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Day of the Dead | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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t some point after the events of Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead, the world has been overrun by legions of flesh-eating zombies. A scouting expedition led by government scientist Sarah (Cardille) finds no signs of non-undead life in a mid-sized Florida town. Back at the expedition's base, a sprawling underground bunker with miles of tunnels in which military personnel and research scientists work to find a way to deal with the undead plague, things have taken a turn for the worse; the bunker's CO has died, leaving the borderline-psychotic Capt. Rhodes (Pilato) in command.
Tensions build further as Rhodes demands results from the beleaguered scientists at gunpoint. One scientist, Dr. Logan (Liberty), a man not-so-affectionately known as "Dr. Frankenstein" who has the bearing of a blood-splattered penguin on crystal meth, bargains for more time. Logan's approach to the zombie plague is a not-so-subtle blend of B.F. Skinner and Goya. Working in a lab that looks like a low-rent charnel house, Logan believes the zombies can be socialized with treats and positive reinforcement; it's unfortunate that the one treat the zombies crave is warm human flesh. Logan has a certain amount of success with a very responsive zombie he nicknames Bub (Sherman).
Sensory deprivation, desperation, exhaustion and good old-fashioned stress take their toll. Rhodes becomes more unbalanced. There's a mishap near one of the tunnels in which zombie test subjects are stored. The kind of carnage for which Romero is famous ensues. The situation grows steadily more critical, though Bub's training is coming along quite nicely ... but where exactly is Dr. Logan scoring those treats?
George Romero's Dead finally has its Day
Michael Felsher points out in his liner notes to this two-disc set that Day of the Dead was not well liked upon its initial release in 1985. Many fans of Romero's Dead movies thought Day was a letdown after the Vietnam-era-flavored desperation of Night of the Living Dead and the apocalyptic shopping mall mayhem of Dawn of the Dead. However, as Felsher correctly states, Day of the Dead can improve remarkably upon a second viewing, despite its being an obviously and painfully low-budget production and its having an inadequate score by John Harrison.
Romero's trademark social satire in Night and Dawn seemed diluted in Day of the Dead; the film's bashing of Reagan-era militarism, filmed in the same year as Rambo: First Blood II, came across as too obvious to have genuine bite. Pilato's maniacal Capt. Rhodes, jarring and unbelievable on first viewing in his gung-ho extremes, becomes on subsequent viewings a much more sly figure of hyperbole, a character with much more in common with Conrad's Mr. Kurtz than anybody actually enlisted in the armed forces. Romero infuses the cold, dark setting of the underground bunker with the flavor of coughed-up tuberculosis spores. The varying degree of mental illness of each character is deeply unnerving in its implications as to how people really do work together in close quarters under great stress.
At the un-beating heart of the movie is the delicious and multilayered relationship between Dr. Logan and his zombie pal, Bub. Logan and Bub, as metaphoric stand-ins illustrating how we all have been socialized, are alone worth the price of at least a rental, as are the superb special makeup effects of Tom Savini. Gorehounds take note: Some of Savini's gags in Day have never been topped. The transfer and Dolby Digital sound of this Divimax set are top-flight.
I didn't like Day of The Dead much at all when I first saw it in '85, but now I can see its virtues, having given the film another look after 18 years. Director and screenwriter Roger Avary's rapturous and fan-boyish commentary track is a real bonus. Hats off to Anchor Bay for giving this Dead movie another life. — Mike
Also in this issue: Babylon 5 Season Four DVD
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