. This virus makes men go crazy but it seems to make women childlike and annoying (it does the same thing to Judy near the end and her death is her own stupid fault as a result). Kathy just aggravates me in this film due to her annoying, childlike way of speaking, her almost getting them shot by the soldiers, and her death is her own fault because she wanders out in a field in front of a bunch of soldiers. You just can't make me care about someone if the virus they get makes them act annoying and stupid. She also has one of the most hilariously bad death scenes ever. She gets shot, spins around, and simply says, "Oh," before keeling over. I don't know what Romero was thinking when he had her act like that but I just couldn't take it seriously.

I thought Lloyd Hollar was fine as Col. Peckem, who's trying his best to maintain order in the chaos-ridden town but knows that the chance of this town surviving the situation is slim to non-existent. By the end of the movie, he's completely disconcerted and despondent when he's called away to another town that's possibly infected with the virus. The way he reacts, you know that he feels that it's probably never going to end no matter what he tries to do. The ending scene with him being airlifted out of the town and looking down upon the chaos that has completely devastated it is quite well done and would be even more powerful if the rest of the movie had been as effective. Another character that I also kind of enjoyed was Richard France (who would go on to play the eye-patch wearing scientist on the TV in Dawn of the Dead) as the frustrated Dr. Watts. I found him to be funny and he kind of unintentionally sounded like me voicing my complaints about the film itself. In his introductory scene, he's complaining about how the army is forcing him to go to Evans City even though he's confident that he could do more productive work at the base and when the soldiers say that they can't do anything about it, he yells, "This is so random!" I was thinking, "Tell me about it, man!" Even later, he's saying stuff akin to, "This is a mess!" and so on and, again, I'm like, "Right on." I also laughed at how, after being unable to look through a microscope with the helmet of his bio-suit on, he decides to heck with it and takes it off, even though he could be risking infecting himself. His last scene is also another one of the few I actually liked, where he finds a cure for the virus but when he tries to get out of the building, the soldiers think he's one of the infected because he's not wearing a bio-suit and they try to quarantine him. He's trampled by a stampede of the infected and is killed as a result and the cure is destroyed. It's another bit of sad irony that the military have unknowingly helped to destroy what chance they had of stopping the virus. The last character of note is Harry Spillman as Maj. Ryder, the initial man who is in charge of the operation until Col. Peckem arrives. He's just doing his job and himself is unaware of the true nature of the situation until Peckem actually tells him. When he is told, he feels like a fool that he bought the cover-up story of the situation. Not much else to say about him. I also must briefly mention Will Disney (I doubt he was related to Walt) as Dr. Brookmyre, the kindly doctor who tells Judy that she and David must get away from the army for the sake of the baby. He's not that noteworthy of a character but he's obviously a decent person due to his concern for the couple.

It's obvious that the film is meant to be about how one can't trust the American government and the military. The original script for the film by Paul McCollough only focused on the military aspect of the story at the beginning of it but the producer of the film, Lee Hessel, asked Romero to re-write it to where it focused much more on that aspect. For me, this is another problem about the movie. They should have focused on the characters who are trying to escape the military occupation of the town or focus on a heroic member of the army who is trying to find a cure for the virus (like the movie Outbreak) instead of going back and forth between the two subplots because, like I said, it gets monotonous and repetitive after a while. Also, when Romero attempts to do political statements and social satire in a subtle way while focusing mainly on making a good movie, it's entertaining; however, when he makes it so blatant that it feels like you're being beaten over the head with it, as in his later Living Dead films and Bruiser, it can be insufferable. While the obvious commentary in The Crazies didn't aggravate me too much and I didn't think it was the film's biggest problem by far, I still think it's one of the examples of Romero being unable to do it subtly. There are so many scenes with the military and government officials trying to find a way to cover their ass about the bio-weapon that I was like, "Okay, I get it. You feel that we can't trust the military and that our government officials lie." I felt the same way about his criticism of the media in Diary of the Dead: "Okay, the media can be bad and corrupted. I understand." Romero even makes the president of the United States look like a Bond villain or something, with his back to the camera, smoking a cigar and speaking in a voice that sounds shady (but then again, this was during the era of Richard Nixon so maybe it was justified). I thought the best part of the commentary was the scenes I described where the military unknowingly helps destroy a potential cure for the virus and later, they ignore another one. That was nice and subtle, that the military doesn't realize that it's doing more harm than good. I also thought the images of the soldiers in faceless, bio-containment suits would have been a subtle enough jab at the military. So, while I do see potential in the political statement that Romero is trying to make here, I think the blatant nature of it ultimately overrules the more subtle and well done aspects of it.

The makeup effects in this movie are fine and do their job. This was before Romero started working with Tom Savini so the effects here are not quite up to the standard put forth in the movies they would do together but since this isn't a zombie movie, there's no need for graphically over the top blood-splatters and the like. It's mainly consists of squibs with blood packs in them that result in some fairly graphic gunshots, some corpses getting burnt, a priest setting himself on fire which is fairly gruesome and disturbing, and, most gruesome of all, ripped open necks and head getting blown off. The effects are fine but they're really quick and the blood is that bright red, almost orange, blood that would later turn up in Dawn of the Dead that isn't very realistic when you get down to it. The infected people themselves don't look much different than normal people. It's all in the way they act. So, while there are some makeup effects here, they're just standard but simply serve their purpose in this type of movie.

Like the structure of the movie, the music by Bruce Roberts is very repetitive and monotonous. The bit that is repeated over and over and over again is the sound of these marching drums used to signify the military. You hear it so many times over the course of the movie that you really get tired of it. There are also some instrumental versions of military themes that play over the music as well as some bits with a singer vocalizing. In all honesty, the score is nothing to write home about in the slightest. There is a song called God Help Us that plays over the ending credits, though, that I felt was effective in showing the hopelessness of it all as Col. Peckem looks down on the town and sees how it is now in absolute shambles. As I've said, it's too bad the rest of the movie is so unremarkable because if it had been more powerful, that song would have hit home even more so.

Some may feel that The Crazies is an overlooked gem in George Romero's filmography but to me, it should have stayed obscure. It has some good points to it but for the most part, it's a fast-paced, frantic, confusing mess of a film that doesn't give you enough time to grow close to the lead characters, doesn't build the situation up well, has a monotonous, repetitive structure, and has some political commentary that is so blatant and in your face that it overshadows the more subtle and well done aspects of it. Every director, no matter how good, is going to make some bad movies and in my opinion, this is one of Romero's, made in-between two of his truly watershed films. Though, as I say, you can sort of see The Crazies as a cousin to Romero's zombie films as well as a precursor to 28 Days Later and the like. But, the reason the zombie films work is because they're simple whereas this is far too complex. Bottom line, I know this movie has fans and I respect that. I would never try to take that away from you. To me, though, The Crazies is just that: it's way too crazy for its own good and it cripples what could have been an interesting movie.

