Day of the Dead (1985) Review - The Corpse of the 80's

Pictured:  The average woman in a night club

It's a funny thing, really, how our culture romanticises a decade known for its reprehensible politics and outlook on greed. Yes there was synth pop, young Debbie Harry, and pastel suits; but on the flip side there was also 'greed is good', Reaganomics, and leg warmers. Underneath the Eighties' neon tinged exterior, is the bloated carcass of nihilistic excess.

In 1985 George A. Romero released Day of the Dead the final part of his original zombie trilogy. Whereas the previous two instalments (Night and Dawn) used the concept of a zombie apocalypse to provide social commentary on themes such as racism, civil rights, and consumerism), Day of the Dead takes aim at the culture of the Eighties. Hence, everyone is an insufferable toss-pot and the zombies are established as eating people just because they can. It's a zombie eat man world here in the era of Gordon Gekko.

Day of the Dead is a strange beast. As the final instalment for a trilogy which has been gradually escalating in the stakes department, you'd expect it to be the balls-out swan song the series deserved. Indeed that was apparently Romero's intent, but when he found his budget halved to $3.5 million, he was forced to revise the script. The end result is a bastard child somewhere between the isolated siege movie which was Night of the Living Dead, and the more overtly apocalyptic Dawn of the Dead.

Personally, I think the movie is better for the reduced scope. More room for the characters, ideas, and for the crushing sense of hopelessness as we watch the final few survivors in the United States (possibly the world) fall apart and turn against each other. By the time Day of the Dead had arrived, Romero had already said everything that needed to be said about zombies. This series did not need some epic final battle between living and dead: humanity is its own greatest foe.

"That's Captain Asshole to you"

An unspecified amount of time after Dawn of the Dead, civilisation has completely collapsed and what humans do remain hide in underground government shelters. One such group, operating out of Fort Myers, Florida, is comprised of a group of scientists working for a cure, a handful of civilian operators, and the soldiers reluctantly protecting them. The atmosphere is tense at best, and can be described as the sort of smoky hostility you experience when you have to share your bedroom with a younger sibling.

The opening five minutes of the movie establishes the true extent of the situation, as the team - led by scientist Dr Sarah Bowman (Lori Cardille) - fly through the across Florida to search for survivors and find only ruined cities and death. Either that, or they stumbled upon a hen party in Blackpool. Unlike the glimmer of hope offered in Dawn of the Dead, this film thoroughly presents the world as lost. The old order has been wiped out and the new order (the zombies) live in its ruins.

Below ground, the slow efforts for a cure is making a pressure cooker situation even worse. Supplies are running low, other survivors are nowhere to be found, and the group has dwindled to just eleven men and one woman. I bet the lady scientist sleeps with her arse firmly to the wall. Whilst stress takes its toll (Sarah experiences strange nightmares and her soldier lover Miguel becomes suicidal), top class dick head Captain Rhodes (Joseph Pilato) takes over as the group's leader. He chews the scenery like it's made of chocolate and he's a fat kid in Willy Wonka's chocolate factory.

Captain Rhodes is comparable to the Trump administration: he doesn't see the point in scientists, irrationally thinks everyone else is the problem, and spends the entire movie swinging his dick about and shouting the bollocks off people.

But he's also faced with leading his men through an unending nightmare. Here's a revealing comment for you: I've found that the older I get, the more 'villains' like Rhodes make sense. Yes, he's an asshole and the designated bad guy - but at the end of the day he's just trying to keep a lid on things and ensure the safety of his men.  He can also serve as the audience surrogate. Rhodes simply has no time for the lead scientist Dr. Matthew "Frankenstein" Logan's (Richard Liberty) insane experiments on the undead. And neither do I.

As well as providing exposition on the nature of the zombies, Dr Logan is also researching his theory that the undead can be controlled and co-exist with humanity. This is represented through his almost father-son relationship with the zombie Bub (Sherman Howard) who possesses remedial intelligence and is able to be taught basic tasks. This includes switching on a walkman, saluting Rhodes, and firing a gun. For those who like their zombie films to be played entirely straight, this plot line is rather outlandish and, therefore, Rhodes' authoritarian military mindset can be sympathised with.

For me, I certainly like Bub as a character. I'm not the kind of monster who doesn't cry at the end of Terminator 2, you know. But the point of zombies is that they reflect some negative aspect of humanity. That they're dead only serves to extend this metaphor: they're the rotting, disgusting parts of humanity which serve only as a dead-end to our progression as a species. But here Romero sees the zombies as something else entirely - they're characters, not just plot devices. I'm not sure what Bub is supposed to represent, however. If the humans represent the worst of humanity this time around, then is Bub the future?

"SCIENCE!"

This leads to the greatest failing of Day of the Dead: that there are few characters actually deserving of our sympathy. Sarah is a strong, capable female lead, but she's completely passive and detached from everything around her. How does that make sense? The rest of the cast are just shades of asshole, crazy, or depressed. The military personal are loud, crude, and motivated entirely by macho bravado. Simply put, they're just generally awful people. Romero's disdain for the military-industrial complex is painfully obvious.

