A killer closer, that one. Saw it relatively late in the day as a strapping young COOLEGE DOUCHEBAG, well-appraised of Night and Dawn but barely knowing Day's existence.sumdumgoy wrote: ↑Mon Mar 17, 2025 11:51 pm Day of the Dead (1985)
Spoiler
"So, what you're doing is a waste of time, Sarah... and time is all we've got left, you know."
Deep into a zombie apocalypse, a dozen-or-so survivors remain alive, holed up in an old underground WWII bunker somewhere in the Southern States. The group is split into the two last vestiges of secular progress: the scientists and the army. They reside together by necessity under an increasingly stressful situation: they've been there too long, no more survivors have been found, and the disagreements between these brainy intellectuals and brute-force instinctuals are at an all-time high. ("There is no one else, lady. We're it.")
The scientists are desperately trying a find solution to the zombie problem; one by seeking to reverse the problem, the other looking to condition the herd into being "good little girls and boys" that can be controlled and conditioned into a truce with the humans. The problem with both solutions lies in unsanitary working conditions (with limited equipment) and the seemingly endless amount of time needed for their studies... not to mention the army's help in procuring live specimens for their experiments, where they keep losing more and more of their precious remaining men to the dangerous task.
And the more men they lose, the angrier they get. These army men are a pack of hammerhead goons that see every problem as a nail; useful for survival, yes, but largely impulsive characters fueled by their own base desires for drugs, alcohol, sex and violence. This is best epitomised by the pairing of meatheads Steele and Rickles, whose non-stop sex jokes and loud demeanour represent the kind of guys ripe to become unruly. Even worse, the Major of the army troop has recently died, leaving an unreasonable, megalomaniacal Captain to take his place... and further accelerate tensions by threatening to execute whoever dares to disobey his tyrannical command.
Under this stressful situation lies a couple of outliers: John and Willie (a helicopter pilot and an electrician), who both don't believe in what either side is doing. Their alternative is to escape and find an island someplace, to simply reset back to human basics and go from there. Sarah sees this as incredibly selfish and means to stay and continue her work towards a solution to save the world. But things keep getting worse between the groups, stresses are running high, the rule of the new Captain is bringing things to a boil, and time is running out.
At its core, we have the inner conflict of Sarah, one of the last remaining scientists (and the only woman left) who has to double-up on her duties by also helping find survivors and round up specimens. Rendered hard and unfeminine by necessity, she's strong to keep her demeanour, both to prevent an emotional breakdown and as a prickly defence against the harassment of the army men. She's witness to the insanity of both sides: how Dr. Logan's research and experiments are leading nowhere, and the looming threat of Captain Rhodes' impatience. True, both sides have their points, but neither side has the answer, and Sarah finds herself repelled by them all. She wants to find a solution, but she also has doubts that her own research will lead to one any time soon. Adding to that, she's scared, stressed and tired.
So, one night after a breakup with her soldier boyfriend, she bumps into Willie and goes with him to visit John for a drink at their little trailer paradise, The Ritz. This is the first time we see Sarah smile, gazing upon the comforts of their home sweet home. "Welcome to civilization, Sarah, the last holdout," John says in a living room furnished with beach chairs, umbrellas and a tropical backdrop. "Not a bad idea," she remarks.
Sarah then accuses both him and Willie of being inactive, doing nothing to help out. And John gently rebukes her with a fantastic monologue about how this underground facility is filled with remnants of the past that no one in future is going bother with, same as her new research, and that the zombie problem will never be figured out "just like they never figured out why the stars are where they're at." She says that what she's doing is all that's left. "Shame on you, Sarah. There's plenty to do!" And he reiterates how, as long as there are survivors like them to come together, they can start over. "Get some babies... and teach them never to come here and dig these records out." This gives Sarah some pause.
Meanwhile, Dr. Logan is hard at work with his star pupil, a zombie he nicknamed Bub who is remarkably docile compared to the rest of the horde. Arguably the most fascinating zombie ever put on film, Bub damn near sells the idea that there is some remnant of humanity left in these creatures that could be reasoned with, that progress is being made. But that does nothing to convince Rhodes, who knows (as well as the audience) that, fascinating as Bub is, he's an anomaly. There's not one other zombie in that horde who's obeyed as he has, so how can Logan's pet research project come to any viable solution on the whole?
Then, the sh!t hits the fan: Sarah's ex Miguel gets bitten during a roundup, and two more army men are killed in the process. He runs away screaming in fear and pain, and Sarah chases him back to The Ritz, where Miguel is knocked out and Sarah makes the necessary cut by severing his arm beyond the bite. Eventually, Rhodes and the men catch up to where they are, and even though Sarah insists she got the infected area in time, Steele is about to pull the trigger on them. That leads to John and Willie drawing their guns, everyone held still in a standoff. "We'll keep him here, with us," John says, and the men leave. Sarah, holding the torch that she cauterised Miguel's wound with, stands there trembling... and when she turns to look at John, it's the breaking point. She can't hold it in anymore and breaks out crying.
Once they get Miguel safely into the trailer, John makes an offering to Sarah: a shirt to replace the one she was wearing and had to use as a last-minute, makeshift cauterising torch. With this one simple act, we see her vulnerable, but thankful... they pause to look at one another before apologising for their earlier words. Nothing romantic, but... the realisation that this simple act of charity and acceptance has revealed they still have their humanity. And in this moment, Sarah looks truly beautiful for the first time. She's no longer hard or confrontational, because here she needs no more defences; she knows she's with the only men she can trust. And in this very moment, Willie remarks in passing, "Well, whaddya know... we are heroes after all. What a relief!"