Movies That Suck/Franchises: Romero's Dead Films. Diary of the Dead (2008)

Barely two years after the release of Land of the Dead, George Romero began making a fifth film in his dead series, which was surprising given how all the other movies were in completely different decades from each other and with the twenty year gap Day of the Dead and Land. And unlike the big budget previous film, this one went back to the low budget roots of the franchise, being independently-produced by a company started by Romero and his friend, Peter Grunwald, and with a meager $2 million to work with, although it was distributed by a major studio, Dimension Films, in selected theaters in February of 2008. Like Land of the Dead, I didn't see it until that winter when I got it on DVD as a Christmas present (which I did ask for, mind you) and, before I went into it, I have to admit was already turned off when I heard that, rather than another sequel, this film was a reboot of the series, viewing the beginning of the zombie outbreak from a completely different perspective, namely from the aesthetic of "found footage." However, once I got over that initial resistance, I felt that viewing it from that angle could work... as long as it was done well, which I really don't think it was. I know there are many diehard Romero fans, as well as mainstream movie critics, out there who feel that he made another masterpiece but for me, as much as I may have thought Land of the Dead was overly preachy, this one turned out to be far worse in terms of pretentiousness and how utterly forgettable it is. 

The framing device is a documentary titled, The Death of Death, which we're being shown by Debra Monaham, the girlfriend of the deceased student filmmaker who began shooting it, who says that this is meant to be a record of how it all began and that it is meant to scare the viewer. The main storyline involves how said filmmaker, Jason Creed, a film student at the University of Pittsburgh, was making a student horror film with his friends and one of his professors when the outbreak of zombies begins. After picking up Debra, Jason and everyone else attempt to flee to safety, initially to the Scranton home of Debra's parents and eventually to the mansion home of another of their friends, all the while running into increasing hordes of the undead and realizing that, as they try to use it to keep themselves updated on the situation, the media begins slowly but surely proving that it can't be trust. At the same time, Jason decides to continue filming in order to show the truth of what went down in retrospect, which makes him very insensitive towards the feelings and even the safety of the others.

As much as I love and respect George Romero, I think this is the film where he once and for all lost his mojo. Bruiser and Land of the Dead were the start of that, especially the former, but here, he forgot how to make an entertaining and interesting movie first and became preoccupied with hammering you over the head with whatever he's trying to teach you. Some may feel that his films have always been that way and maybe they're right but, the difference is, I could appreciate it more in those earlier movies because there was a lot more to them; here, there's nothing but the message and it's not conveyed in the most effective way possible, so I find this movie dire to sit through. Even more disconcerting, it often feels like we're being lectured to by an old man who is so out of his depth and doesn't understand his subject that well, like his wagging his finger at us and saying, "You kids today, with your internet and cameras," and such. I guess that's an inevitability for everyone but, given how he was able to approach his subjects in the past, it's sad to see how far Romero has fallen.

Just to stay on topic, as well as for another reason I'll get into in a minute, I'll start my criticism with the themes of the film. This time, Romero's talking about both the media and the YouTube generation, where everyone has a camera and is always filming everything. The core idea that he's trying to go with is an interesting one: how would all of these cameras and the internet be used if something as cataclysmic as dead people returning to life and attacking the living happened? There's a lot of potential there. Unfortunately, Romero decides to just wallow in it purely in his writing and pander and preach to the choir as if he's teaching a college class. That leads me into the main reason why I decided to start my review with the theme: because the characters themselves hardly talk about anything else. I swear, just about every line of dialogue is pretentious crap about how Jason Creed is obsessed with recording everything, that he won't put down the camera, no matter what happens, and how to him, "If it didn't happen on camera, it's like it didn't happen at all, right?" (Debra says that line twice, in case we didn't get it the first time.) And not only that, the film's framing device intercuts with news clips and radio broadcasts while Debra narrates about what happens when everybody starts filming, how it numbs you to what you're seeing, and... ugh, just stop! I get it! People are obsessed with filming stuff in this day and age, especially when something bad is happening.

Could the title be more redundant?

In fact, the core idea of the story is very flawed and makes it feel like Romero does not quite understand what he's trying to talk about. First off, what we're supposed to be seeing is Jason's film that Debra has finished for him. Question: in the context of the movie, who is supposed to be watching it? Who's going to be around after a zombie apocalypse to watch this thing? And for what purpose? Debra says that she hopes the film will help the viewers to "wake up" and not make the same mistakes she and her friends made but, by that point, isn't it a little too late for that? Here's an even bigger mystery; when the group stops at a small National Guard base and Jason uploads his footage to the internet, he says that within minutes, he's got thousands of hits. Again, who are all these people who aren't worried about what's going on and are just sitting at their computer, watching this stuff? Don't they have more important stuff to do, like trying to find shelter or making their homes zombie-proof? What's hilarious about this is that the movie itself sometimes points out the flaws of this main idea, like when Jason tells one of the National Guardsmen that he's shooting "home movies" and he asks, "Who's gonna be left to watch?"

And by the way, does this movie feel like it could be taking place around the same time as Night of the Living Dead, as Romero says it does? It doesn't feel that way to me. That film had such an air of the 60's about it, with the way everybody looked, talked, and even dressed to some extent, not to mention the vehicles, the radios, and the television sets, that it's very hard for me to believe that this story about filming the beginning of a zombie outbreak with digital cameras and uploading it to the internet is happening just miles away from Ben and company dealing with the siege on the farmhouse. Of course, you could say that it's also hard to fathom that Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead take place weeks or even a year or so after Night because of how much they feel like movies from their respective decades, especially Dawn, but it's easier for me to suspend my disbelief there. Once I see a bunch of digital cameras and modern computer screens, as well as college students who look and talk the way they do here, it feels so definitively like a movie from the 2000's that the idea of it taking place at the same time as a movie from the 60's is nearly impossible for me to swallow. It especially doesn't mesh when you hear audio from Night's news reports on the radio because of how it stands out from all of the others in terms of both audio quality and performance.

Just as bad as, or maybe even worse than, that idea is the message about the media. While the truth about the internet and all of the video cameras in the world seems to have flown over Romero's head, here he really tries to pound into you what he's trying to say and it's nothing you haven't heard before: the media lies, it makes up stuff, it doesn't give you all the details, etc. Again, you're bombarded with all of these clips of the media and they're often accompanied by Debra's pretentious narration, with lines like, "The media were lying to us, or the government was lying to them. They were trying to make it seem like everything was gonna be all right," or, "The more voices there are, the more spin there is. The truth becomes that much harder to find. In the end it's all just noise." It's eye-rolling, and if she's not preaching to you about it, the characters themselves mention it, like when they note that they changed footage of a zombie attack from how it seemed earlier. All you would have needed was the dialogue from the police chief (Romero himself), where he tells the press, "These attacks were carried out by a bunch of illegal immigrants who were mistakenly pronounced dead before the attacks took place. The only time they were dead was when my guys shot 'em," followed by the footage to get across that they're full of shit. You didn't need someone to spell it out for us.

