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Day of the Dead
With Day of the Dead, George Romero continues to make effective commentary on the issues of the United States using the metaphor of a gory zombie apocalypse. Having already tackled the issues of the 1960s (civil rights, the Red Scare) and the 1970s (consumerism, Vietnam), he turns his sights on the 1980s, which was a decade of conflicting nations, strong military, a deficit of cannibalistic proportions, and paranoid leaders of nations screaming at each other at the tops of their lungs. As are Romero’s previous Dead films, Day of the Dead manages to be a clever parody, both funny and terrifying. Romero has stated that Day of the Dead is his best movie. I would say that of all of his social commentaries, it is probably the least, but that doesn’t keep it from being a brilliant film. After all, the 60s and 70s had major issues that were ripe for parody, as the public was moved by racist hate and the need to shop all of their savings away. With the Cold War coming to an end and race tensions easing up, the 80s was a little more difficult to comment on successfully, as most of the major issues took place internally, behind closed doors in rooms containing people in high authority. It was not the public that had become zombified in the 1980s so much as the leaders of the nations at odds with each other. Thus, Day of the Dead is less about society and more about politics. As a result, Romero has to give us a setting that is not as effective or personal as the farmhouse of Night of the Living Dead, or as stupendously epic as the shopping mall of Dawn of the Dead. Instead, we are given an underground facility consisting of a small number of doctors and military men, who constantly quarrel about how to survive against the walking dead above them, who are still hungry for human flesh and by now outnumber humans “four-hundred thousand to one,” by one character’s calculation. The scientists and doctors want to find a way to reverse the process of the dead coming back to life, but they lack the recourses. The military want to simply “blow the piss out of them all,” but they lack the man power. Thus, we are given a tug of war against two different sides, and though neither side can possibly win, no one is willing to admit that they are wrong. This nonstop bickering makes for interesting conflict, but we certainly miss watching zombies lumber through close-to-home locations such as the shopping mall and the barricaded farmhouse. This facility is a place that we simply cannot relate to, because the closed doors of politics are not something that most of us have ever seen. The characters are also less effective than in the previous films. Because Romero is arguing that those in authority in the 1980s were the main problem with the declining society, he gives us caricatures representing viewpoints of different leaders instead of real, human characters. Thus, it is difficult to care for anyone on the level that we did with the people in Night and Dawn. Leading the military is Captain Rhodes (Joseph Pilato), who considers himself in charge and runs the facility like a dictatorship. Sarah (Lori Cardille) and Dr. Logan (Richard Liberty) make up the core of the scientists, and latter has trained a zombie named Bub (Howard Sherman) who has been taught not to devour human flesh. Bub follows Logan’s orders like a confused puppy, and the scientists are thrilled at his progress. Rhodes and his men are not so amused. Day of the Dead consists mostly of scenes featuring these characters as they scream at each other because of their conflict of interest. Indeed, there is so much screaming movie from characters who we feel little for that often, the movie is difficult to watch. This is not a flaw, however, but Romero’s point: The 1980s was a decade in which no one in a leadership role could agree on anything, and they therefore got in screaming and fighting matches as the nations painfully looked on. As they continued to bicker and complain, they became closed off and suffocating in their little rooms, as Rhodes and the others do in their underground facility. If we never connect with any of the characters in Day of the Dead, we know exactly where Romero is going with them. Another group exists that has a different approach to the plague altogether. They are John the Jamaican helicopter pilot (Terry Alexander) and Irish radio-man William (Jarlath Conroy). Their solution to the problem is to get fly to some deserted island and begin recreating civilization in a zombie-free environment, and if that sounds like a good idea to the viewer, it doesn’t go over well with Sarah, Rhodes, or the others. John also offers a theory concerning why the dead are returning that is as good as any other we’ve heard thus far in the series: “We're being punished by the Creator. He visited a curse on us. Maybe He didn't want to see us blow ourselves up, put a big hole in the sky. Maybe He just wanted to show us He's still the Boss Man. Maybe He figured we were getting too big for our britches, trying to figure His shit out.” That such insight is given to a Jamaican and an Irish man demonstrates Romero’s continuing sympathy towards immigration in America, and John and William are the only characters in the film to ever emerge as real people. To be fair, the limitations in Day of the Dead rest on the issues of the decade that it represents, not on George Romero’s filmmaking abilities, and that’s why we forgive him. Romero still gives Day everything that he has as an artist and social commentator, and the efforts pay off to create film just as thoughtful as his previous efforts, if not as enjoyable. Look carefully at Rhodes, and you may realize that he bears a certain resemblance to the United States President of 1985. Also note that his eventual fate is similar to that President’s most famous acting role (“Where’s the rest of me?”). In addition, Romero scatters Day with clever images and ideas that indicate the failure of Reaganomics, such as the countless dollars bills blowing away in the wind. It is also interesting to note that Bub, the domesticated zombie, becomes more resourceful than his captors. The point: As nation’s leaders continued to argue and complain, and problems of the world began to take on lives and intelligences of their own, and this is a chilling and perceptive prophecy of later conflicts in the Middle East throughout the nineties. Aside from Bub, the zombies themselves are limited mainly to the opening scenes and the climax, but they are more hideous looking than they have ever been. Puss oozes from their rotting bodies, and most are missing appendages as they shuffle about, hunting for living persons to devour. As in Dawn of the Dead, Romero attempts to give each zombie individual characteristics, to show that all walks of life in American are affected by its ever-increasing depravity. We are given chef-zombies, farmer-zombies, football player-zombies, clown-zombies, bride-zombies, construction-worker zombies, and (in what I suspect is a subtle attack on the many cannibal, copycat films from Italy that followed after Dawn of the Dead) zombies that stumble out of movie houses. The makeup from Tom Savini has never been more effective than it is here, nor as socially relevant. By the end of the film, we realize that sans two or three characters, everyone in Day of the Dead have been driven quite mad, because they have succumbed to hatred and their closed in environment. As in all of Romero’s Dead films, the characters end up shooting at each other as the dead break in and begin to munch on their flesh. These final scenes stress the main thesis of Romero’s entire Dead saga: that our worst enemies are really each other. The result is a film which, like its predecessors, challenges the American system and offers insight to a world whose leaders have lost touch with reality. Perhaps Romero considers this his best film because of the extra thought that he had to put into the parody of a decade whose major problems were more difficult to pinpoint. If this is the case, then Romero has never been cleverer than he is in Day of the Dead. Click
here to continue on to my review of Night of the Living
Dead (1990 remake). Cast: A Laurel Films production.
Written and directed by George A. Romero. No M.P.A.A. rating (contains
graphic gore, language, and sexual talk). Running time: 102 minutes.
Original United States theatrical release date: July 3, 1985.
Questions? Comments? E-mail me: danel_the_tinman@hotmail.com |
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