Day of the Dead (1985)


Day of the Dead (1985)

Day of the Dead (1985)

Day of the Dead (1985)

Day of the Dead (1985)

Day of the Dead (1985)

Day of the Dead (1985)

Day of the Dead (1985)

Day of the Dead (1985)

Day of the Dead (1985)


Director: George A. Romero


Cast: Lori Cardille as Sarah, Terry Alexander as John, Joseph Pilato as Capt. Rhodes (as Joe Pilato), Jarlath Conroy as William McDermott, Anthony Dileo Jr. as Pvt. Miguel Salazar (as Antonè DiLeo), Richard Liberty as Logan, Sherman Howard as Bub (as Howard Sherman), Gary Howard Klar as Pvt. Steel (as G. Howard Klar), Ralph Marrero as Pvt. Rickles, John Amplas as Dr. Ted Fisher, Phillip G. Kellams as Pvt. Miller, Taso N. Stavrakis as Pvt. Torrez, Gregory Nicotero as Pvt. Johnson, Don Brockett as Featured Zombie (chief), William Cameron as Featured Zombie




Months after the first dead rose from their graves, the world has
seemingly become overrun. Deep in a storage bunker in Florida, a group
of soldiers and a group of scientists have formed an uneasy alliance in
order to try and discover something that can help reverse their spread.
However Dr Logan is not making the progress that the soldiers require
and Captain Rhodes becomes increasingly impatient and erratic as a
result. Things continue to worsen as the zombies gather above and
Logan's work gets more worrying.

Having seen and enjoyed (if that's the word) the remake of Dawn, I
decided to re-watch the three originals on their own values. While I
had seen the other two before, this was the first time I had seen Day
and assumed that it would be bigger than Dawn was (in the same way as
Dawn extended the ideas from Night). In that regard I was a little
disappointed to find that the film stayed on a rather small scale and
didn't manage to really convince me that the world was actually over on
the surface of the earth. However this is not to say that it is not a
good story in itself, because it is, albeit very different from both
Night and Dawn. To me it lacked the social commentary that was to be
found in Dawn but it is still tense, gory and gripping. The
claustrophobic nature of the bunker and the battling characters means
that tension is easily created even when the zombies are distant and
seemingly pose less of a threat than the humans do to one another. The
film is a little weak at points – the medical experiments are given too
much time and the character of Bub is not clear as to his reasons for
being included as much as he was. I didn't like the idea of Bub, the
film didn't seem to know what to do with him other than using him to
fill out the story – Logan's progress with him seemed such a waste of
time that, even if that was the point, it didn't work.

When the gore comes it is very hard to watch and a little sickening at
times – bodies are ripped into and ripped apart in full bloody colour –
as a horror it succeeds because I was looking a way quite a lot of
times! Even though Shaun of the Dead has made fun of these slow zombies
recently they still manage to be very effective here – I personally
find them scary as they are relentless and simply wish to kill. True,
the fast ones are scarier but these ones are too. The cast are more
than just victims and are reasonably well drawn and acted. They have to
be engaging or else the tension between them wouldn't work and, while
hardly totally real people they still are good enough for a horror
movie and they are not just fodder to rip apart – even if they are
clearly penned as 'goodies' and 'baddies'.

Overall this is not the best of the trilogy but it is still a good
horror film. The tension between the characters creates as much of a
threat as the zombies do – even if some of the plot isn't that good. It
all builds well to a gory finish that really only lacks teeth because
both the film and the actual ending both fail to really show just how
bad things are and never convinces that the world has come to an end in
the way that the whole trilogy suggests it has.

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