Also, Romero's dialogue is some of the most ham-fisted, overly dramatic, preachy crap I've ever heard. That seems to be a growing trend in movies in general nowadays but it's especially bad in this film. It seems like Romero forgot he was writing a screenplay and wrote it as if it was a damn novel. The college professor played by Scott Wentworth is the worst offender in that regard. (By the way, does that guy's voice remind anyone else of Geoffrey Rush? At first, I thought it was him for a moment.) He always gives these long, melodramatic speeches, talking about how it was during the war when killing became justified and how he has no home to go to because he's a wandering spirit. Nothing he says is ever casual dialogue from him; it's always a big speech like he's living in Shakespeare's time. The one that slays me is a line at the end of the film where he says he doesn't like mornings or mirrors, mornings because,"I prefer the darkness. It's easier to hide in the dark," and mirrors because, as well as mornings, they "only serve to terrify old men." Give me a freaking break. The only times I liked him were when he shut the hell up and took out some zombies with a bow and arrow and later an antique sword. In those moments, he was a badass; otherwise, he's annoying. And you know what, looking back at Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead, I realize that there were indeed instances of this overdone, pretentious dialogue there as well, like in Day when John says, "It takes more energy to keep quiet than it does to speak the mind," but because everything else, including the characters, was so well done and engaging, I was able to overlook it. In a movie like this, it's impossible for me to do so.

At the beginning of the film, the professor says a throwaway line about the basic gist of the horror film they're shooting, saying it has, "an undercurrent of social satire." That's the key word: undercurrent, as well as subtext. This is not subtext; this is just text. If Romero wanted to talk about this stuff, he might as well have just a made documentary about it rather than shoving it into something that's supposed to be a horror movie at the end of the day. I hate to keep repeating myself but, once again, while I can appreciate a little subtext and depth, ultimately all I care about is being entertained. This is not entertaining. It's just preachy. And, going back to the dialogue, a lot of it sounds like stuff film critics writing about the movie would say. Listening to some of it, like that comment about the altered footage I mentioned earlier, it's as if Romero said to himself, "People are too stupid to understand what anything really means anymore, so I'll just outright tell them." The part where Debra is filming a zombie attack along with Jason and she stops filming because she realizes she's becoming like him is a prime example. If it had just ended there, it wouldn't have been too hard to figure out why she stopped, but no, instead, she has to come out and say, "I don't want to become you."

The other major flaw of the movie is the characters, none of which are memorable, at least not in a good way, or well-acted. Except for the professor, it seems like all them are Canadians trying to sound American and it doesn't feel convincing. The most painful example is Amy Lalonde's performance as Tracy, the woman who was acting in the student film. The character is from Texas and so, Lalonde puts on a very stereotypical, cringe-inducing accent that sounds nothing less than like someone who's never been to the south trying very hard to sound like they're from there. As Debra, Michelle Morgan does nothing to make her particularly likable, coming across as very bland, and in the end she decides to finish Jason's film and, despite all of her criticisms, becomes like him for no apparent reason, with her after the fact narration proving that. How and why did that happen? Other than them and the professor, none of the other characters do anything particularly memorable. In fact, they're so forgettable that the only reason I'm remembering their names and who played them is because I'm reading it off Wikipedia; otherwise, I'd only be able to remember them either visually or by their actions. Case in point, I remember Eliot (Joe Dinicol) because he was the kind of nerdy guy with his big glasses, Ridley (Philip Riccio) because he spends the entire movie dressed up as a mummy for the student film they were shooting (fitting, since he becomes a zombie), Mary (Tatiana Maslany) because she attempts suicide due to guilt for running over some people (refusing to believe that they were zombies) and eventually becomes undead, and Gordo (Chris Violette) for getting bitten in a hospital and Tracy, who's his girlfriend, having to eventually kill him after he becomes reanimated. They're also idiots because, when they get to Ridley's big mansion at the end of the film, they keep leaving the damn doors open! They deserve what they get for that blatant stupidity.

Jason Creed (Joshua Close), the leader of the film project, however, is the worst character of all, which really sucks since he's basically the lead. I wasn't kidding earlier when I said that he's so committed to filming what's going on that he doesn't give a flying shit what's happening to his friends and doesn't do anything to help them when they're in danger. The worst example of this is near the end of the film, when Tracy is getting chased by a zombie and Jason does nothing to help, saying, "I'm shooting!" What kind of an uncaring asshole is this guy? Some people have tried to defend him by saying he's just so obsessed with it but somebody on an IMDB message board responded to that in the best way possible: rather than making me relate to him, it just alienates me from him more. I don't care how obsessive somebody is, I doubt they would just do nothing unless they're psychotic or a sociopath.

Another big problem is that the tone of the film sometimes feels out of whack, as the characters are often saying funny stuff and making jokey remarks when they shouldn't. Yes, there was a lot of funny stuff in Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead but they kept with the overall tones of those particular movies. This is meant to be grim, serious, and, I assume given the motif of the film, realistic, but it's absolutely botched by these dumb moments. Even worse, remember the scene I talked about earlier where Tracy is being chased by a zombie? After she subdues said zombie, she says, "Don't mess with Texas," which was bad enough but then, just to add even more cheese, you hear a few chords of Dueling Banjos. That just floored me, especially when Debra said at the beginning that she added some music to the footage in order to enhance it. What was that meant to enhance? The stupidity of what's going on? And speaking of music, which is by Norman Orenstein, it's not only generic and forgettable but it also never fails to ruin any suspense or eeriness the film would've had if it was just dead quiet, as most of these types of movies are for good reason.

The zombies and the gore effects are another aspect of this movie that is a major letdown. Since this is the beginning of the apocalypse, the zombies' makeup designs are very basic and unimpressive, with no particularly well-designed wounds or scars to them and few of them stand out, except maybe the one in the hospital played by Greg Nicotero, the undead patrolman they come across, and Debra's zombified mother and little brother. The deaths of the zombies and their victims are also very basic: typical throat-ripping and munching on body parts, an electrocution in the bathtub for Eliot, gunshots to the head, a group of zombies getting blown up by dynamite, an IV pole through the head, an arrow to the head for Debra's little brother, and Ridley's head getting sliced in half by an antique sword. I guess by this point, we'd been spoiled with the fantastic makeup effects in the previous movies, making this one disappointing because it's so restrained. The most creative death for both a character and a zombie at the same time is when Samuel, the deaf Amish guy they come across, gets grabbed from behind and bitten, prompting to stab himself right through his head with a scythe, doing the same to the zombie. There are other more creative zombie deaths in the film, like one getting a defibrillator to the sides of its head, causing its eyeballs to explode, another that gets acid thrown on its head, which slowly eats away the skin, and the last shot being of a zombie hanging from a tree that gets shot through the middle of its face, leaving only the top of its head hanging, and they all could have become classics... had they not been achieved by horrible CGI. In order to breeze through shooting more quickly, Romero used CGI even more so than in the previous film and because of the film's very low budget (which also resulted in an overall look that's far worse than Land of the Dead), it's so terribly rushed and bottom of the barrel in terms of its quality that it absolutely ruins those scenes and takes you out of the movie. Hands down, the worst effect in the film, aside from that final shot (even before it gets blown apart, the hanging zombie is clearly computer-generated), is a moment where Ridley shows Jason and Debra that there are a number of zombies wandering around the bottom of his estate's swimming pool. I don't even have to describe it. Just look at it. Does that not look like something of a PlayStation 2 game?