But the scientists aren't exactly likeable either. Dr Logan sees no problem with using fallen soldiers as fodder for experiments, or food for the undead. And aside from Sarah, the scientists are incapable and constantly whinge about their working conditions. Never mind that it's the soldiers who have to risk their assess. We've all got colleagues like these scientists: they do, maybe, 20% of the heavy work and complain about what a crap day they've had.

The lack of camaraderie, of course, is completely the point. Romero is satirising a decade that ushered in 'me,me,me' politics. In Night and Dawn, there remained the faith that humanity will always (eventually) pull together. Day doesn't have that optimism: the humans are worn down and feel put out by the needs of their fellow survivors when they're thinking only of themselves. Never mind that the human race is on its knees from the zombie threat. This is humanity at its worst: selfish, lacking communication, and broken. Again, just like every office job I've ever had.

If that sounds very similar to The Walking Dead, that's because it is the exact plot which that show has repeated for the last 8...9...10(?) seasons. Christ, talk about drawn out. Only here it's far better realised. Romero does not pretend that the focus is on the zombies. There are two big set pieces which highlight the zombies. The first comes at the beginning, with the city of the dead designed to showcase the (much improved) zombie designs. And the second is the blood soaked finale, in which the zombies overrun the base and butcher anyone who didn't get to hold the character development conch.

Other than that, the zombies are sidelined. They constantly patrol the gates outside of the base, doing little more than serving as the barbarians at the gates and providing a visual shorthand for the hopeless situation. The only other zombies we see are the ones the scientists keep to use for their experiments. And in a moment of the human characters serving as examples of humanity's awfulness, the scenes of the zombies being forced into cages, like cattle, shows our treatment of 'lesser beings'. Which is given further context with the development of Bub as a character. 

I also overreact when people try to help me get debris out of my eye.

"That's all well and good," I hear you cry, "but where's the blood!" Well alright, Jason Voorhees: you'll be pleased to know that Day of the Dead is considered Tom Savini's special effects masterpiece. The zombies are the best realised of any Romero film up to this point. Unlike the naff zombies from the previous instalments, the zombies here look appropriately decayed and are comparable to those of Italian zombie films. And, of course, this being Savini, there are plenty of brutal death scenes. Throats are shredded by teeth, arms hacked off, and heads exploded.

I think that the violence here is more prolonged and harder-hitting than anything from Dawn of the Dead. There are two very famous death scenes: Rhodes being disembowelled and torn apart, and one of the soldiers who gets his head (slowly) ripped off - as his pained screams raise higher and higher in pitch. Day of the Dead simply does not disappoint on the gore front. It stacks alongside anything else released in the era and is a step-up from its already hyper-violent predecessor.

To get to the reckless blood-soaked carnage, however, you have to sit through a film dedicated to building a thoroughly miserable and nihilistic atmosphere. The base is well-realised and becomes this claustrophobic place indistinguishable from a prison or a tomb. A moody and pessimistic vibe - heightened by John Harrison’s Carpenter style synth soundtrack - hangs over proceedings. And the majority of the action comes from the unhinged interactions between the characters, who are as jovial to one another as a divorcing couple. That's the problem with having ennui as your plot...nothing happens!

This a film that is by design, not for everyone.

But it is my favourite of Romero's '...of the Dead' films. Call me jaded, but I cannot think of a more fitting swan song to the zombie genre. If this was the last zombie film ever made, I would have been happy. Look at Romero's 'sequel trilogy' and how wank that was. With the possible exception of Land of the Dead, Romero's follow ups to Day are inferior and derivative of his own work. They do nothing to build upon his creation and can simply be described as 'more zombie movies'. As if that's what the world needed. At this point the human race is more likely to be destroyed by the endless grey tide of zombie movie DVDs.

Day builds on the legacy left by Night of the Living Dead and takes it to its logical conclusion: the human race destroys itself. Sure, the undead hordes helped us on our way, but they're a placeholder and can be substituted for racism, capitalism, disease, war, and climate change. When all is said and done, at the end of Day (hehe) the human race is all but expended and the hope lies with zombies like Bub.

Not even the uncharacteristic happy ending can remedy the bleakness of Day. Helicopter pilot John (Terry Alexander), radio operator McDermott (Jarlath Conroy), and Sarah escape to a tropical island content to live out the remainder of their days in the sun. Lovely tranquil music plays and it seems a bit too nicey-nice compared to the depressing greyness of before, right? Wrong. It's a superficial ending, symbolic of a superficial decade. John and McDermott never gave two shits about helping the scientists find a cure, or aiding the military in keeping order. They were happy to live in their little bromance section of the bunker, and doing the Eighties' thing of not giving a shit.

And that's the way the world ends. Not with a bang, but with aesthetics of the Club Tropicana music video.

"Oh god. Make it stop!"

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