Oct '14 *
If Dawn of the Dead was an upgrade of Night of the Living Dead, then George Romero's Day of the Dead (1985) was an upgrade to zombie genre as a whole. Even better make-up for the zombies and better gore effects? Check. A polished score by John Harrison that never feels out of place? Check. A great cast of characters who all grow on you in one way or another (yes, that includes this movie's main and, well, only living female character, unlike those two before...)? Check. This movie has it all and that's despite having its budget chopped in half, forcing Romero to change much of his original script to fit the lower budget, keeping only some of the characters and the basic ideas of the original script.
This was the first Romero movie I actually owned, having blind bought it on VHS in a store at the mall, and much like the previous two movies, it had me hooked from the start, despite my young self being completely fucking horrified by the amount of gore in the movie. Seriously, after seeing this movie enough times, it caused me to become almost completely desensitized to gore in other movies. But even before I knew as much about the Dead movies as I do now, I knew that this was a movie much better polished and better put together than its predecessors. Starring Joe Pilato (Wishmaster), Richard Liberty (The Crazies), Gary Klar (Miami Blues), John Amplas (Martin), Taso Stavrakis (Knightriders), and a bunch of other cool people who I don't recognize from anything else, this movie wasn't received very well when it came out, but in more recent times, things have changed for it.
Try not to "choke on 'em" while you read this entry of... Reviews with Ballz!
As void of life Dawn of the Dead might have seemed, especially towards the end of the movie, Day of the Dead starts right off with showing just how fucked up things have become as we see shots of a lifeless city, the only activity seen coming from alligators who have wandered into the city and the undead. Sarah (Lori Cardille), Miguel (Antonè DiLeo), John (Terry Alexander), and McDermott (Jarlath Conroy) land their helicopter in this city, the former two getting out to try to find anyone who might still be alive, only to quickly discover what we already know: there's no one. Getting the hell out of there, we then soon see that they operate out of an underground bunker built in a system of caves and learn that they've been searching for other survivors for a while now.
The underground bunker is inhabited by both scientists and the military, the military outnumbering the scientists by quite a few, which causes a lot of tension between the two groups. The scientists trying to study the zombies don't help with the tensions either as the military would much rather just "shoot the mothers in the head". John and McDermott live on their own in the caves, away from the two groups and their tension. It leads to some great drama though, making it feel more like a drama movie with zombies in the background at times. The arguments between Captain Rhodes (Joe Pilato) and Dr. Logan (Richard Liberty) are especially entertaining. That's not to say Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead don't have great moments of drama, but with Day of the Dead, it's an almost constant thing.
The budget this time around was $3.5 million, which is significantly larger than what the previous two Dead films had, but as I said before, it was originally twice as big. Supposedly the reason for the budget cut is because George Romero wanted it to be released unrated. The original script still involved an underground bunker and several other elements present in the movie, such as the scientists and military both living there, but there were more characters and some of them were quite different. Sarah, for example, came to the bunker from the outside with Miguel while in the movie, she's already a scientist there and he's already part of the military. It's not hard to find online and is a pretty interesting read if you're ever curious about it. It definitely would have been interesting to see actually filmed, but at the same time, maybe it's for the best that things went the way they did.
Tom Savini returned to do the special effects in Day of the Dead. I don't know if it's the bigger budget or if he just learned a lot in the seven years between this and Dawn of the Dead, but zombie make-up in particular is easily the best I've seen in any zombie movie or TV show. And then there's John Harrison's score. It has a very 1980's sound to it and it works perfectly, always helping set the mood for whatever scene it's used in. These two things combined with the plot and characters give it what I would call a slight edge over the great Dawn of the Dead. And speaking of the characters, I already mentioned how even Sarah grows on you in this movie, but it still must be said. After useless Barbra and almost just as useless Fran, Romero finally wrote a female character that could hold her own quite well. I don't know if this is because he was trying to show some kind of evolution of females in world of zombies or if he got criticism on his other two movies, but for this, Sarah is easily my favorite female character of the series.
I could sit here all day writing about this movie's characters and their traits and what I think is great about each of them and fuck, maybe I will someday. That would actually be a lot of fun to do I think. But for now, all I can say is, definitely see this movie if you haven't before. There will probably never be a zombie movie better than this one. It's supposedly George Romero's favorite of his original Dead trilogy and it's definitely my favorite too.