While we're on the subject of the zombies, another thing that gets tiring aside from the constant beating over the head of the theme and the pretentious dialogue is Romero's need to remind us that, "Dead things don't run." He's always hated the whole "running zombie" concept that first started with 28 Days Later (again, not really a zombie movie to me, but whatever) and really caught a lot of attention in the remake of Dawn of the Dead, and I don't understand why. Aside from the simple fact that zombies aren't real and, therefore, it's unnecessary to preoccupy yourself with how they would or wouldn't move in reality, it's like he doesn't get how scary the concept of running zombies is. Those guys will be able to catch you no problem, especially since they can't get tired due to they're being, you know, dead. Romero has always seemed to be unable to enjoy other zombie movies that weren't made by him (aside from Shaun of the Dead) and doesn't respond well to people tampering with the "rules" that he established in Night of the Living Dead. Therefore, there are several times in this film where the character of Jason Creed makes it clear that the undead wouldn't be able to run. He directs Ridley in this way while filming the student movie at the beginning, telling him, "Dead things don't move fast. You're a corpse, for Christ's sakes. If you run that fast, your ankles are gonna snap off," and at another point, he yells, "See? I told you dead things move slow!" It's like, "George, we get it! You don't like running zombies. Fine. That's your prerogative. But get over it and stop trying to shove it down everyone's throats, for God's sake."

By this point, you're probably thinking, "Man, Cody, you're pretty harsh towards this movie. Is there anything in it you did like?" Well actually, like Land of the Dead, there were some aspects of it that I did indeed like. My favorite part of the whole film was the deaf Amish guy, Samuel (R.D. Reid) they come across. He was just awesome with how he was no nonsense and took care of business by throwing dynamite at the zombies and slicing into others with his scythe... and then they kill him. He gets the best practical death in the film, yes, but still, I'm like, "Way to go, Romero." The other things I liked were two video clips that they see on the net. One was a video of a little girl's birthday party, where the clown turns out to be a zombie and attacks the partygoers, which struck me because I always find that kind of twisting of something that's supposed to be happy, memorable, and exciting for a little child to be very disturbing. And then, there was a clip from Tokyo where a young woman says that everything is going to hell there, telling anybody who's watching, "Don't bury dead. Shoot in head!" I found that unsettling because it proved that the zombies are was appearing all over the world, not just in America. In the other films, we always assumed that it was a world-wide thing but here, we get confirmation and it makes the situation all the more frightening.

Diary of the Dead not only had the misfortune of being given a limited release but it also came out a couple of months after Cloverfield (which used the point-of-view gimmick much better, I might add) and, by that point, people were already tired of the POV horror style, even though it was actually just getting warmed up. But, as I've said, that was the least of the film's problems. I hate ragging on Romero this much but there's no denying that the guy does not make films the way he used to and, as I've said, his biggest problem is that he now cares more about the messages he's trying to convey than anything else, which the movies suffer for. In my opinion, he needs to be a filmmaker first and a social studies teacher second, and if he can't, then he should either just make documentaries about his views or retire. In case you're wondering, I still haven't seen Survival of the Dead, his follow-up to this. I'm afraid to see it because I hear it's even worse than this, which is quite an accomplishment. He's apparently making movies so bad that they're only worth watching to satisfy your curiosity as to how bad they can get. If I ever do see Survival of the Dead, you guys will, as always, be the first to know my thoughts. For now, I'm moving on.

Franchises: Romero's Dead Series. Land of the Dead (2005)

Twenty years after he made Day of the Dead, and after having not made a movie since the early 90's up until 2000 with Bruiser, George Romero made his long-awaited return to the zombie subgenre with a new film. From what I can gather, fans were nothing less than thrilled about the prospect of a new Romero Dead movie, which is understandable, and the renewed popularity of zombie movies at the time, with films like 28 Days Later (although I personally don't consider that to be a zombie film but that's a discussion for another day) and the remake of Dawn of the Dead, didn't hurt either. And from what I can gather, the film did quite well, making over $46 million on a budget that was somewhere between $15 and $20 million, and it got generally good reviews from critics as well. I only vaguely heard about the film's release in the summer of 2005 and didn't become really interested in seeing it until I saw an advertisement for its DVD release that fall. Once I saw those brief clips from it, I decided that this was a flick I wanted to check out, especially since I was now a fan of Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead. I received the DVD as a Christmas present from my late aunt and popped it in the day after I watched Day of the Dead for the first time (fitting, considering how the documentary on that edition ends with Romero talking about the possibility of a fourth movie). My reactions to both were fairly "meh" but, while I've grown to really enjoy Day of the Dead, Land of the Dead has remained one that I've always felt was just okay. For me, it proved that, by this point in his life, Romero had lost some of his spark and now seemed more interested in the political messages he was trying to invoke rather than making a movie that, while having some welcome depth to it, was, first and foremost, entertaining. While I still don't out-and-out hate this film, it's not one that I had much of an inclination to go back to every now and then and, in fact, I no longer have that DVD I once did.

What's interesting is, after Day of the Dead, George Romero tried his hand at making movies with studios, filming Monkey Shines (which I really like) and The Dark Half (which I think is a fair film) for Orion Pictures, but the experiences on both weren't great due to studio meddling and Orion's money problems. After The Dark Half, was filmed from 1990 to 1991 but not released until 1993 due to Orion's bankruptcy, Romero was inactive for the rest of the decade, save for directing a commercial for, fittingly, Resident Evil 2, and while there were talks of him possibly directing the Resident Evil movie (I've never seen the movie that was eventually made but, given Paul W.S. Anderson's track record, I'm sure Romero could have done much better), he remained inactive until 2000 when he released the very low budget, independent movie, Bruiser (really don't care for that film). Land of the Dead would prove to be the one movie by him that was backed by a truly major studio, namely Universal, and it would also prove to be the biggest budget he'd ever work with. However, while Romero has said that he was able to do everything he wanted to with the film and was allowed to shoot it in Toronto, where he's lived since before the millennium, he made it clear even on the special features of the DVD that he wasn't a "Hollywood guy," that he didn't go in for that "bullshit," which makes me wonder if something else happened behind the scenes that he didn't mention. Or it's also possible that he's simply not comfortable working with so much money and doesn't care for the studio system (I think he may hate it more than John Carpenter, is that's possible). Whatever the case, I don't think it's likely we'll ever see another major studio film with his name on it.

Despite my feelings that the movie is just okay, I also think that there are genuinely good things about it. First off, the makeup effects by Greg Nicotero and company are top-notch all-around. The zombies, which the characters here refer to as "stenches," look fantastic and they sometimes combine realistic-looking animatronics with great makeups (see if you can tell which is which, because it's not that easy). The gore effects are also excellent and, like Day of the Dead, a highlight of this film is when the zombies descend on the fortified city and go on a brutal killing spree. You get the usual, bloody flesh-ripping and biting that you want and it is an exciting sequence (sadly, it's one of the only exciting sequences in the film, as I'll get to). Another highlight is a small recreation of the basement scene in Dawn where two characters come across zombies chewing on human remains, which is actually much creepier because of how it's completely dark and you're only getting gruesome glimpses as a result of the flashlight one character has.

