Day of the Dead (1985)

User Rating:

7.0/10   

Director:

George A. Romero

Writer:

George A. Romero (written by)

Release Date:

19 July 1985 (USA)

Genre:

Horror | Sci-Fi

Tagline:

The Dead have waited. The day has come.

Plot:

A small group of military officers and scientists dwell in an underground bunker as the world above is overrun by zombies.

Plot Keywords:

Scientist | Military | Bunker | Florida | Zombie

Awards:

2 wins

Cast

Lori Cardille	...	Sarah
Terry Alexander	...	John
Joseph Pilato	...	Capt. Rhodes (as Joe Pilato)
Jarlath Conroy	...	William McDermott
Anthony Dileo Jr.	...	Pvt. Miguel Salazar (as Antonè DiLeo)
Richard Liberty	...	Logan
Sherman Howard	...	Bub (as Howard Sherman)
Gary Howard Klar	...	Pvt. Steel (as G. Howard Klar)
Ralph Marrero	...	Pvt. Rickles
John Amplas	...	Dr. Ted Fisher
Phillip G. Kellams	...	Pvt. Miller
Taso N. Stavrakis	...	Pvt. Torrez
Gregory Nicotero	...	Pvt. Johnson
Don Brockett	...	Featured Zombie (chief)
William Cameron	...	Featured Zombie

Also Known As:

George A. Romero's Day of the Dead (USA) (complete title)

Runtime:

102 min | Argentina:101 min | Norway:97 min | Australia:97 min | Canada:96 min (Ontario)

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

UK:18 (original rating) (cut) | UK:18 (video re-rating) (1997) | UK:18 (video rating) (1986) (cut) | Canada:18+ (Quebec) (video rating) (1998) | Canada:(Banned) (Nova Scotia/Ontario) (uncut version) | Canada:R (Ontario) (cut) | Canada:R (Manitoba) | Finland:(Banned) (original rating) | Chile:14 (uncut DVD version) | Canada:14A (Ontario) (Re-rated 2008) | Portugal:M/16 | Argentina:16 | Australia:R | Denmark:16 | Finland:K-18 | France:-12 | Hong Kong:III | Ireland:18 | Italy:VM14 | Japan:R-15 | Norway:(Banned) (original rating) | Norway:15 (re-rating) | South Korea:18 | Spain:18 | USA:Unrated | West Germany:(Banned) | Germany:BPjM Restricted

Filming Locations:

Florida, USA

Company:

Dead Films Inc.

Trivia:

The first film in George A. Romero's "Dead" series to begin a tradition of having a clown zombie, as also seen in Land of the Dead (2005) and Diary of the Dead (2007).

Goofs:

Factual errors: Captains Rhodes, wears the U.S. Army Reserve 99th Regional Readiness Command patch and the U.S. Army uniform tape. Making him and all his men U.S. Army soldiers. Throughout the film you see them all wearing the "Bakers Cap" of the U.S. Marine Corps. They would all have had the Army baseball cap.

Quotes:

[first lines]
McDermott: Nothing, nothing at all.
Sarah: Send again.
McDermott: I've been sending up and down the coast from Sarasota to the Everglades and still getting back the same dead air. There's nothing! There's nobody or at least nobody with a radio.
Sarah: All right then let's set down, we'll use the bullhorn.
McDermott: Set down? Wait a minute, that's not in our contract!
Sarah: It's the biggest city within 150 miles and we're going to give it every chance.
McDermott: Jesus, Mary and Joseph!
Sarah: Set down, John!
John: I'll set us down. But I won't leave my seat and I'll keep the engine running. Now the first sign of trouble, I'm going up. If you ain't on board when that happens, you're likely to have a lousy afternoon.

Movie Connections:

Featured in The Dead Will Walk (2004) (V)

Soundtrack:

The Dead Walk

Good tension and sick gore with only a few failings in the plot and the failure to paint a convincing Armageddon

Months after the first dead rose from their graves, the world has seemingly become overrun. Deep in a storage bunker in Florida, a group of soldiers and a group of scientists have formed an uneasy alliance in order to try and discover something that can help reverse their spread. However Dr Logan is not making the progress that the soldiers require and Captain Rhodes becomes increasingly impatient and erratic as a result. Things continue to worsen as the zombies gather above and Logan's work gets more worrying.

Having seen and enjoyed (if that's the word) the remake of Dawn, I decided to re-watch the three originals on their own values. While I had seen the other two before, this was the first time I had seen Day and assumed that it would be bigger than Dawn was (in the same way as Dawn extended the ideas from Night). In that regard I was a little disappointed to find that the film stayed on a rather small scale and didn't manage to really convince me that the world was actually over on the surface of the earth. However this is not to say that it is not a good story in itself, because it is, albeit very different from both Night and Dawn. To me it lacked the social commentary that was to be found in Dawn but it is still tense, gory and gripping. The claustrophobic nature of the bunker and the battling characters means that tension is easily created even when the zombies are distant and seemingly pose less of a threat than the humans do to one another. The film is a little weak at points – the medical experiments are given too much time and the character of Bub is not clear as to his reasons for being included as much as he was. I didn't like the idea of Bub, the film didn't seem to know what to do with him other than using him to fill out the story – Logan's progress with him seemed such a waste of time that, even if that was the point, it didn't work.

When the gore comes it is very hard to watch and a little sickening at times – bodies are ripped into and ripped apart in full bloody colour – as a horror it succeeds because I was looking a way quite a lot of times! Even though Shaun of the Dead has made fun of these slow zombies recently they still manage to be very effective here – I personally find them scary as they are relentless and simply wish to kill. True, the fast ones are scarier but these ones are too. The cast are more than just victims and are reasonably well drawn and acted. They have to be engaging or else the tension between them wouldn't work and, while hardly totally real people they still are good enough for a horror movie and they are not just fodder to rip apart – even if they are clearly penned as 'goodies' and 'baddies'.

Overall this is not the best of the trilogy but it is still a good horror film. The tension between the characters creates as much of a threat as the zombies do – even if some of the plot isn't that good. It all builds well to a gory finish that really only lacks teeth because both the film and the actual ending both fail to really show just how bad things are and never convinces that the world has come to an end in the way that the whole trilogy suggests it has.