The Geek Address

Day of the Dead is a dark and disturbing horror film, an appropriately depressing conclusion to George Romero’s zombie trilogy. A small group of soldiers and scientist are holed up in a bunker while zombies wreak havoc on the world above. There are three words that warrant this films’ inclusion in the top horror films of all time: ‘Banned in Queensland’.

Although the film isn’t remarkable, it does have some memorable scenes. The film opens with Sarah (Lori Cardille) asleep in a spartan room. She wakes up and approaches a calendar on the wall, running her fingers across the idyllic picture of an open field. Hundreds of zombie arms burst through the brick wall…she wakes up inside a helicopter which is flying over a deserted city in Florida. In a search for survivors, the helicopter sets down. Seeing a city overrun with zombies is one of the most satisfying and memorable scenes in the film. While they call for survivors, Romero gives us a glimpse of the devastation that has befallen the city: a rotting corpse, money strewn across the sidewalk, a newspaper with the headline ‘The Dead Walk’ and an alligator sitting serenely in the street after evidently gorging itself on the remains. Slowly, a zombie shuffles into frame, saliva dripping from its mutilated maw. Tom Savini. Give the man a round of applause, ladies and gentlemen. The make-up is light-years away from the pasty-faced zombies of Dawn of the Dead. The rotting flesh and bloody wounds are shown in gory detail. In one of the film’s most chilling scenes, zombies slowly begin to emerge from the abandoned buildings. Hundreds of zombies fill the streets and begin shuffling towards our protagonists. Apparently, the extras received very little for their performances: a badge which read ‘I Played A Zombie In ‘Day of the Dead’, a copy of the newspaper shown blowing through the street and a dollar. Worthy payment for appearing in one of the most brilliant horror trilogies of our time.

Most of the soldiers are extremely stupid and irritating characters. Fortunately, the radio officer and helicopter pilot give the audience someone to identify with.  Their performances are memorable because they represent the last shred of a humanity in a military unit falling apart at the seams. 

The film centres around Doctor Logan’s attempts to condition the zombies not to crave human flesh. He spends most of his time mutilating corpses and spouting pseudo-science that most forth graders would find errant. Early in the film, when he’s explaining the biology of zombies, one of his mutilated experiments attempts to lift itself from the operating table. It reaches for Sarah, spilling its internal organs across the floor. Logan stops it by jamming a drill into its skull. Like I said: ‘Banned in Queensland’. But the gore doesn’t stop there. When zombies finally overrun the underground base, most of the surviving soldiers are ripped apart and eaten alive by the hordes of zombies. Charming stuff.

Ironically, one of the most endearing characters is Bub - the one zombie that Doctor Frankenstein manages to domesticate.

Worst line: “You’re incapable of exciting me, Steele. Except as an anthropological curiosity.”

Best line: “We don’t have enough ammunition to shoot them all in the head. The time to have done that would have been in the beginning. No, we let them overrun us. We are in the minority now, something like 400,000 to one by my calculation.”