Another aspect of the movie that's sort of good is the music score by Reinhold Heil and Johnny Klimek. While it's definitely not the most memorable score, it does have some nice pieces, such as an interesting little theme that plays throughout the film and has a sound like, "Duh-duh-duh, duh-duh-duh," on a piano. The music that plays during the zombie rampage sequence and over the majority of the ending credits is also memorable for just how badass and threatening it sounds.

Unfortunately, those are some of the few truly good things I can say for the movie because, for the most part, it's either preachy, forgettable, or just plain awful, which is a shame because the story had potential to be interesting. By this point, the world is so overrun with zombies that a large part of humanity has now  taken up residence in the fortified city of Pittsburgh, which is protected by the zombies by rivers on either side and an electrified fence. (As I said in my earlier review, this doesn't fit with the scenario in Day of the Dead, where humanity was apparently wiped out except for a few pockets of people but, now that I think about it, it's not far-fetched to believe the city could have existed all this time, especially since the characters in Day were saddled with faulty radio equipment that made it nigh impossible to contact anyone nearby.) However, life in the city isn't so good, as the rich and powerful have taken control and live in a nice, luxurious high-rise called Fiddler's Green, leaving everyone else to languish in the slums around it. One of those working for the wealthy, Cholo, gets tired of risking his life by going out and killing zombies, as well as doing other dirty work for them, and getting nothing in return. He retaliates by hijacking Dead Reckoning, a massive, fortified armored vehicle used to safely venture in the zombie-infested areas outside the city and threatens to use it to destroy Fiddler's Green unless his demands are met. Kaufman, the true ruler of the city, responds by hiring Riley, Dead Reckoning's designer and former commander, and his friends to stop Cholo, with the help of a small group of people he sends with them. Meanwhile, the zombies are becoming more intelligent, thanks to the leadership of one in particular, and eventually figure out how to get over to the city. Like I said, it could make for a good movie; however, I'll now explain why this doesn't work as well as it should in my opinion.

If any political messages were going to be prevalent in this film, they were inevitably going to be about the war on terror. Romero has said that the way the people living in the city treat the zombies is the same way the American people treat terrorism: they know the problem exists but act like it doesn't until it eventually comes and, as it literally does in this film, bites them in the ass. I will say that part is handled well enough. Also, according to some critics, the tactic the characters use to distract the zombies with fireworks is similar to those used during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, which I didn't even know until I read about it, mainly because I try to stay away from anything to do with politics and government, but I did find it interesting and a nice way to slip in some undertones. But, where I think the movie gets overly heavy-handed with its statements is in the metaphor for the widening gap between the rich and poor. For my money, it spends a little too much time trying to hammer that message home, with so many sequences in the slums of the city and numerous lines of dialogue talking about it in the scenes with Cholo and Kaufman (who I used to think was a George W. Bush stand-in but, since I'm not entirely sure, I'm not going to say any more about it so as not to open that can of worms). Speaking of his Kaufman, his line about the zombies having "no right" felt very forced and pretentious. It was like, "Okay, George, we get it." And finally, going back to the terrorism angle, when Cholo steals Dead Reckoning, he parks it on a hilltop overlooking the city and aims the weapons at the biggest tower in the city. Granted, he never gets a chance to destroy it but I don't think I have to say any more about it's meant to be a call-back to. Again, a little heavy-handed.

Now, I wouldn't have minded all these political overtones, however heavy-handed they may be, if the film was one thing: entertaining. The original trilogy may have had a lot that it was trying but they managed to lay them within movies that were, most importantly of all, fun and thrilling to watch at the same time. This film, however, didn't entertain me, which is all I ask for from a movie in the first place and the only thing I really care about, honestly. It was really dull most of the time, with almost no zombie action until near the end, and when it it wasn't being preachy, it was just forgettable. The biggest reason for that is the cast: none of these people are anywhere close to the level of the casts from the previous films. Simon Baker, who plays the lead character of Riley, gives what has to be one of the most uninteresting, bland performances ever. I get that the idea is that he's burned out on everything and just wants to get away but that doesn't change the fact that he's a boring lead with no charisma, doesn't feel like a leader or a badass in any way, and is a huge letdown following the leads we've had in the past movies. Asia Argento, daughter of Dario Argento, plays a slutty character named Slack who also is not interesting in any way, even when they try to make her someone you should care about by revealing that she tried to help organize rebellion against the rich. John Leguizamo and Dennis Hopper's presences were meant to show that Romero now had the power to get big actors like them but, honestly, how many people were expected to be interested in them by 2005? I've got nothing against either of them but it's laughable that they were intended to be big draws. Leguizamo tries to be badass and he does have some kind of charisma but he mainly comes off as a cliche and Hopper, while he does his best, has nothing to do other than act as a representation of one of Romero's themes. The only character I kind of liked was Robert Joy as Charlie, Riley's burned and kind of simple friend/bodyguard (originally, I thought he was maybe halfway between human and zombie but, apparently, that's not the case). I felt he was interesting, with his mannerisms and how much of a sure-shot he was by licking the barrel of his gun, as well as his devotion to Riley. I also liked how he called the fireworks "sky-flowers," and, at the end when the zombies are killing a big group of people and weren't distracted by the fireworks they shot off earlier, he solemnly says, "Sky-flowers don't work no more." I thought he was something of a cool character but they never did much with him when all is said and done.

As good as the zombies look, there aren't that many that stand out as in the previous films. The most memorable one is Eugene Clark's Big Daddy, who's mostly just a big brute who roars a lot but he does have some notable moments, like when he shows emotion towards other zombies who've been injured, such as the one whose head is shot off right in his hand, and his moments of intelligence when he shows the others how to reach the city and makes use of a propane tank to kill both Kaufman and a zombified Cholo at the end. I used to wonder why the zombies didn't get smarter after Bub, who was far more intelligent than Big Daddy and would have probably made a more effective leader for them but, given how he was taught to be civil, only committed violence out of revenge for Dr. Logan's death, and didn't join the other zombies in eating those he did kill, I guess it makes sense that he wouldn't have gone on to help the zombies devour other people. It was also probably best for the story that the zombies have a leader who learned on his own rather than having been taught. Other than Big Daddy, there aren't many other zombies who stand out, except for maybe a cheerleader one you see briefly at one point and the ones in the barroom photo booth, who are only noteworthy because they're played by an unrecognizable Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright. One exception, though, is Blades, the biker character played by Tom Savini in Dawn of the Dead, who makes a brief appearance as a zombie during the climactic rampage and, while he's obviously put there just to make the fans squeal with delight, as well as so Romero can give his old friend some kind of involvement with the film, it's a nice surprise nevertheless.

Lastly, as I mentioned earlier, the budget, while not exactly gigantic, was definitely the biggest one Romero ever had to work with and it allowed him to do some things he'd never been able to before, like have a really big scope for the film, which actually enabled him to use some of the concepts from Day of the Dead he was originally forced to abandon, and create the massive, cool-looking Dead Reckoning vehicle. Unfortunately, the budget proved to not mean a thing in other areas, the most notable of which was the use of some CGI effects. By this point, there had been movies with $100 million budgets that had really bad CGI, so there was no hope for it in a movie this small, and while it's thankfully used sparingly, the results, sure enough, make the film feel much cheaper than it really is. The most jarring effect is a zombie whose head is hanging by its spinal cord behind its back and it flips it around in order to bite someone. It is laughably bad, to say the least, and doesn't do anything to help the film's credibility. The film also looks rather cheap to me, like a big budget TV movie instead of something you'd see in theaters. I don't know what it is about Canada, if it's the film stocks up there or what, but a lot of movies that were filmed there often have that kind of generic, bland to them. Some shots look cool, with a dark blue tint to them that I like, but for the most part, if it weren't for the gore and adult content, I'd think I was watching that was made for television.

