director/screenwriter
George A. Romero
producer
Richard P. Rubinstein
cinematographer
Michael Gornick
music
John Harrison
editor
Pasquale Buba
cast
Lori Cardille (Sarah)
Terry Alexander (John)
Joseph Pilato (Capt. Rhodes)
Jarlath Conroy (Bill McDermott)
Antone Dileo (Pvt. Miguel Salazar)
Richard Liberty (Dr. Logan)
Howard Sherman (Bub)
G. Howard Klar (Pvt. Steel)
Ralph Marrero (Pvt. Rickles)
John Amplas (Dr. Ted Fisher)
Phillip G. Kellams (Pvt. Miller)
Taso N. Stavrakis (Pvt. Torrez)
Gregory Nicotero (Pvt. Johnson)
mpaa rating: none
running
time: 102m
u.s.
release: 7/3/85
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
cool
fansite
other george
a. romero films
reviewed on this website:
- dawn
of the dead
- land of the dead
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When George A. Romero delivered
Day of the Dead, the final film*
in a trilogy begun with the classic Night of the Living Dead
and continued in the beloved Dawn
of the Dead, many fans greeted it with disappointment
and even disdain. True, Tom Savini's gore effects were more elaborate
than anything he'd done before, but as a story it just seemed
like a collection of scenes about people yelling at each other.
Some fans also mourned the Day of the Dead that never
was -- the original script (available here) that Romero couldn't film for budgetary
reasons. That script is an entertaining read, far different from
what was filmed -- the idea of training and domesticating zombies
is much more fully developed, for example -- and extremely action-oriented.
The movie Romero made is a lot more claustrophobic and contained,
out of necessity, and probably more in keeping with the limited
backdrops of NOTLD (an abandoned house) and Dawn
(an empty shopping mall).
Romero fell back on the standard
conflict between the military and science. As in Howard Hawks'
The Thing from Another World, the scientists want to study
the creatures -- flesh-eating zombies -- while the military men
just want to shoot them in the head and be done with it. Brains
vs. brawn. The soldiers, commanded by the snarling Captain Rhodes
(Joe Pilato), resentfully do the dangerous shitwork of capturing
zombies to be used in experiments. The scientists, headed by
Sarah (Lori Cardille, playing a composite of two characters from
the original script) and the loopy Dr. Logan (the late Richard
Liberty), know they need to produce some impressive results soon
or Rhodes and his men will take off and leave the test-tube jockeys
for zombie snacks. In between are John (Terry Alexander), a helicopter
pilot, and Bill (Jarlath Conroy, looking like an emaciated Rowan
Atkinson), a communications techie; they don't believe in the
scientists' research but don't trust the crude soldiers either.
In the original concept, Rhodes
wasn't just a bellowing control freak -- he was a sadist and
a madman, acting under orders from a corrupt politician in comfortable
hiding. And some of Rhodes' soldiers were actually zombies, trained
to shoot or reload depending on an electronic signal; the zombies
wore color-coded vests according to how advanced their "re-education"
was. In the movie, Rhodes is pretty much just an asshole, though
a dangerous one, willing to shoot anyone who disobeys an order.
His men -- except the snivelling, neurotic Miguel (Antone Dileo),
who's sleeping with Sarah -- are loutish, bearded beer-belly
types who love nothing more than spraying Sarah with lewd comments.
(Amusingly, one of the more obnoxious soldiers, played by Ralph
Marrero, is a dead ringer for Stanley Kubrick.) One wishes that
Romero had drawn the military men with a bit more subtlety, so
that we could relate to their resentment at having to risk their
asses rounding up zombies for some half-ass experiments. Instead
they're more or less all written (and acted) on the cartoonish
level of that SWAT guy at the beginning of Dawn who growls
"Shoot all their Puerto Rican and nigger asses."
Still, the friction between
the characters, while sometimes tiresome, is realistic. Nobody
in the movie is quite likable -- at best, some are less dislikable
than others, usually those on the scientists' side, though Dr.
Logan is eventually revealed to be cracking under the strain
as much as Rhodes is. The most annoying character is also the
least dangerous (for most of the movie, anyway) -- Miguel, a
shaky composite of a guerrilla forager in the original script
(who died early on) and a sympathetic soldier named Toby Tyler.
Supposedly Sarah's Hispanic lover (he's referred to as "the
spic" more than once), Miguel, as played by Antone Dileo,
reads as neither Latino nor heterosexual, and his scenes with
Sarah feel pointless. It's brave of Romero to give us such an
unstable and useless character, but we think less of Sarah for
being attached to him, and besides, we've been here before in
the rather more complexly written dynamic between Gaylen Ross
and David Emge in Dawn. We do see a different side of
Sarah when she's able to hang out with John and Bill (friends
or more than that? the movie never says) in their Caribbean-decorated
hideaway; she relaxes and lets her guard down. The movie is maybe
too taut for its own good; in Dawn, in the scenes that
didn't advance the plot -- when the four survivors went shopping,
goofed around in the mall, had romantic dinners -- we were able
to glimpse something of what they were before the zombie apocalypse,
and that's what we miss here.
As a zombie film, it needs
to be said, Day does deliver. Howard Sherman's performance
as Bub, the domesticated "teacher's pet" zombie nurtured
by Dr. Logan, adds pathos and humanity to the proceedings. We
certainly get a sense of what he used to be like when
he was human -- indeed, he's often more human than the humans.
And special-effects master Tom Savini goes all out with the money
scenes of zombies on the rampage, including the celebrated fate
of Captain Rhodes (who gets the best final words in horror-film
history). Day is entertaining, if frustrating. The frustration
comes out in the film; it feels frustrated, embittered,
made by a man who's fed up with the business side of the movie
industry. And that bitterness shows up in every Romero film since,
from Monkey Shines to The Dark Half to Bruiser.
I think part of the reason
many Romero fans reacted against Day so strongly is that
it showed the writing on the wall. Romero's films up to that
point -- even the bleak Martin -- vibrated with a kind
of personal glee, and long stretches of Dawn of the Dead
are actually comedic. Day of the Dead shows Romero at
a low personal ebb -- forced to cut down his vision to appease
the guys with the money (shit, couldn't Stephen King have kicked
in a couple of mil to help out his friend?). With that in mind,
you understand why the soldiers in the film are depicted as hostile
thugs; if you read the scientists as film artists and the soldiers
as the money guys -- who breathe down your neck demanding "results"
-- the movie becomes a rather personal expression of Romero's
anger and depression. And it sort of deforms the arc of the trilogy;
rather than casting its net wider, as originally planned, it
shrinks and freeze-dries into an underappreciated director's
growl of impotent contempt. For Romero fans, it's a sad sight.
* At least until Land
of the Dead 20 years later.
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