Review: Day of the Dead (1985)

In the years since its initial theatrical release, Day of the Dead has, in some circles, gained a reputation for being the darkest and most intellectual of George Romero's three Living Dead epics. And this, bluntly, confused the living hell out of me. When I bought my first VCR back in 1988, I rented three movies, one of which was Day of the Dead, (the other two were The Hidden and a porn flick called Sex Star--but did you need to know that, really?) and while I didn't think it was the worst horror film I'd ever seen, it was probably the most bitterly disappointing. I was (and am) a huge fan of the first two Dead movies, and I found Day to be loud and stupid, tossing aside the atmosphere carefully constructed in the first two films for a cheap, sloppy and ultimately depressing conclusion to the series.

But I'll be the first person to admit that I'm fully capable of being wrong, so I recently sat down and watched Day of the Dead again for the first time since that initial viewing. And found that my contempt for it has only grown.

I can't argue with the perception that Day is the darkest of the trilogy; that's stating the obvious. The dead rule the world, and humanity has been driven underground into cavernous bunkers like the one we find our characters in. The big problem, though, is that the remaining survivors all seem to be either idiots, assholes or idiot assholes. From Sarah (Lori Cardille), a pill-popping shrew, to Captain Rhodes (Joe Pilato), a maniacal military freak, to Dr. Logan (Robert Liberty, who gives the film's best, most eccentric performance), a scientist so removed from reality that even his subordinates refer to him as "Frankenstein," everybody in this movie seems to be in varying stages of mental disintegration. That's understandable-if the world were ending and the dead were waiting right outside the door to belly up to the table with me as the main course, I'd pretty well lose it, too. But these characters are so universally unpleasant and poorly drawn that spending time with them for even a few minutes gave me a ringing headache. And interminable stretches where actors unconvincingly scream at one other qualify as "intellectual," then Day of the Dead may be the most dizzyingly cerebral movie ever made.

Many of the quieter moments in the movie, in which the more marginally likable characters discuss theories as to why the zombies do what they do or how it would be better to forget the past and just start the whole worldover again, are much more effective than the more "dramatic" scenes, even if they echo moments from the previous two Dead movies. And Tom Savini's special effects reach their ultimate zenith--or valley, take your pick--withan ending so overrun with spilling guts that they must have raided every butcher's shop on the East Coast to pull off those gushy effects.

But it all comes back to the script, which was reportedly severely reworked because funding had fallen through for the zombie picture Romero had wanted to make. That's no excuse. Romero has had zilch to work with on many ofhis movies, but has most often turned out startling work. Day of the Dead only startles in how easy it is to predict which of the survivors will make it to the end of the flick and in how shallow and, inevitably, disappointing the whole exercise is. What a shame it is that the one horror series entirely controlled by its main creator still ends with an entirely unworthy entry. Maybe, someday, Romero will revisit the material and come up with a more fitting conclusion to the Dead saga.

Till then, Day of the Dead is what we're left with--and we deserved better.