The final part of Romero’s Zombie Trilogy – only now its part three of the Quadrilogy

After the world above has been lost to the zombies, a dwindling group of scientists and soldiers struggle with their situation – and each other – in their stronghold below.

Day of the Dead really is something of a flawed masterpiece.  There is heaps of really good stuff here but – to deal with the weaker parts first – it suffers from too much padding, namely unnecessary dialogue that just goes on far too long.   It is fairly short at around 100 minutes anyway, but another 15 minutes of pointless chattering could easily have been cut.  Terry Alexander as helicopter pilot John has a lot of talk time, but he is working with poor dialogue and is simply not commanding enough an actor to maintain interest – these scenes just drag.  Similarly the soldier’s bickering is overlong, too puerile and mostly unnecessary – we get the point; no-one’s getting along and everyone’s cracking up.  Day reputedly had a troubled time getting made; the original script was far more ambitious but the money men didn’t want to spend so much – especially when Romero was adamant about not cutting the gore to get an “R” rating.  What resulted was a much smaller scale, slower paced – and frankly, filled out – offering.  The Miami Vice 80′s style soundtrack is another weakness; it’s a bit cheesy and is quite dated (all other elements of the film actually stand the test of time well for a 20 year old film).

Dead is probably the least well known of original series and was a commercial and critical failure when it was released.  However Romero considers it his best and retrospective views seem to be more favourable to it.  It’s certainly not all bad – far from it, I would say it has one of the best opening scenes ever:  searching for survivors, Miguel wails a hopeless, pleading “Hello!” over and over through a megaphone.  In the dead city a newspaper bearing the headline “The Dead Walk!” blows through the deserted, overgrown streets, banknotes flutter in the wind and finally shuffling, rotted corpses respond to Miguels bawling. (This baleful cry is sampled to nice effect on the Gorillaz debut album on the track “M1 A1″).  28 Days Later’s opening owes everything to Day’s, and I would have loved to have seen more of this world overrun by the dead but a measly five minutes is really all we get.

Despite the budget limitations Day does have much higher production values than its predecessors.  Zombie have never looked so good; FX ace Tom Savini is at the top of his game – a zombie’s guts spilling out of its open stomach then splashing onto the floor when it rolls onto its side is a particular highlight.

The action, when it does get going, is tense and exciting. The flight through zombie infested caverns is real edge of the seat viewing, and the thoroughly unpleasant offing of the soldiers borders on the seriously disturbing.

This film has a most bleak and hopeless feel about it; it begins after humanity has already lost the world to the undead, the survivors have lost contact with a crumbled government and they are holed up in a 16 mile underground bunker with all the paraphernalia so important to normal society unable to help them now.  With the constant background noise of the undead’s howls echoing around the caverns, most of the characters – not unreasonably – come to the same depressing conclusion that their only option is to admit defeat and run away.  Although three survivors do make it to their safe hideaway, it really is not a happy ending.  The message here is that the world is beyond saving, and the only course of action is to give up on it and leave it to rot.

Bub

I shouldn’t love Bub but I do.  He is the star of this film.  This is a zombie (named after Dr. Logan’s father) that has been “allowed to continue existing” for observation and experimentation purposes.  I love him because he’s fascinating to watch but I hate him because being that clever and self aware is not zombie-like at all.  Seeing Bub study a book, a walkman, a razor, a telephone is the first time we see a zombie transcending its usual mindless automaton state and it is utterly fascinating.  Even when he salutes and works a pistol – it is revealed that he used to be in the military – this is residual memories.  The more cringey Bub-isms for me are when he manages to grab Dr. Logan’s arm then decides to let it go (instead of taking a bite out of it), and later when he looks like he’s about to cry when he sees Logan’s dead body.  Romero is hinting at the direction he’s going to take in future (one that I’m not altogether happy with)  where zombies make that great leap forward to the point where they are planning together, teaching each other skills – and even getting emotional!

Dr Logan 

The “mad professor”, “Dr. Frankenstein” is another one of the film’s plus points.  In sharp contrast to dreary flyboy John, Logan always makes for gripping viewing – and his parts are all slow paced and dialogue based.  So there.  (It is interesting that Logan and the other scientists are concentrating all their efforts on studying zombies to see how they can be stopped but they never seem to investigate or speculate on what could have caused the situation).

Dr Logan’s character is fleshed out more by some intriguing parent-related, Psycho-esque issues that are hinted at:

[Logan muttering]
“Bub. That’s what the lodge fellows used to call my father. Can you imagine a surgeon called Bub? Well, he didn’t mind. He was rich. My father was rich”

[A ranting Logan overheard on one of his tapes]
“It’s my stocking mother! I’ll put it away, mother! I’ll put it away!”

Zombie alligator    

As far as I know, there are only two instances of animals appearing in the original trilogy (Land of the Dead not included).  Night of the Living Dead has a moth (which a zombie eats), and Day has an alligator, right at the beginning crawling out of a building.

Is this a zombie alligator?  I say not, which begs the question what is the zombie response? The scene is over in an instant so it is quite hard to see what is going on but in my opinion:

• Alligator is real – there are a lot of them in areas of Florida (and a city full of zombies would make for easy prey for an alligator).
• Zombies, seeing a living animal, would attack it and try and eat it
• Alligator would either run away (they can shift when they want to), or
• attack the zombie – and win.
• Even of the zombie did get a hold of the alligator zombie teeth couldn’t penetrate its thick hide anyway.

The original script has scientists “weaning” zombies onto alligator meat.

Favourite Scene:

Opening scene: City of the dead.

Favourite Quote:

Logan: “We are in the minority now, something like 400,000 to one by my calculation.”

Film Rating:

4/5

Adherence to THE LORE:

3.5/5

See Also

The original scripts is available over at homepageofthedead.com - follow the “films” link to Day of the Dead, there’s a link to “The Original Script”.  It’s an interesting read, and it’s easy to see where the big budget money would have gone, but it’s little too gung-ho and not at all subtle.

If you have iTunes installed then you can hear a clip of the Day of the Dead sampling “M1 A1″ by Gorillaz

End Note

As I am finishing this section, the city of London, where I live, is under suicide bombing attack by “terrorists” – whatever that means – and the police are responding in a trigger happy manner.  The subtle (and defeatist) theme of this film – that the world is beyond help, and the best we can do is run away and hide, while we still have the time, and let the world tears itself apart – is a very relevant one.