“Day of the Dead” (1985) directed by George Romero.

Starring: Lori Cardille, Terry Alexander, Joseph Pilato, Jarlath Conroy and Richard Liberty.

Zombie Film Rating:

Overview: A group of scientists and soldiers are thrown together in the final days of the zombie outbreak in a desperate effort to find an answer or cure to the problem. Their numbers dwindling, communications with their superiors severed they begin to turn on each other, and one can only wonder if it’s the undead or the living that are a greater threat.

Summary: The movie opens with a small group arriving by helicopter in what appears to be an abandoned city. They try to contact survivors by bullhorn, but as zombies begin appearing from every nook and cranny they quickly depart, and return to their base (an underground storage facility that has been pressed into hurried service as a shelter and research facility).

We learn that the garrison of this small base has suffered a number of losses, and the few remaining soldiers are lead by a junior officer (Captain Rhodes), who is less than enamoured with with his scientist charges, and is tired of seeing his troops being whittled away.

The senior scientist (Dr. Logan) has become obsessed with finding a means of domesticating the undead, and has been conducting numerous experiments on zombies that are coralled within the underground facility.

We learn that Captain Rhodes is planning on shutting down the research unless some definite results are shown in the immediate future, and that Dr. Logan seems to have lost his tenuous grip on reality. When Logan explains his progress to Rhodes the good captain is incredulous that anyone would want to tame the zombies, and not just kill them.

Of course the entire group is riding the ragged edge of both exhaustion and cabin fever, and when the soldiers discover that Dr. Logan has been experimenting on their dead comrades they lose all patience with the scientists and insist that it is time to leave.

Throwing the remaining scientists into the zombie holding pens, the soldiers make ready to depart. One soldier (bitten by a zombie) friendly with the scientific element allows the zombies inside the compound, and down into the facility.

Things now degenerate into a mad rush for survival as hundreds of zombies flood the facility, and the living (both military and non) struggle to escape with their lives..

Critique: I’ve always been torn about how to rank this film. Out of the three Romero zombie movies it swings between 2nd and 3rd favorite depending on my mood. It is an excellent zombie movie, and ignoring the social commentary it fleshes out the picture of the post-apocalyptic world that Romero has introduced us to.

According to sources, the original script called for much more, but budgetary restraints limited the actual production. As a consequence this film didn’t get a great reception on its release. It is a film that seems to get better with age however, and I have to admit that I rank it just below “Dawn - 78″ at this point.

If you’re a fan of the genre this film is a “must see”.