The positive reviews that Land of the Dead got from many mainstream critics mostly focused on the film's political overtones, a fact that makes me think I'm possibly not cut out to be a professional critic. As I said, I just want to be entertained and don't care about political or social commentary, and while I can appreciate it if it's there, the film itself has to be a fun or interesting watch as well and this wasn't that for me. Again, I don't think it's absolutely horrible and feel that there are good notes to it, like the makeup, gore, and animatronic effects, the zombie carnage at the end, some bits of the music, parts of the political statements that are well-done, and advantages from the big budget, but it's still a letdown at the end of the day. The story isn't as interesting as it should be, the characters are almost completely forgettable, the film has a cheap look to it, the CGI effects are horrendous, and, ultimately, not much happens until the third act, as the film is so focused on its political statements. Its biggest failure to me is that, instead of being downright terrible, it's just forgettable, which is often even worse.

Franchises: Romero's Dead Series. Day of the Dead (1985)

I first saw Day of the Dead not too long after Dawn of the Dead, when I bought the collector's edition DVD from Anchor Bay at the beginning of 2006. Before I went into it, I gathered that the general consensus was that it was the weakest film in the original trilogy of zombie movies from George Romero and, the first time I saw it, I happened to agree with that sentiment. I didn't care for it as much as the two previous films and thought it was a big step down, mainly because, like a lot of people, I didn't find it as entertaining and fun as Dawn and I didn't like the characters as much either. But, as has also happened among most genre fans, as I've watched it more and more over the years, it's really grown on me, to the point where I now feel it more than holds its own among its kin and is a worthy cap on the original trilogy (Romero himself has even said that it's become his personal favorite, so that has to say something). I can now appreciate that the film returns to the claustrophobic feeling of Night of the Living Dead, albeit on a slightly widened scale, as well as that film's grim tone, with the zombie apocalypse having now wiped out all but a few patches of mankind (something which would be slightly retconned in Land of the Dead). The main characters this time are scientists and military personnel who are held up in an underground base, with the scientists performing experiments on zombies that the soldiers acquire for them in order to figure out what drives them and, more importantly, to try to find a way to stop the outbreak from continuing. However, the soldiers are becoming less and less cooperative with the scientists and it's quickly becoming a dangerous dictatorship.

As he did after Night of the Living Dead, following Dawn of the Dead, George Romero attempted to spread his wings a little bit with Knightriders (which I've never seen, although it does sound interesting; not so sure about the 145-minute running time, though) but then immediately went back to horror with his biggest commercial success, Creepshow. After that, he began prepping Day of the Dead, which he originally envisioned as an enormous film, with the biggest scope of any of them, but because of the directive that an unrated movie, which is what Romero wanted again, wouldn't be able to make back the budget needed to bring his vision to life, he had to scale it back, whittling the script down from over 200 pages to just 88 by the time of shooting. It's a real shame that he wasn't able to do the movie he originally had in mind because back then, with him at his creative peak and Tom Savini and Greg Nicotero doing the effects, I'm sure it would have been something to behold. But, that said, the movie that we did get still has a lot going for it, so it wasn't that much of a loss.

Like the films before it, the cast members in this film play their parts very well and I've grown to like them a lot more than I did upon my first viewing. Sarah, the young, tough female lead played Lori Cardille, feels like the end result of an evolution in the trilogy (of course, by this point, Ripley in Alien had made strong female leads very popular, so you can't ignore that influence either), going from the catatonic, useless Barbra to the more proactive but still not exactly warrior-material Fran and finally arriving on a woman who takes charge, doesn't take crap from any of the men around her, and, most importantly, doesn't fear the zombies and, while supportive of the research being done on them, isn't above blowing their brains out if she needs to. In addition, she's one of the more sensible and level-headed characters around, trying her best to maintain order between the increasingly disgruntled military men and the scientists, but she soon starts to realize that their research is far from helpful in the long run and that Dr. Logan is absolutely insane. When things start going to hell during the third act and she realizes just how dangerously deranged Captain Rhodes is, Sarah decides to hell with it and joins John and William in their decision to abandon it all and fight their way to some place that isn't full of zombies.

I've always really liked John and William, the Jamaican pilot played by Terry Alexander and the Irish radio operator played by Jarlath Conroy, mainly because, along with Sarah, they're two of the few characters in the film who aren't either high, assholish, or outright insane. Instead, they're both laid back and cool, especially John, and only do what they're absolutely supposed to: fly the helicopter and make the radio work. They don't do anything to help the scientists figure out a solution to the problem because they don't believe in it at all. As John tells Sarah, after elaborating on how all the information kept down in the cave is completely meaningless now, "Here you come with a whole new set of charts and graphs and records. What you gonna do? Bury them down here with all the other relics of what... once... was? Let me tell you what else. Yeah, I'm gonna tell you what else. You ain't never gonna figure it out, just like they never figured out why the stars are where they're at. It ain't mankind's job to figure that stuff out. So what you're doing is a waste of time, Sarah. And time is all we got left, you know." Despite that, though, he does give his own two cents on what caused the zombie outbreak, suggesting that it might be a divine punishment by God for mankind getting too big for its britches. Moreover, John has the most sensible idea of anyone in the movie: let's just go somewhere that isn't inhabited by zombies and either wait for this thing to blow over or spend what time we have left doing something happy and relaxing! If I was there, I'd be like, "Hell, yeah! Let's go, dude!" But, despite their laid back attitude, John and William prove to be reliable and dependable when the military guys turn on Sarah, with John refusing to take off without his friends, despite being beaten up for it, and both of them helping her fight off the zombies as they try to escape the cave.

