If the intestine-plopping, face-ripping gore (a strong candidate for Tom Savini’s best work) doesn’t get under your skin, maybe the searing pessimism of George Romero’s third zombie film will. The apocalypse is in full swing here. Civilization is whipped and whipped good. The radios are silent, the towns are empty. For all we know, there’s no one else in this world alive other than a small group of scientists and soldiers holed up in an underground missile silo in Florida. The zombies can’t get in, but no matter. These people just might kill each other.
It’s a conflict that goes back to 1950s sci-fi flicks: Scientists vs. the military. Do we take the risk of capturing and studying the alien/monster/strange glowing artifact or do we blow it to kingdom come? