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I first watched Day of the Dead, the conclusion to George A Romero’s ‘Dead’ trilogy, in a fun and

 

 

 

hopeful mood. At the time I worked at the US Glasshouse theater in the Sport Arena area of San Diego and my friend Brad, who was the assistant manager there, had just finished assembling the print on the platter for the project. So, late at night, after everyone else had left, we ran the print and watched it just the pair of us Zombie fans.

We were disappointed.

Now, nearly 40 years later, I have watched the movie again this time as part of the 6-film marathon hosted by Film Geeks SD.

It is still disappointing.

The Night of the Living Dead introduced the zombie plague where the recently deceased are animated and then attack and eat the living. A small, contained film it boasted a diverse set of characters trapped in microcosm of American society fighting, and failing, to save their lives.

Dawn of the Dead, produced a decade later, presented a world in the process of being overrun by the living dead with society collapsing into anarchy. The central characters, with sharply drawn natures, flee their responsibilities for a life of isolated decadence with a shopping mall. This film is a satire on consumerism, holding a mirror to humanity’s obsession with possessions even after death.

After a pair of sharp, interesting film populated with interesting characters I had high hopes for Day of the Dead, but Romero’s script presents none of the flourish or insight this time around that he had displayed in the previous two movies.

The movie follows a set of characters in a hastily assembled research facility that is tasked with understanding and defeating the zombie outbreak. The world has been overrun and for months these survivors have been unable to contact anyone on the radio as their number dwindle. Tensions run high between scientists tasked with the research, the army troops assigned to the facility, and the civilian support staff as the hopelessness of their condition becomes more and more evident.

That is an excellent premise. It is a crime that Romero’s populated it with flat, stereotypical cardboard cutouts instead of characters. Each division of characters, scientist, military men, and civilian are presented exactly the same way, without any meaningful differences. Heroic characters are presented not only as heroic but as correct and moral. Villainous characters, which include all the military men save for one romantic interest, are presented as crude, cruel, and bigoted.

The cast, struggling with the flawed screenplay, is fairly forgettable, except for two, Sherman Howard as the zombie ‘Bub’ and Richard Liberty as the chief scientist Dr. Logan. Howard performs excellent mime-work, giving ‘Bub’ a depth that is lacking from most of the human character while Liberty is mischievous in his choices as an actor imbuing Logan with a life that stands out in sharp relief to all the other performances.

This pair of actors however is not enough to salvage the film which wanders zombie-like from cliche to cliche with Romero cribbing from himself like so many low budget zombie movies did in the wake of Dawn of the Dead.

Now, I was prepared to suspend my disbelief that the dead could reanimate as it is central to the story’s conceit. That said I simply cannot accept as any form of reality that the base is constructed in the vast stone caverns beneath South Florida.

Between the absurdity of its setting, the flatness of the characters, and the lack of any coherent theme Day of the Dead is a movie that I shan’t watch again for another 40 years.