Of course, you can't talk about the cast without mentioning Joe Pilato's Captain Rhodes, who has to be one of the most insanely evil characters ever. The guy is not only a mean old son of a bitch but is clearly crazy, willing to kill anybody who doesn't obey his orders, even if that order is as mundane as getting back in your seat during a meeting. Even his own men seem to be taken aback by how out of his mind he is. The scene where he tells Pvt. Steel to shoot Sarah just because she won't sit down is a prime example. Steel makes a joke  by pointing his finger at Sarah and saying, "Bang, you're dead!" but, when Rhodes whips out his pistol and threatens to shoot Steel if he won't follow his orders, you can tell from Steel's expression that he's thinking, "Good God, you're actually serious, aren't you?" As far as Rhodes is concerned, the scientists need them more than they need the scientists and that's bad news for them, because he's not at all impressed with their research and doesn't think it's worth his men risking their lives. He also doesn't give a damn about the less than desirable conditions of their laboratory and when things really start to go downhill, as he runs out of men and ammunition and then learns that the scientists don't have the proper equipment either, he makes it very clear that he's willing abandon it all and leave. When Dr. Logan, who he really doesn't like, and Sarah manage to talk him into giving them more time to continue with their research, Rhodes, nevertheless, shows just how tentative his offer is when he tells them, "You better start showing me some results, and you better not piss me off. You understand? Nothing happens around here without my knowing about it! And anybody fucks with my command... they get court martialed... they get executed. You better know I mean it too, people." When he learns that all Logan is doing is trying to civilize the zombies, with Bub as the main example, Rhodes' patience begins to wear even thinner, and it finally breaks when he learns that Logan has been using body parts from some of his men in his experiments and has been feeding Bub the flesh of others as a reward. He kills Logan and then tries to force John to fly him and his two remaining men, Steel, Rickles, and Torrez, out of the base, while leaving Sarah and William behind for the zombies. After John manages to escape them, taking their weapons, Rhodes proves that, despite his anger at what Logan did to his men, he's willing to abandon those left to save himself, although he gets his comeuppance as well. One last thing I have to say about Rhodes is that he certainly has a way with words. Some of the most quotable lines from the movie comes from him: "I'm runnin' this monkey farm now, Frankenstein, and I wanna know what the fuck you're doin' with my time!", "You ain't been givin' me nothin' but a bowl full of Greek salad!", and, even as he's being ripped apart by the zombies, "Choke on 'em!"

Rhodes' nickname for Dr. Logan (Richard Liberty), "Frankenstein," is actually a pretty apt one because, as brilliant and elegant a speaker as he is, you learn that he's really quite mad, in case you couldn't tell when you first see him with his blood-covered clothes and crazy hair. He thinks that the time to try to kill all of the zombies has passed as there are now too many of them and also feels that it'll take too long to find a way to reverse the process; for him, the key is to now train them to become docile, progress of which he feels he's making with Bub. Despite Captain Rhodes' threats to shut the whole operation down and get out, Logan is able to talk him down by reminding him that he has nowhere to go and that he'll simply have to wait for the results of their research. It might be because he's too crazy to realize just how dangerous he is but one thing that you have to give Logan is that he's not at all intimidated by Rhodes and knows how to talk circles around him, as John says. Even when Rhodes discovers that all he's trying to do is teach the zombies how to be civilized, Logan still keeps his cool and tells him that this is just the beginning of it, that their civility must be rewarded. And when Rhodes tells him, "I don't want them to do anything but drop over!', Logan jokes, "Yes, well, apparently they're not inclined to do that for you, captain." Like I said, though, Logan is quite deranged despite his brilliance and is revealed to have no morality regarding his experiments. This was already clear at the beginning when he reveals that one of the corpses he's using is that of Maj. Cooper, the man who was in charge before Rhodes, but becomes all the more apparent later when Sarah and Logan's assistant, Dr. Fisher, find that he's now using the body parts of some of Rhodes' recently killed men and, moreover, is feeding Bub the flesh of others. They also find a tape recording of Logan yelling at and apparently beating a zombie, going on about his "Mother" and "Father," further proof of how deranged he is. His experimentations on the soldiers' remains ultimately get Logan killed, although this act by Rhodes unleashes the wrath of Bub, who had grown actual affection for him.

One character I have never liked is Miguel (Antone DiLeo), a Hispanic soldier who's also something of a boyfriend to Sarah, although I don't know what she sees in him. He's a complete ungrateful asshole towards her. Granted, it's explained that he hasn't had much sleep in a while but, at the same time, when he's not whining and moaning about what's going on, he's being a complete dick to Sarah, even when she tries to help him. He either hassles her about making him look like an "asshole" in front of the other soldiers when all she did was try to help to corral some of the zombies or actually slaps her when she tries to give him something to help him sleep. The only moment where he acts kindly towards her is right then when he does hug her but right after that, when she does sedate him, she has to grab something to back him off and he calls her a bitch. The last straw for Sarah comes that night when, after she wakes up from a nightmare, Miguel berates her for trying to hide her fear and says that he's through with her, prompting to her throw him out, to which I say, "Good riddance." Because of that, I didn't give a crap at all when Miguel later gets bitten by one of the zombies when a corralling goes bad and Sarah and her friends amputate and cauterize his arm to stop him from becoming a zombie himself. Originally, I thought that his making his way to the surface, letting the zombies gathered outside the base through the main gate, and then leading them down into the heart of the complex, was a way of trying to redeem him as it ultimately kills Rhodes and the remaining soldiers but, now that I think about it, he went up there simply to commit suicide. What's more, he had no way of knowing that Sarah was put into the adjoining caverns, away from the real carnage that follows, meaning that, if she hadn't, he would have doomed her too, especially when he ripped apart the elevator controls down in the base. Not thinking straight or not, that realization was the final nail in the coffin for me, and I was glad to see Miguel's throat get ripped out.

Among the military men, the most colorful ones after Rhodes himself are his second-in-command, Steel (Gary Klar) and his sidekick, Rickles (Ralph Marrero). While they're not as crazy as Rhodes, they're no less dickish and disrespectful to Sarah and the others, particularly Steel, who has a really filthy mouth, as well as a memorably crazy laugh, and proves to be not only sexist in his attitude towards Sarah but also racist, as he often calls Miguel a "spick." Both of them seem to be looking for any excuse to hassle and annoy Sarah, either making vulgar comments about her and her relationship with Miguel or simply showing that they don't care at all about what they're supposed to be doing, like when Sarah berates Rickles for not doing something properly early on and he gives her that kind of, "And what does that mean to me?" look that makes you just want to deck someone. Speaking of Miguel, they really don't like him, especially Steel, who tries to let a zombie kill him when his really fatigued condition almost costs Rickles' his life and tries to convince Rhodes that they need to kill him when he gets bitten by a zombie, although Rhodes decides that'd be letting him off too easy. But, like I said earlier, Steel and Rickles' loyalty to Rhodes ultimately proves to be their downfall, as he leaves them behind when the zombies invade the complex and they, along with another private, are torn apart and eaten. The last noteworthy character is Romero regular John Amplas as Dr. Fisher, Logan's much more reasonable assistant who's only trying to help the doctor in his experiments and is Sarah's one true friend outside of John and William. Like Sarah, he's constantly at odds with the soldiers and the way they're treating them, which gets him on Rhodes' bad side almost from the beginning. Also like Sarah, while he's impressed with what Logan has managed to accomplish with Bub, he eventually realizes that he's quite insane after the two of them discover some of his more immoral experiments. Unfortunately for Fisher, when Rhodes finally snaps and takes him and Sarah hostage after killing Logan, the deranged captain decides to make an example of him when John refuses to leave his friends behind, shooting him in the head.

