El día de los muertos

The third film in George A. Romero's immensely popular "Living Dead" trilogy is by far the bleakest and most complex film the director has ever worked on. "Day of the Dead" received a lot of negative press upon its release in 1985 - people picked apart unsavory characters, OVER-acting from a no-name cast, and outlandishly gory special effects that only Tom Savini himself could be proud of.

But none of this makes it a bad experience really, does it? I don't think so. For the reason that I usually detest zombie flicks, I have worked up a fondness for the works of Romero and over the last two weeks have separately watched each film in his trilogy.

"Night of the Living Dead" (1968) virtually defined a new genre of horror movie-making and basically set the standards for the many zombie flicks that would follow in its footsteps. Next up to bat was the most praised film in the trilogy - "Dawn of the Dead" (1978) - which was more of an action film than a horror movie and was nothing short of epic. Then came "Day" in 1985, which got the tongue-lashing that I described earlier.

However those that did like it, praised the Savini effects, its complex, plot-driven characters, and satire. While "Day" is certainly a step down from "Night" and "Dawn," "Day" is more of a claustrophobic horror movie and that allows it to stand on its own as a fitting end to Romero's trilogy. It's more in sync with the tension of "Night" than it is with the adrenalin-laced action, zombie-slaughterfest that was "Dawn."

A team of civilian scientists and a loose army unit clash with each other's motives after they have taken shelter at an underground military base from the hordes of living dead that storm the surface above. The civilian scientists aren't seeking to eradicate the zombies like the soldiers are hell-bent on doing, but are instead trying to get to the bottom of what is causing them to be what they are.

In doing so, they need live zombie specimens, which are held captive in a maze of dark underground tunnels where they're corralled like cattle. We later get what is one of the most profound and moving experiences in the entire trilogy with "Day," when we see one zombie, nicknamed "Bub" by one particularly eccentric scientist, who eventually learns what it means to be "alive," so to speak.

"Day of the Dead" obviously isn't a perfect movie, but is more or less a fitting conclusion to one of the most daring film trilogies in the horror genre. It may be best to not watch "Day" thinking it'll be anything like "Dawn" just because it has military men blasting away mercilessly at the living dead. Zombie slaughter is few and far between and much of the first hour of the film is clashing dialogue between the characters.

The darkest day in the world - "Day of the Dead."

9/10

As a zombie aficionado is it impossible to not have watched the Romero zombie movies, especially as they are such big milestones in the zombie genre. And also as they are the zombie movies that has the most heart put into it, no pun intended.

This 1985 movie, directed by George A. Romero, is the third of zombie movies in his lineage of zombie storytelling. And it continues with the usual bleak world overrun by the living dead. Society has collapsed and the world is in disarray, with small clusters of people struggling for survival. But it is not the threat of the living dead that proves the only danger is the new dying world.

Romero does a great job at telling the story he has in mind, and it is presented in a very enjoyable manner, which makes his movies quite entertaining and watchable.

The story in the 1985 movie "Day of the Dead" is about a group of soldiers and scientists who have barricaded themselves in an underground bunker facility. Here they try to survive the dying world around them. Some scientists are studying the living dead in order to understand more about them and to control them, a study which does not sit well with the armed military forces.

Granted that this movie is from 1985, so the special effects and zombie make-up is a bit outdated by today's standards. But it still works fine though, and the effects are still believable. But in the Romero movies it is not the special effects that drive the movie, it is the story and the characters; the special effects just help to progress the story and add a visual imagery to the dying world.

The acting in "Day of the Dead" was quite good, and there is a very memorable gallery of characters in the movie. And there was even a very memorable zombie known as Bub. And they had managed to cast some good talents to portray the various role and characters. I must admit that I was surprised to find out that special effects master Greg Nicotero was in the movie.

I assume that you are already familiar with this 1985 classic zombie movie if you are a fan of the zombie genre. If you are not, shame on you, then it is about due time that you get around to watching it. In fact, watch all the Romero zombie movies, as they are important to the zombie genre.

I have watched "Day of the Dead" several times, as I have with all of Romeros movies, and it can sustain multiple viewings, because the story is so well-written and executed on the screen.

"Day of the Dead" receives a seven out of ten stars from me. This is a good, wholesome zombie movie.

In 1985 this zombie movie virtually went by unnoticed except for many Romero fans. It was virtually dead a week or two after it hit the theaters. Many attribute its failings to the other many horror films released that year including "Re-Animator", "Fright Night", and "Return of the Living Dead". All these movies were R though and day was not. Romero stuck to his guns and made a very gory movie. Unfortunately, when dawn was released there were still many independent theaters, but by 1985 the chains had taken over and one thing chains do is not show movies like this. So it went by unnoticed and those that did notice it usually had nothing good to say about it other than the zombies looked really good. So suffice to say, I wasn't expecting much when I bought this movie except the zombies would look good. However, I am happy to report that I was very pleasantly surprised. Granted, Dawn was still a better film as it had more likable characters than the ones featured in this film. This would be the final Dead film George Romero would do until Land of the Dead was released, but I do not count that one as part of his original trilogy as they seem to belong together because Night showed us the humble beginnings of the zombie outbreak, Dawn showed us the zombies beginning to overrun us and this film shows us a bleak world where the zombies now outnumber the living 400,000 to one.

The story has a group at the beginning flying a helicopter in the hopes of finding some survivors. All they find is the dead and quite frankly, any survivors out there would be better off keeping their mouth shut as they do not want to go back to the facility this group belongs to. It is like a bunker and in it we have scientists who have no clue what they are doing, army people in a rush to leave said facility even though there is no indication there are any people left, two civilian guys just doing their jobs and Bub the most awesome zombie ever! Tensions are running high in the facility as the army people want to leave and there is a lot of arguing; however, things take a turn for the even worse and the zombies that are topside begin to lick their lips!

This film has great looking zombies and it does a good job with its setting. Originally, George wanted to do something much larger in scope, but could not get the funding so he had to scale back immensely which is why we sadly on get the one shot topside in the city and get to see how much the zombies have taken over. Everything in this film is rather good, except the characters! Seriously, Bub who is a zombie is the most likable character and then civilian guys. Everyone else just wants to yell and rant and this film is not a good one to watch when you have a headache! The good news is that this creates a finale where you really want to see a few of these guys eaten and suffer, unlike Dawn where you just kind of get a random motorcycle gang out of nowhere.

So this film is good, just not as good as Dawn as this one just does not have the action of that film and for a good portion of the film the only thing you have to look forward too in between the shouting matches between the scientists and evil Bono are the Bub scenes. It does help build up the finale and like I said, you really want to watch these guys get eaten, but it also tends to get annoying as no one really seems right. That is just the way it goes though, mankind is pretty much lost here and so why worry about trying to cure something that cannot be cured when you can just try and live out your life the best you can.

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.

While not quite up to the levels of Night or Dawn, Day Of The Dead still packs a story line that is just as relevant to day as it was in 1985, and boasts performances that are better than it should be. I really loved Lori Cardille here, and I'm surprised she didn't do much, much more than this.

It has one of the best openings in horror movie history (and Dr. Tongue is likely the most impressive zombie in any of these films), but it does drag just a little bit in the middle. The antagonists (of which there are more than one), aren't your typical mustache twirlers, and Romero gave them some depth and nuances that actually made most of their actions completely believable.

The climax more than makes up for the middle drag, and I love how Romero injected his undead with both horror and humor. A must for not only Romero fans, not only zombie fans, but horror fans in general.