Axiom's Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy

Our ongoing column giving the spotlight to movies that bucked the Hollywood Blockbuster trend and still managed to deliver a superior viewing experience. Note that these reviews may contain spoilers.

By Sam Christopher

Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars

George Romero thinks it was due to this being a more serious, much darker film than his own preceding Dawn of the Dead, which was a much more comic book-type, splatterfest romp. Christine Romero, George’s now ex-wife, who worked with him on both films, once said she thought it was because Day was actually dark—as in hard to see—when it first came out. There is another camp that says this film didn’t make the splash it should have because the producers cut the original budget in half before filming. I would tend to agree with George mostly, although after seeing the debacle that was the film version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer I think we have to also give the cutting of the budget its due. George Romero does say this is his favorite of his zombie films, though. It is also mine.

Day of the Dead is the third in the now tetralogy of Romero’s Dead films. After he had reinvented the modern horror film in many ways with the seminal Night of the Living Dead, then gave an intelligent spin on the splatter genre with Dawn of the Dead, Romero turned his sights to a summing up of the genre with a final, more science-oriented film in the early ‘80s. He wrote the original version of Day of the Dead and this was truly meant to be his final word on the zombie film, with set-pieces on the order of a ramped up Dawn tied together with a darker, more realistic storyline concerning how people already in power would use the zombie apocalypse to their advantage. Night was made for about $16k, Dawn came in at around half a million dollars to make, but Romero asked for $7 million as budget for this film. The money men said that was fine, but for that amount of money they would need an R-rated cut to get the picture in more theaters. Romero didn’t feel he could do that and deliver the picture he had written so a compromise was reached: Romero was given $3.5 million and told he could do whatever he wanted. So he cut the script down. Instead of armies of trained undead, we now have Bub, the star pupil of Dr. Logan played with amazing élan by Howard Sherman. Instead of a massive underground city with herded people and zombies we now have an underground bunker with twelve survivors of a government project put together in the first days of the crisis and now growing more and more paranoid and impatient with what they see in the world above.

The plot is simple: Twelve people are left from the government crew, seven soldiers, three scientists, a radioman, and a helicopter pilot. They are, of course, pulling in all different directions. The soldiers, led by Captain Rhodes, are all rather wonky from living on the edge for so long and watching their friends die one by one, mainly in service to the scientists. It’s easy to just say they represent the “evil military/industrial complex” but it always seemed to me they represent a public growing weary of being told by the ruling class, in this case the scientists, that said ruling class knows what’s best and if that requires sacrifice on the public’s part then that’s the way it should be. Dr. Logan, the lead scientist, dubbed “Frankenstein” by just about everyone, is clearly insane, although also apparently entirely correct in his assertion that the zombies can be trained. He is also the most aloof and detached person in the play, driven solely by his own thoughts and desire to know, with no regard for others. Sarah (scientist), John (helicopter pilot), and Billy (radioman) are the three most sane characters—John, especially, seems to “get it”—and they are designed by Romero to draw our sympathy and identification but I can’t help but feel for the soldiers, too, up until the end when they allow their fear and paranoia to get the best of them.

There is so much I could say about this film. If the Oscars really meant anything Howard Sherman would have won one for his astonishing portrayal of Bub, a dead man trained to virtual docility (although Captain Rhodes would disagree) by Dr. Logan. Lori Cardille’s Sarah was very much Ellen Ripley before Sigourney Weaver was in Aliens (which is where she really became the action figure, much more than the original Alien). The makeup and special effects, by the master Tom Savini, are typically amazing. John Harrison, who wrote the music for this film, went on to write and direct the Sci-Fi Channel’s version of Dune. Greg Nicotero… I could go on and on.

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