Post by ronnierocketago on Nov 28, 2008 0:41:35 GMT
DAY OF THE DEAD (1985) - ***1/2
Do I have problems that on Thanksgiving, I decide to review George A. Romero's DAY OF THE DEAD, easily the most gruesome and infamous of his DEAD series? Honestly, I think this is fitting considering how today you and your families took the corpse of what was a Turkey, deep fried or baked it after removing all of its innards, then rip it to shreds as soon as the meat hits the table. Hell, I bet some of you even disrespect the bird even more by shoving some stuffing up that poor bastard's ass, which in this age of Stove Top is quite a trivial humiliation.
Point is, we all are no better than the zombies in writer/director Romero's cinema. They don't want to eat us simply out of hate, nor even need the nutritional value of our flesh, but because they're just hungry. They can't help that because their brains have been ultra-retarded by the virus, for they simply are running purely on instinct, which is to eat. They in fact are introduced in DAY OF THE DEAD when a jawless zombie stands alone in broad daylight, for indeed literally this is their day in the sun. We now are the Turkey, so prepare for your asshole to be punished.
People back in 1985 greatly complained of how cynical and bitter DAY OF THE DEAD was, but what is the mood going to be besides depressing when zombies now outnumber humans 400,000 to 1, and having lost contact with the rest of America, these people you see on the big-screen may very well possibly be the last people on Earth? Such a premise usually doesn't invite a romantic comedy with Meg Ryan, you know? Like Berlin 1945 or Richmond 1865, the losing war is practically in its endgame. With the endless white corridors and barely-lit caves, this underground labyrinth invites a claustrophobia that boils over the survivors with cabin fever.
This bunker has become an insane asylum, dominated by two strong-willed crazy assholes in John Wayne-wannabe soldier Captain Rhodes (Joe Pilato) and blood-soaked scientist Dr. "Frankenstein" Logan (Richard Liberty), with everyone else stuck in the middle. What unites both men though is their impractical solutions to this problem, with the Army behind Rhodes simply wanting to take their guns and murder every zombie out there (Romero's allegory of Reagan America at the time), while Dr. Logan wants to train the creatures to be subservient harmless pets.
The logical centre is typified by Lori Cardille, who is fighting to find an antidote for the virus, but thinks Logan's experiments are either pointlessly excessive or just plain sadism. She's the sole rational adult who isn't helped by the fact that she's the only woman down there. She takes sexist and lesbian taunts from the Army, and her strong-will attitude contrasts strongly with a traumatized soldier in Miguel (Anthony Dileo Jr.) who simply can't handle the fact that the shit has hit the fan. Yet behind her face, with the opening sequence with Lori Cardille's dream where they are finally overrun by the zombies, she is in denial too about the inevitability. But I would also consider the subliminal implication that she also fears perhaps sexual assault by her neighbors. It's never explicitly stated as such, but just think about her situation.
But the most realistic folks stuck in this hellhole to nowhere has to be the Jamaican pilot and Irish radio operator, who live together in a trailer far away from their fellow loony toons. Their answer to the apocalypse is simply to not try to solve or figure it all out, and instead live out their last few days by drinking, smoking, and relaxing. DAY never says it, but look at their home, how domesticated, clean, and organized their kitchen is. If you've been to a guys hangout, you usually don't see such a habitat unless....yup, they're gay, a conclusion shared by Roger Avary on his fan DVD commentary track. Then again, he co-wrote Robert Zemeckis' lame BEOWULF, so I take that theory with a grain of salt.
That said, those guys are the only realistic people down there having accepted defeat, plotting to steal the base's helicopter and fly to a deserted island, and why not? They are all living within a giant tomb. That's what I've never understood those citizens within the Evangelical Christianist movement or those obsessed with the Mayan calendar ending in 2012. Like a nuclear war, what can you really do about the end of the world? I say party all you can, or until those supplies run out. Then you should panic.
Yet the most memorable character of DAY OF THE DEAD who steals the show isn't even human, but the zombie Bub (Sherman Howard), who becomes a guinea pig for Dr. Logan. In the DEAD franchise for the most part, a good zombie was a dead zombie, and yet Romero somehow humanizes Bub by having him repeat actions that he had done in his pre-dead days like shaving, reading, and even talking. When Rhodes aims his gun at Bub, you actually fear for him, who like a dog recognizes that he's being threatened. When the zombies do finally enter the bunker, and the freed Bub sees that his master Dr. Logan was relieved of duty by the firing squad, you actually root for Bub when he goes off on his whole revenge hunt for Rhodes, carrying a gun that he also remembers how to use properly.
Now I gotta applaud Pilato here, who doesn't get much credit for playing Rhodes terrifically as not just a psychopath, fort he's basically the male Sarah Palin. He's strapped to the limit with guns and bullets, with a severe anti-intellectualism streak, for when given a lab report filled with equations and statistics he dismisses it as "A mouthful of Greek salad." When you want him to become lunch, you know an actor did his job well as the villain. You also gotta dig his defiant attitude to the very end, yelling at the zombies knawing on his intestines to "choke on 'em!"
DAY is also the masterpiece peak of legendary FX make-up artist Tom Savini's career, where with the freedom allowed by the DAY distributors not seeking a MPAA-sanctioned rating, Savini is allowed to go for broke in crafting disturbing believable imagery that are well-executed and follow up to their logical conclusion. Consider an opened-up zombie on an operating table who turns his body, and all his guts fall out. Then you have amputations by machette, a trachea chewed off like beef jerky, a slow decapitation during a death scream, and an excessive galore of nasty head blasts. There is a story of where allegedly a DAY crew member returned to the set just when the production was shooting the sequence where a soldier commits suicide by putting a gun in his mouth and pulling the trigger, and the poor assistant absolutely was convinced that she just saw someone blow their brains out, instead of a remarkable magic trick pulled off by the great Savini.
Trust me, everyone who sees DAY will never forget the most fucked-up moment of the DEAD series when Rhodes gets his just desserts and gets ripped in half by the hungry zombies, who promptly start eating the spilled organs while he's still alive. The entirety of all those lousy "Torture Porn" flicks have failed to even come close to the squeamishness that whole scene produces within an audience.
Following the degressive pattern of the DEAD franchise, DAY isn't as good as NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD or DAWN OF THE DEAD, but holds a quality leverage over LAND OF THE DEAD. This simply is because Romero tried to jam a solid round tale of finity into a square genre picture and he was willing to go all the way, even if it got his budget slashed by millions because he refused to conform his reality to a R rating. He's only seriously hampered by a lousy 1980s-era soundtrack, which does the opposite of what a composed score is supposed to do, which is to emphasize the dramatics or action.
I mean, can anyone name a recent American independent-produced quality horror film filled with such awesome acting, superb special effects, and intelligent filmmaking like DAY OF THE DEAD did back in the day? I know I've been harping about this in too many reviews, but I'm tired of having to look into the past to find such gems.
Oh and if the following DAY gore highlight makes you queasy after your day of feasting....too fucking bad.