Day Of The Dead

Synopsis: The dead are walking the earth. A few pockets of resistance have hidden themselves from the carnivorous cadavers and these survivors are desperately trying to find a way to cure the zombies. A few members of the military have holed themselves up in a disused missile silo and have been charged with looking after a group of scientists. Tensions are high when the soldiers discover that the scientists have been feeding humans to zombies in order to try and train them. As the atmosphere grows more hostile their inner sanctum is breached and the flesh-eating hoards break in on the hunt for fresh meat.

If Night of the Living Dead (1968) was a grim and grimy black and white nightmare and Dawn of the Dead (1978) is its garishly gore-soaked, slapstick, crowd-pleasing elder brother then Day of the Dead is the nihilistic, depressing cousin.

Claustrophobic, grim and horrific, Day of the Dead is a sombre watch. Our heroes are doomed from the get-go. As the last few survivors in the United States their future is bleak and to be honest, the hands of the earth couldn't be in the hands of a more unlikeable bunch. Both the military and the medical team spend most of the movie screaming at each other or being eaten by zombies. By the end of the film you are cheering on the zombies to kill off human kind. The dialogue features some great one-liners, in particular in Rhodes' death scene pay-off.

The performances are enthusiastic, if B- grade, but this film is all about the zombies. Romero's masterstroke was to make one of his walking dead more human than his human captors. Kept as a pet by Dr Logan, zombie Bub listens to a Walkman, plays games and is given regular meals, the contents of which provide one of the film's most deliciously dark shivers.

Tom Savini's make up work is astonishing. This was back in the day when CGI was not an option and blood, sweat and latex were the name of the game. His incredibly realistic and extremely bloody effects perfectly accompany Romero's political agenda. Zombies are decapitated, dismembered and brutalised and the results of the mad Dr Logan's experiments have to be seen to be believed. Not that the humans get let off lightly; the film's final scenes as the zombies infiltrate the compound and pull Rhodes' men to pieces display an particularly evil ingenuity on Savini's part. It's quite amazing considering the budget of $3,500,000 that Romero, Savini and company had to work with.

While not reaching the heights of Night of the Living Dead or Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead is well worth revisiting, it is certainly vastly superior to its seque,l Land of the Dead, and if anything it has improved with age.

 

 

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