The setting for Day of the Dead is something of a halfway point between those of the first two films: it's certainly not as claustrophobic and confined as the small farmhouse in Night of the Living Dead but, at the same time, it's not as wide open and spacious as Dawn of the Dead's mall. One thing's for sure, though: it's the most uninviting, miserable-looking environment in all of them. For 90% of the film, you're down in this dark, dank underground storage facility turned into a makeshift military complex, with miles of dark, gloomy tunnels filled with zombies and bats, drab, white-painted hallways with very poor lighting, a similar-looking dining hall which is almost nauseating in how cold and bland it looks, and some basic, uninspired quarters with concrete walls for everyone (go back to that image of Sarah near the beginning of this review and look at the wall behind her to see what I mean). Worst of all is Dr. Logan's laboratory, which is positively skin-crawling with the cadavers lying around on slabs, pieces of bodies lying here and there, zombies chained to the wall as test subjects (you know someone's bad news when the zombies are afraid of him), and a freezer that's later revealed to be full of body parts. It's small wonder that everyone is going crazy from being stuck down there for so long, especially when up top, it's bright and sunny Florida, albeit overrun with zombies. Speaking of which, the film's opening is quite haunting as it really gets across how, by this point, the zombies have almost completely wiped out mankind, as the city of Fort Myers is devoid of human life, with the only sounds there being those of the undead moaning. It's small wonder why John has decided that all he wants to do now is find a little zombie-free slice of paradise to spend the rest of his days.

Effects wise, this film features the best in the entire trilogy, and the entire series, as far as I'm concerned. Tom Savini teamed up with an up-and-coming Greg Nicotero (who also has a small role in the film as Pvt. Johnson, whose severed head is later seen being used in Logan's experiments) to create some of the most mind-blowing stuff ever put to film, stuff that has to be the best effects he's ever been involved with. For starters, the zombies themselves look better here than they've ever been. As so much time has passed since the outbreak began, they're more decomposed and rotted than before, with nasty green skin and hideous wounds, some of which have very elaborate details in them. Hell, the very first one that you see when the title comes up after the opening credits has no bottom jaw and what blew my mind was learning that it was an animatronic; it feels so alive, that I really thought it was an actor. In Dr. Logan's lab, there are some amazing specimens on display, like the corpse of Maj. Cooper that's missing its entire head except for the very back of its neck, with its brain and the top of its spinal cord exposed (an effect that stumped the legendary Dick Smith), a zombie whose guts fall out of his opened stomach when he tries to get off the table, an effect that's repeated in a nightmare Sarah has about Miguel later on (both times, it's a disgusting but amazing sight), and the aforementioned severed head of Johnson, which is reacting to Logan's experimentation as if it's being reanimated. Needless to say, this film is gory as all get-out. Among some of the other gruesome sights are people's throats getting torn out by zombies, one zombie getting a drill right into his forehead, Miguel getting chunk of his arm bitten off and then having the entire thing amputated and cauterized, a zombie getting his head sliced in half by a shovel, with the top half watching Sarah and her friends escape afterward, and plenty of shots to the head that spray blood everywhere (blood which looks very, very real this time). As amazing as some of that stuff is, though, it's just a warm-up to my favorite section of the whole movie, which is near the end when the zombies are let loose inside the base and they chase and rip apart Rhodes and his men. The carnage is unbelievable, gruesome, and uncomfortably realistic. Torrez (Taso Stavrakis, Tom Savini's buddy and assistant) has his head pulled straight off, his voice turning into a high-pitched screech as his vocal cords are severed, Rickles' face is pulled apart, exposing the eyeball, and Rhodes, fittingly, getting the worst death of all when his entire lower half is ripped away while he's still alive. Steel decides to commit suicide rather than be eaten alive as the zombies begin to do so but you still see his remains getting devoured, as you do everyone else who was in the base. It's a montage that makes the basement scene in Dawn of the Dead look like Sesame Street, to say the least.

This film also notable in the franchise for having the first zombie who becomes a full-blown character: Bub, Logan's prize specimen who has been taught not to attack and eat people and is actually showing signs of rehumanizing. At first, he's just as vicious as the other zombies when he lunges at Sarah when she first enters Logan's lab but, as the film goes on and he changes, Howard Sherman begins to play the role in a very innocent and childlike manner, as we see him learn to read, shave, speak to an extent, and even listen to music, the latter of which he's quite taken by. You also gets hints that Bub was in the military when he was alive, as he salutes Captain Rhodes upon seeing his tags and figures out very quickly how to use a gun. When he discovers Logan's body in the lab after Rhodes has killed him, Bub displays the most concrete human emotions seen in a zombie yet when he mourns the loss of a man who probably felt like a father to him and decides to take revenge upon the soldiers. He even becomes a full-blown hero by the end, injuring Rhodes enough for the other zombies to have their way with him and, instead of joining them in eating him alive, simply salutes Rhodes and shambles off, showing that there might have been something to what Logan was getting at with his experiments.

Romero has said that the theme of this movie is loss of communication and how it eventually leads to chaos and destruction, even in a little piece of society like we have here. While I do understand that notion, if I was personally going to try to find any theme in the film, I think I'd say it's both a jab at the military, who are supposed to help and protect but, in this case, turn out to be the worst nightmare imaginable, as well as a reinforcement of some of the themes in Night of the Living Dead. As in that film, the characters are cooped up in a claustrophobic setting, trying to deal with a threat that's right on their doorstep, and probably could find a solution to it if they'd work together but they're too busy fighting with each other. I guess that's part of the communication theme as well, so there's that. Personally, the exact theme of this one has always been harder for me to pin down than in the previous films, mostly because, unlike them, it doesn't feel like it represents the decade it was made in. Maybe the theme of loss of communication could have something to do with the tensions between America and Russia that was going on at that time or some other issue back then that I'm not privy to or maybe that wasn't Romero's intent this time around. I could be looking into this more than I need to but the theme here has always felt more abstract to me... or maybe I'm just dumb.

Besides those I've listed, my only other major problem is the ending. Some have said they don't get it but that's not my issue, because I think it's pretty self-explanatory; I just find it to be lackluster. There's a false scare with a zombie seemingly in their helicopter and then suddenly, we find out that it was just a dream like the one the movie opened with and Sarah, John, and William did, in fact, make it to the tropical island they talked about flying to. It just felt very abrupt to me, like Romero didn't know how to end the film. Never really cared for it.

This was the first Romero zombie film to have an original score from beginning to end rather than relying on library tracks and as far as I'm concerned, it's a welcome change of pace. John Harrison, who had worked for Romero before on Creepshow as both a musician and an assistant director, which he also did here, brings a very unique, electronic sound to the score. Rather than sounding scary, it's mainly very energetic, with some odd sounds created by electronic keyboards and synthesizers, and even has some pieces here and there that correspond to the tropical location up top. My favorite piece of music comes during the zombie rampage through the base, which is where the music really starts rocking and just sounds awesome. As for the song, The World Inside Your Eyes, which plays over the ending credits, I've never thought much of it. You only hear a little bit of it but I've never cared for the sound or the lyrics and it's one those songs that doesn't fit at all with the movie it's accompanying.

Day of the Dead, as I said, used to be a much hated part of Romero's career but has, in recent years, garnered the respect that I now feel it deserves. While I do think some of its ambitions were done better in the previous films and there are some things about it I don't care for, like some of the characters, the abrupt, lackluster ending, and the song at the end, it definitely has enough to warrant it being considered a worthy of being part of this great series, such as the memorable characters and actors, the setting of the underground complex, the incredible zombie and gore effects, and the well-done music score. Unfortunately, as we'll see, it would also end up being the last truly good zombie movie Romero would ever do (as well as one of his last good movies period).