Really Good Movies! The one that's the best zombie movie

 

 

Title: Day of the Dead

What Year?: 1985

Classification: Weird Sequel

Rating: Awesome!!! (3/3)

 

In the course of my movie reviews, some of the most complicated decisions I have had to make have been regarding zombie movies. To start with, I reviewed a few before I had decided to cover the genre specifically, like Night of the Creeps, Zombie, and borderline examples like The Falling. When I did start a dedicated feature with the (revived) Revenant Review, I set a tone and parameters that excluded many examples, and still felt the need to retire the feature before it ended up crowding out anything else. Since then, I have continued to add to the count where it comes up, steadily enough that a time may come when the Revenant Review count is exceeded by the number of genre reviews outside it. But there have been certain examples that have remained outside the scope of anything I had considered, until I came to this feature. One of those was Nosferatu. I now present the other, Day of the Dead, as nothing less than the best film from the guy who founded the genre.

Our story begins with the aftermath of disaster, as our protagonist Sarah leads a search in vain for survivors in a city long since overrun by the undead. Once she returns to the base of operations, we quickly learn that the situation is even bleaker than it appears: The zombie apocalypse has overrun civilization thoroughly enough that any remnants of the government and general human population are cut off from each other. At the isolated research outpost we do see, Sarah continues to search for answers about the origin and nature of the undead plague, while her colleague Logan aka “Frankenstein” is more interested in studying the intelligence and behavior of the zombies. Meanwhile, the new military commander Rhodes announces that he wants results, while his amoral subordinate Steele and the pilot John clearly just want out. What they get is Frankenstein’s star pupil Bub, a revenant that shows enough intelligence to use technology, including a .45 pistol. As tensions escalate, Rhodes prepares to wipe out the captive zombies and anyone he finds non-essential or irritating. With the humans pitted against each other and the undead on the loose, will anyone be left to escape?

Day of the Dead was the third of a trilogy of zombie movies by George Romero (see Two Evil Eyes, Knightriders), following Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead. The production was reportedly conceived immediately after Dawn of the Dead, but filming was delayed until 1984, in part due to difficulties obtaining funding for an unrated film. The film starred Lori Cardille as Sarah and the late Joe Pilato as Captain Rhodes, with Richard Liberty as Logan. Pilato had previously had a minor role in Dawn, while Liberty had appeared in The Crazies. Other cast included the late Gary Howard Klar as Steele and Sherman Howard as Bub, the first named zombie in the series. Much of the filming took place in an actual mine in Pennsylvania. The movie was a commercial success, earning up to $34 million worldwide against a $3.5M budget, but received poor reviews from critics and fans, including Roger Ebert, who had previously supported Dawn of the Dead. The film’s reputation improved over time, with Peter Dendle’s Zombie Movie Encyclopedia describing it as “in many ways the most polished and sophisticated of the trilogy”. It is currently available for free streaming on several platforms.

For my experiences, this was a movie I knew by reputation well before I got hold of it, which at that point meant a lot of criticism. I also ended up going through a number of other genre entries first, possibly including the Night of the Living Dead remake. My immediate reaction wasn’t strongly positive or negative; I didn’t see what all the hate was about, but I wouldn’t have anticipated it becoming as highly regarded as it is now. As I continued to come back to it, however, I came to appreciate it far more, until I reached the point where I found myself seriously considering whether to count this or Dawn of the Dead as the better movie. My final hair split has been to count this movie as “best” and keep Dawn as my personal favorite. What I intend to do with this review is to explain why I reached this point.

Moving forward, the better points of the film are apparent literally from the beginning, which showcases some of the finest zombie effects of the movie and the trilogy. These are some of the most grisly and rotted zombies we’ve seen (egregiously the jawless “Dr. Tongue”, who poses a conundrum for the lore), yet there are also ones that are unnervingly well-preserved. My personal favorite, I would swear right from my first viewing, is a revenant seen emerging from what appears to be the box office of a theater. At first glance, he looks like he could be a survivor or at least a recent victim, until he turns his head and reveals his full face; even that is not as unsettling as the predatory expression as he recognizes prey. Closely intertwined is the very cool soundtrack from John Harrison (which I will definitely come back to), often incongruous yet increasingly unsettling. The great effects continue as we witness Frankenstein’s “research”, and reach a sustained peak with Bub. Frankenstein’s star pupil is the perfect storm of good practical makeup/ effects and great acting as he goes through his paces, alternately comical and alarming, seemingly in a perverse positive feedback loop with the psychotically detached doctor.

The other side of the equation is the humans, and this is where I must dissent even against the preceding films. In the “series” so far, Romero offered plenty of characters who are generally “likeable”, but far fewer who were really that developed. Here, we have a number of major and minor characters whose qualities are revealed and perhaps evolved as the story proceeds. The true star is certainly Pilato as Rhodes, delivering a performance that could easily be discounted as overacting. In fact, he is in many ways the voice of the audience, expressing our doubts and frustrations, and far more often than not, he offers the most reasonable assessment of the situation. There’s also an intriguing arc for Sarah, as she leaves a partner she never seems to know and then has her broader worldview questioned by the spiritual figure of John (who mostly repeats the same things we already heard from Rhodes!). Then my favorite character is Steele, played to the hilt by Klar, a fine character actor who evidently never got very far. I find him to be a darker version of Bill Paxton/ Hudson in Aliens; on paper, he’s a jerk, but he’s entertaining and even likeable throughout the film, with some poignant moments. He is the one character who one might feel disappointed in, which is in itself is a good indicator how much we are invited to care about him. There’s redemption enough in seeing him buy himself a quick death.

After that, I still feel a need to say more about the finale. It’s here that the flaws seem to concentrate, to the point that even the effects go noticeably downhill. The real problem is that far too many developments seem dictated by Romero’s sympathies rather than the characters or the story. There’s room for argument about Rhodes, whom we have already seen has a fixation on Sarah that can override his usually rational concerns. (Really, it would be even creepier if he wanted to take her with him…) As noted, there’s more problems with Steele, the one soldier we have previously seen defy the captain after a fashion, going along with the pointless sadism. It would surely have been more natural for the commander to have him attend to other things rather than test him one way or the other. Then the root of most of the complications that follow come from a virtually undeveloped character who does the single most irrational thing in an entire series built on bad decisions. My own strongest complaint is that with a little more work on the plot, the final zombie incursion could have been left out entirely. There’s simply nothing here we haven’t seen before, and none of it is as terrifying as Bub and his .45.

That brings me to the “one scene” later than usual, and I’m going with what I consider the heart of the movie and the series. Around the middle act, Sarah pays a visit to John (played by the reasonably prolific Terry Alexander) and the vaguely disgruntled radio operator, who have managed to make their quarters pleasant. John soon goes into an account of the original purpose of the installation, a repository of records and artifacts ignored and forgotten long before the fall of civilization. Naturally, he connects this to Sarah’s quest to explain the apocalypse. There’s a perfectly natural shift in inflection as he says, “We have been cursed by the Creator.” As to why, he goes back to a more bemused tone as he offers what would be a horrifying theology if it were more than a rhetorical point. Finally, he profanely repeats that the only real hope for rebuilding the human race is to abandon the base and the futile research. While his own words echo, we hear a zombie moan. It’s a priceless scene, and surely Romero at his most articulate.

In closing, what I’m left with is my own guess why this film remained unpopular for so long. In Night and Dawn, Romero kept his satire aimed at “safe” targets for the Hollywood mainstream: police brutality, military incompetence, and consumerism. With the third film, he brought things much closer to home, critiquing not just science but the materialist and determinist philosophies that had pervaded even “soft” fields like sociology. The point and punchline is John’s declaration, straight out of 1930s horror (see The Walking Dead), that there are things humanity can neither understand nor benefit from trying to understand. It was a message that might not have made waves before or since, but it was definitely a hard one for the left-leaning crowd who had praised Romero before. (One more rant, how did actual critics fail to notice that Bub operating a Walkman was supposed to be completely useless???) The film’s greatest accomplishment was show that the still-new genre could truly grow up, unfortunately at a time when fans and the public were walking away from it. Fortunately, history has given a better verdict, without the film dropping out of print in the process. With that, I can call it a day.

As a bonus, see my misbegotten Youtube channel for a video on mostly the same stuff!