Day of the Dead [reviewed by Lackey]

George A. Romero, 1985 (101 min.)
My rating:
IMDB

Lackey’s capsule review of Day of the Dead was previously published as part of his coverage of Terror in the Aisles 7. —Ed.

Romero’s third zombie movie’s a damn good film. But that’s damning with faint praise: it should have been a masterpiece.

* * *

Premise

“I’m running the monkey farm now, Frankenstein, and I wanna know what the fuck you’re doing with my time!” It’s been some time since the dead began to walk, resulting in the collapse of society. In an underground bunker in Florida, a group of soldiers and scientists originally tasked with countering the reanimation phenomenon continues with its operations…but already-heightening tensions reach the breaking point as the stress level rises and dark secrets come to light.

Critique

I have to confess that I didn’t care much for Day of the Dead the first time I saw it, or even the second. It eventually grew on me, and I came to enjoy it a great deal. It is, in comparison to its predecessors Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead, somewhat underrated; I still think it’s highly flawed, but it also has its strong points—many of which are subtle and only revealed upon subsequent viewings.

The first thing you’re likely to notice about Day of the Dead is the zombies. The makeup and gore—designed by Tom Savini (legendary), heading a team which featured Greg Nicotero (then completely unknown; nowadays, almost as legendary as Savini)—are truly stunning, a quantum leap ahead of Dawn. The zombies are also, for the most part, well-acted, and Romero elects to keep the massive swarms of undead at arm’s length for most of the movie. Instead he focuses on a few zombies and develops them as real characters, an experiment that richly pays off, because they’re exceptionally well-played.

That brings me to the second thing you’re likely to notice about Day: the acting. At first glance, it seems like three actors are running the show here: Joe Pilato, playing the newly-promoted leader of the military faction (and villain), Capt. Rhodes; Richard Liberty, playing Dr. Logan, the mad scientist in charge of the scientific team; and Sherman Howard (here plying his wares as “Howard Sherman”) as Bub, one of the zombies. Bub deserves a bit of an explanation: while the scientific team was originally charged with countering whatever it is that animates dead flesh, Logan’s interest has shifted to figuring out how zombies can be effectively co-existed with. One of his projects is domesticating zombies, and Bub (apparently a former soldier in life) is his star pupil.

Of all the performances in Day, Howard’s is the most striking (and he has a lot of competition, as we’ll see). Trained in mime, he marries the by-now-familiar “zombie shuffle” to a strong sense of childlike curiosity and wonder, and Bub is quite an endearing and likable character. (Here’s where we pause to remember that Romero has stated on numerous occasions that he sees zombies as victims, not monsters. Day is the clearest expression of that philosophy.)

Of the rest of the ensemble, Howard is the most effective at holding his own in scenes he shares with Liberty, who consistently goes over the top, and Pilato, who doesn’t even seem aware that there is a top. Their overacting isn’t a bad thing, here; the two actors seem to be playing their characters as written, and they turn in eminently compelling and watchable performances.

Which isn’t to put down the rest of the cast, which includes Lori Cardille (as scientist Sarah, the film’s protagonist and emotional core), Terry Alexander and Jalrath Conroy (as helicopter pilot John and electronics/communications expert Bill McDermott, respectively), the great John Amplas (as another scientist, Dr. Ted Fisher) and Gary Klar (as Pvt. Steele, who, despite his low rank, seems to be the real leader of the military team—the soldiers may take orders from Rhodes, but they respect Steele and follow his lead). Most of the cast does a fine job with what they’re given, especially Cardille, who manages to find the vulnerability at Sarah’s core without letting it compromise the toughness.

But let’s go back to the beginning of the last sentence. “Most of the cast does a fine job with what they’re given.” The stock line about writer/director George Romero is that characterization is one of his great strengths. I disagree, to an extent. I think he’s okay with characterization, but where he really shines is with casting, and he’s willing to allow the actors freedom to develop their roles in ways that weren’t part of the original conception. Try to imagine Night without Duane Jones, Dawn without Ken Foree or Scott Reiniger, or Martin without Amplas. The problem with the characterization here is that it’s painfully one-dimensional (John is about two inches away from being a “magical Negro”; Logan is a stock mad scientist in a blood-stained lab coat; Rhodes is a shouty “my-way-or-the-highway” alpha male type…and don’t get me started on McDermott and Steele!) and it’s left for the actors to fill in the gaps.

For the most part they do this well, but there isn’t a whole lot to work with. Steele, who could easily have been an audience-identification character—and Day honestly needs more than just one—only gains any real humanity in his final scene (which was Klar’s idea, not Romero’s). Fisher only exists in the story to bulk up the science team, and while Amplas and Cardille have great chemistry, it’s a waste of Amplas’s considerable talents to stick him in such an ill-defined role.

And speaking of chemistry…it certainly doesn’t help that the weakest performance in the film is turned in by Antonè DiLeo, playing Sarah’s love interest, Pvt. Miguel Salazar. It’s not that DiLeo’s performance is bad, but it isn’t enough to make Miguel compelling enough to buy into. It’s hard enough to understand what exactly attracts the two; they seem utterly mismatches, and the fact that there’s no chemistry between Cardille and DiLeo, combined with the fact that DiLeo never quite nails the character until it’s too late, makes their apparent bond even more incomprehensible.

The story’s themes need a bit more refinement and development. The social commentary here is very heavy-handed, more along the lines of The Crazies or the later Survival of the Dead than the subtler subtext of Night and Dawn. Rampant militarization is a bad thing? You don’t say! We all have to put our petty differences aside and work together? Thanks—I never would have figured that one out on my own.

Plus, most damningly, Romero undercuts some of the most potentially interesting arguments. The idea of figuring out a way to “coexist” with the zombies as opposed to a futile attempt to wipe them all out…well, maybe you don’t agree with it as a practical survival technique, but dramatically, the idea has legs. Unfortunately, the idea’s chief proponent, Logan, is so comedically crazy the audience isn’t likely to take his wacky ideas seriously. (Hmm…sound familiar?)

Many fans do, in fact, consider Day of the Dead the strongest of Romero’s “classic” zombie trilogy. It’s hard to blame them: it’s got great locations, great acting, great ideas and, of course, great zombies. Even John Harrison’s score is pretty good (it’s much better than many of the “composed in the mid-’80s on a Fairlight, Synclavier or Emulator” style scores that dominate films of this vintage). But it’s got too many flaws to ignore. Over the years, I’ve noticed the strengths were more prominent than I gave them credit for, but the flaws are still there. I’d like to ignore them, but I find myself unable to.

Moment of Zen

“That wasn’t very nice, you know. That wasn’t very nice at all…and you can sit there in the dark and think about what you’ve done. Think about it. Think.” (And pay close attention to the score at the end of the scene…)

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