And a relief for us, as well. Finally, for the first time in Romero's trilogy, we have a troupe of real heroes who have all tried to do the right thing by everyone and ended up the only ones escaping the horror... so, when they make it out at the end, it feels heroic. They've earned it through their suffering.
Romero's third of his famed zombie trilogy, Day of the Dead is about humanity lost and humanity gained. The zombies that have lost it, how that same loss affects others and makes them lose their own, and those holding onto their humanity and finding hope in a hopeless situation. The director had it in mind to make the biggest zombie epic ever, and after revisiting both Night and Dawn, you can feel his buildup to it: respectively, that you can't win by standing your ground, and you can't win by taking what isn't yours. You have to be the good guys; your actions matter!
Unfortunately, Romero kept running out of budget to work with, and he had to keep cutting down the script more and more. Yet, the core of the epic remained in his writing, budget be damned, and those trims ended up resulting in his best and most focused script. Even though the movie is rather dialogue-heavy for a picture classified as horror, it's never boring, and for those who aren't hooked into the dialogue, there's a lot of quality stuff in every other regard to keep horror fans holding on. Like The Shining and The Thing, no other horror movie has rewarded multiple viewings like Day has.
For starters, there's not a bum performance in the whole main cast, and everyone here gives it their best. I'd talk more in specifics, but aside from our hero trio, Joe Pilato's Rhodes makes for an unforgettable villain (holding back just enough from chewing up all the scenery), Sherman Howard mesmerises and amuses as "Bub" the zombie, and Richard Liberty's turn as Dr. Logan nails that kind of scientific obsession which leads many into madness. (The group didn't nickname him "Frankenstein" for nothing.)
The underrated music score by John "Creepshow" Harrison suits the movie well and then some; in fact, I listen to it outside of the movie every now and then, either on the road or at work. There's something about that dual theme of survival and hope in the melodies (repeated in the tropical-getaway motif) that seems to me timely and relevant in a world gone mad, and it encourages me in my own life's purpose. And if music be the soundtrack of our lives (as David Geffen once opined), then Day's score sometimes seems like mine. I never get tired of hearing it.
But wow, how about those unbelievable make-up effects by Tom Savini, who worked together with his understudy Greg Nicotero on this project? If he was teaching his student how to be the master, then man, did he ever prove it. Putting aside the main showcases, even simple gunshots look incredibly impressive! I believe Savini was at the top of his game here, so when I heard him say in the making-of doc' that he considered his work on Day to be his masterpiece, it's not the ego talking. The man is speaking from experience, and besides that, it's absolutely true. The effects never fail to shock every time I see them.
In short, Day of the Dead is not only my favourite Romero picture, but easily in my Top 10 horror movies list.
Nah, strike that... it's in my Top 5.
Was stunned at the intensity of its gore and, crucially, its bleak subterranean canvas. A purgatorial vision hard as fuckin nails, with bone-chilled synths to match, though never without heart or optimism. Well-said re: Pilato. He's hilarious and quotable, yet there's a real fury and tyranny to his Rhodes, backed up with singularly unsmiling brutality.Shoutout to earlier ZOMBI 2, my favourite Slow Zombies ever. A mouldering wall of inexorably advancing death. Sad to see the artform vanish in the early 00s with 28 Days and Snyder. Game Of Thrones vanished up its own ass so thoroughly as to defy any remark at all, yet its weightless ninja wights can eat not brains but my fuckin ass
Boring! I love the first [REC]'s but, true to its videogamey style, its runners play off the pressure-cooker venue for some truly explosive sequencing.Spoiler for REC
The late shot where the last two survivors nervously peer over the stairwell railing for their comrade, only for the camera to illuminate floor after floor of infected utterly losing their shit, their recently self-sacrificed guardian among them, is a mighty swing above its b-film weight; immortal snapshot of despair in timing, arrangement, and framing.
not to forget DRAGON UNIT >w>) was into Fulci's rotters at all. SWORD MASTER has my favourite VG zombie ever, sporting a similar pathos; piteously ruined remains impelled onward by some horrid invigoration. Head lolling groundward, arm sickeningly palsied, feet dragging flat, not a healthy guy! BUT DANGEROUS 
TRVE KVLTIC NECROMANIA
SWING YOUR BODY (´ω｀)
Like how MONKEY SOMETIMES GETS HIS COCK OUT (■｀w´■)
It's such a paradigm shift away from the conventional Romero apocalypse. Not just fast and cruelly indestructible but also intelligent, almost disarmingly self-aware undead, creating an entirely different dynamic from the classic meatwall.
The Thing is my single favourite horror movie to watch with newcomers, and yet it's just as good with fellow aficionados. Always something to reconsider in that miasma of subterfuge. ala another hard n' dark 80s sci-fi evergreen, Rob Bottin's later Robocop, it's both a balls-to-the-wall genre flick bursting with arch joie de vivre, and a formidably well-produced, well-played film.
See also Fulci's Conquest for birds, The Beyond for spiders and Aenigma for snails! I have seen The Beyond a few times but it's been a decade at least. I think Fulci admitted the ending was a studio shoehorn-in, as funds had basically dried up. According to my imdb ratings I have seen House by the Cemetery, but it has slipped away from the old grey matter now. I saw Blob '88 for the first time last year and enjoyed it. Not sure how that one snuck below radar for so long. I had to buy the German bluray to see it legally though.
hmm hmm hmm, dustin' these shelv-OH GOD WHAT THE FUCK BBBRLBGERAGA
Squibs, glorious squibs!
Wall-to-wall with great dialogue, and in the latter's case an enviably seamless soundtrack. Infamously sweary films, but it's all about the ebb and flow, y'know? 