My Rating: 5/5
If Dawn of the Dead was an upgrade of Night of the Living Dead, then George Romero's Day of the Dead (1985) was an upgrade to zombie genre as a whole. Even better make-up for the zombies and better gore effects? Check. A polished score by John Harrison that never feels out of place? Check. A great cast of characters who all grow on you in one way or another (yes, that includes this movie's main and, well, only living female character, unlike those two before...)? Check. This movie has it all and that's despite having its budget chopped in half, forcing Romero to change much of his original script to fit the lower budget, keeping only some of the characters and the basic ideas of the original script.This was the first Romero movie I actually owned, having blind bought it on VHS in a store at the mall, and much like the previous two movies, it had me hooked from the start, despite my young self being completely fucking horrified by the amount of gore in the movie. Seriously, after seeing this movie enough times, it caused me to become almost completely desensitized to gore in other movies. But even before I knew as much about the Dead movies as I do now, I knew that this was a movie much better polished and better put together than its predecessors. Starring Joe Pilato (Wishmaster), Richard Liberty (The Crazies), Gary Klar (Miami Blues), John Amplas (Martin), Taso Stavrakis (Knightriders), and a bunch of other cool people who I don't recognize from anything else, this movie wasn't received very well when it came out, but in more recent times, things have changed for it.
Try not to "choke on 'em" while you read this entry of... Reviews with Ballz!
As void of life Dawn of the Dead might have seemed, especially towards the end of the movie, Day of the Dead starts right off with showing just how fucked up things have become as we see shots of a lifeless city, the only activity seen coming from alligators who have wandered into the city and the undead. Sarah (Lori Cardille), Miguel (Antonè DiLeo), John (Terry Alexander), and McDermott (Jarlath Conroy) land their helicopter in this city, the former two getting out to try to find anyone who might still be alive, only to quickly discover what we already know: there's no one. Getting the hell out of there, we then soon see that they operate out of an underground bunker built in a system of caves and learn that they've been searching for other survivors for a while now. The underground bunker is inhabited by both scientists and the military, the military outnumbering the scientists by quite a few, which causes a lot of tension between the two groups. The scientists trying to study the zombies don't help with the tensions either as the military would much rather just "shoot the mothers in the head". John and McDermott live on their own in the caves, away from the two groups and their tension. It leads to some great drama though, making it feel more like a drama movie with zombies in the background at times. The arguments between Captain Rhodes (Joe Pilato) and Dr. Logan (Richard Liberty) are especially entertaining. That's not to say Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead don't have great moments of drama, but with Day of the Dead, it's an almost constant thing. The budget this time around was $3.5 million, which is significantly larger than what the previous two Dead films had, but as I said before, it was originally twice as big. Supposedly the reason for the budget cut is because George Romero wanted it to be released unrated. The original script still involved an underground bunker and several other elements present in the movie, such as the scientists and military both living there, but there were more characters and some of them were quite different. Sarah, for example, came to the bunker from the outside with Miguel while in the movie, she's already a scientist there and he's already part of the military. It's not hard to find online and is a pretty interesting read if you're ever curious about it. It definitely would have been interesting to see actually filmed, but at the same time, maybe it's for the best that things went the way they did. Tom Savini returned to do the special effects in Day of the Dead. I don't know if it's the bigger budget or if he just learned a lot in the seven years between this and Dawn of the Dead, but zombie make-up in particular is easily the best I've seen in any zombie movie or TV show. And then there's John Harrison's score. It has a very 1980's sound to it and it works perfectly, always helping set the mood for whatever scene it's used in. These two things combined with the plot and characters give it what I would call a slight edge over the great Dawn of the Dead. And speaking of the characters, I already mentioned how even Sarah grows on you in this movie, but it still must be said. After useless Barbra and almost just as useless Fran, Romero finally wrote a female character that could hold her own quite well. I don't know if this is because he was trying to show some kind of evolution of females in world of zombies or if he got criticism on his other two movies, but for this, Sarah is easily my favorite female character of the series.I could sit here all day writing about this movie's characters and their traits and what I think is great about each of them and fuck, maybe I will someday. That would actually be a lot of fun to do I think. But for now, all I can say is, definitely see this movie if you haven't before. There will probably never be a zombie movie better than this one. It's supposedly George Romero's favorite of his original Dead trilogy and it's definitely my favorite too.
My Rating: 5/5
