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This is the third movie in George A. Romero's "Living Dead" series. Society has succumbed to the zombie plague, leaving a small group of survivors to clean up the mess. To add to the mess, a scientist has started training a zombie, Bub, in hopes of eventually training all zombies to be "good little boys." Things go from bad to worse when what's left of the military turns on the rest of the survivors...
The makeup and gore effects in Day of the Dead are top notch. The zombies in this movie still rank up there with zombie effects in more recent zombie movies. The gore is downright disgusting in spots, which is exactly what gore effects are supposed to be. They basically built on all the good makeup and gore stuff they did in Dawn of the Dead and took it to the next level. The main character, Sarah, is countered by the main zombie of the movie, Bub. Sarah is sympathetic, helpful and easy on the eyes. Bub, however, is a zombie, so he’s hungry for flesh, not so helpful, and looks like death. The thing that makes Bub different from other zombies is that he seems to remember more about his past life and is a lot less aggressive. The actor who portrays Bub, Sherman Howard, does an excellent job here, considering the limitations of the role. There is some interesting dialogue spread throughout the movie. One scene that I always look forward to whenever I re-watch this movie is when Sarah spends a night drinking with John and McDermott. In this scene John talks about how it is the end of the world, and explains that they might be the last humans alive and should be trying to escape somewhere so they can restart the human race.
Unlike most other zombie movies, we get a feeling that the characters are trapped in a no-win situation. They can’t escape to safety because there’s no where to escape to. The no-win situation is evident from the start of the movie, where four of the characters fly into a zombie filled city to search for survivors. This scene still remains one of my favorite scenes of all time in any of Romero’s movies. As well, the tensions that develop among the characters also show the viewer that even the bunker where the characters hide from the zombies isn’t that safe.
When I first saw this movie, I loved the gore but was a little let down with everything else about it. Like Dawn of the Dead, there are those who will say they find this movie boring. There some parts that do drag a little, but I find the more I watch this movie, the more I appreciate it. I think the setting of the movie works against itself though. In other zombie movies there’s lots going on because we’re usually shown how society is reacting to the zombie plague. In this movie there is no societal reaction to watch because there is no society left. Because of this drawback, there are times during the movie that it feels like there isn’t a lot going on. The characterization in Day of Dead is also a weak point. Most of the military characters are either underdeveloped or one dimensional. The military leader, Rhodes, is interesting because he is so over the top, but his motivations still seem blurry to me. It becomes obvious that Rhodes isn’t mentally stable, so was he always like that? Did he only get like that after the zombie plague? If it’s so obvious that he’s crazy, why would he ever be put anywhere near a position of command? As well, why do the other soldiers obey him when they know what a nut he is? The big question becomes, why didn’t someone just shoot him the back when he wasn’t looking? My own survival instincts would definitely not allow me to follow a lunatic like Rhodes, so I would have ended up doing something other than obeying his orders.
Just about every zombie nerd out there knows that this wasn’t the movie Romero had in mind. He lost a chunk of his budget when he wouldn’t do what the studio wanted, which was to provide an R-rated movie. There exists a script of what Romero wanted to do, and I would recommend reading it if you ever get the chance. It’s mind blowing how different this movie could have been. The original script had a much better ending (an end to the zombie plague), but the premise of training the zombies to kill was a little too far fetched for me. I could handle the stuff we saw with Bub, but I don’t think they could have ever trained Bub to kill other zombies. The better ending aside, I have to say I prefer the movie that got made compared to the one that didn’t.
Day of the Dead isn’t for everyone. It lacks the timelessness of the original Night of the Living Dead and the social commentary of Dawn of the Dead, but it is still a good zombie movie. The first two zombie movies Romero made were so good that they hurt this movie because compared to its predecessors it can’t help but feel like a let down. However, considering Day of the Dead was the third movie in a series, it’s actually quite good. In other words, there are things about this movie that I love and things that I’m not in love with. I would recommend this movie, but not with the same force that I would recommend Romero’s first two zombie movies.
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