George A Romero said he wanted Day of the Dead to be the ‘Gone with the Wind’ of zombie movies. The one thing that has always stymied and stopped the shuffling hordes more than running out of living flesh to eat or being shot in the head is a lack of budget. Romero’s ambition was hobbled from the get-go when he ran into money troubles before he even started and thus Day of the Dead became smaller and more focussed on a group of people forced together in what effectively is a set stage. This being an imagined government storage facility in Florida, physically impossible in that state due the water table being too high.

Whatever Romero’s focus was going to be originally he had strip it back to a bare dramatic clash between three disparate group of people, representing a hawklike industrial-military complex, the logical scientific community and civilians. Herein we have clashes that happen in the modern world played out in microcosm of society on a dramatic stage.

Unfortunately, some of the acting involves chewing on the scenery than out does the ravenous zombies on hapless victims at the films end and unfortunately it does detract from the film. Some of it is horrible. Lori Cardille is good as Sarah and the laid back and Terry Alexander as laid-back civilian helicopter pilot John and Jarlath Conroy playing the lush, but kind McDermott give solid and reliable support. The late Richard Liberty as Logan, a character hiding his slide into insanity is fun and interesting but the manic and demented Rhodes, but Joe Pilato (cut from the theatrical cut of Dawn of the Dead) unfortunately leads a group of manic and demented actors, cackling and giggling their way through scenes that would even have the most hard-line military commander siding with the scientists and civilians. It seems as if Romero let them start off at ‘11’ and then did not do the trick of bringing them down to an acceptable level. Rickles played by the unfortunately demised Ralph Marrerois is especially over the top, probably the most horrible and scary thing in the movie. Finally, the wimpy Miguel, Anthony Dileo Jr., rather being part of the tough guy soldiers comes across as terribly camp and is always eyeing the scenery in case he gets hungry.

Luckily the opening of the film is great with Dr. Tongue and his cohorts owning the Florida beachfront estate along with alligators and snakes apparently. It is just too little, perhaps a vision of what might have been had more money been available?
Dr. Tongue whilst memorable is a prelude to the greatest zombie to grace any film ‘Bub’. Played with inordinate skill by Howard Sherman or Sherman Howard (I do not understand) portrays his ‘journey’ with Logan with such skill and nuance that by the end of the film you have more sympathy with him than any human with perhaps the exception of Sarah, John and McDermott. He earns his escape; he kills the biggest monster in the whole film and he staggers off into some imagined sunset. Magic. Only the recent French Night Eats the World has come close to a more memorable zombie.

With the restriction of the main setting, we must rely on the story and acting and unfortunately the frankly bonkers conflict between the people in the facility is nothing we have not seen before, says nothing new, and therefore weakens the film. I understand that conflict is what drives drama but sometimes it borders on insanity. In general, in a tight spot people tend to co-operate if it means they will survive. The soldiers in this film are as dumb as rocks and psychopaths and one must ask what sort of soldiers were able to survive the world collapsing? These lot look like they would get stuck in a revolving door and start an argument in a empty room. Most of the zombies looked brighter. The scientists seemed a bit sharper but only just, Logan has supposedly cracked so his barmpot ideas did not have to make sense but Sarah and quiet Ted seemed to be researching to find out what causes the outbreak. Even the most dedicated researcher might think it is too late by this stage.

Every increasing numbers of zombies really takes you out of the story, just how many came down on that lift and how many were in the silo caves. By the end of the film it appeared to be thousands but twenty easily defeated zombies does not a gore-fest make I suppose. It did make me wonder how this happens when the ‘action’ was taking place so for me took me out of the story. The gory deaths were a more realistic extension of ‘Dawn’ and Tom Savini again out did himself.

Notwithstanding my ultra-churlishness at picking holes in the logic of a film where the dead have come back to life and are consuming the living Day of the Dead for all its faults is a romp. A gory, shouty, cave-bound romp. I have said this before that removing mega-bucks from many directors must be very frustrating for them but it does make them inventive and often craft a better story.
I liked the location for the film, it was believable and solidly real. The zombie effects were logically moved on from Dawn of the Dead all the main ones more decomposed with rotting clothes and gooey black blood and for this film the violence and blood were more realistic, gone is the melted crayon blood of Romero’s predecessor.

Taken as the third in the originally trilogy the film was given a luke-warm reception on release but has grown in reputation and popularity in the intervening years. Romero himself claimed it was his favourite. The themes explored in particular the pointlessness of carrying on when all is lost are interesting as is the conflict between different philosophies which could make the story a ‘Gone with the Wind’ but in the end with the acting and reduced budget it felt more like, ‘Why don’t we just film the whole darn thing here kids?’ with good intentions.

I would recommend watching Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead and this Day of the Dead as back-to-back advancing timeline stores, although the great man himself insisted they could be standalone stories not even in the same world – which makes no sense – but when we get onto the next three have a big bag of salt ready. I will be giving my opinion on these soon enough.

You have been warned.