Day of the Dead

June 20, 2005

Rated: NR Runtime: 102 min Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Day of the Dead is the third zombie movie from George A. Romero. While it is technically a sequel to Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead, none of the same characters appear. That’s not a problem, however, since we do get appearances from three MFG favorites: Automatic Weaponry, Blood and Gore, and Reanimated Corpses.

After a beautiful opening sequence in a coastal town overrun with zombies (and a single alligator), the action moves to an underground military complex. And unfortunately, the rest of the movie takes place in the underground complex. Isn’t this one called DAY of the Dead? I really want to see Savini’s zombies in the daylight!!

In the wake of the zombie holocaust that’s wiped out most of the American population as we know it, the government has assigned a medical staff to study the zombies in a secret facility. Their mission is to discover a cure that will turn the zombies back into humans. A military unit has been tasked with assisting the medical staff when they capture zombies to be used as test subjects.

And where do they keep the test subjects, you ask? The best idea is probably to chain them up on the grounds above the complex, but that wouldn’t make for a very good horror movie. Instead, one of these United States Government employees made the decision to capture dozens of test subjects and to keep them unchained in a gigantic pen, which is located underground in the complex with the medical and military dudes. This turns out to be a very bad idea.

Tensions run high between the soldiers and the doctors. The soldiers are freaked out that they’re sharing living space with the undead. The doctors want to continue to test the zombies and try to develop a cure. Sadly, we get a lot of this in the first hour of the movie, and it becomes very tiresome.

Just when the movie is getting unbearably boring, Bub makes an appearance. Bub is a zombie test subject that Dr. Logan has been able to domesticate. Instead of finding a cure, Logan has found a way to train the zombies to NOT crave tasty human brains. Bub is his star student. He can salute, listen to music on headphones, answer a telephone, and point a gun. And lucky for us, right after the Bub scene, the tension from the first hour finally pays off. Predictably, all hell breaks loose.

Even though it came out twenty years ago, the blood and gore are just as good (if not better) than any recent horror movie that I’ve seen. And while it’s not as great as its predecessor, Day of the Dead still manages to be a really great zombie movie. I highly recommend this Divimax special edition DVD, as the sound and picture are amazing, and there are more extra features than most current Hollywood releases.

Posted by Chris Terranova | Filed Under 4 Stars, Action, DVD, Drama, Horror, Howard Sherman, Joseph Pilato, Lori Cardille, NR, Richard Liberty, SciFi, Terry Alexander, Thriller