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).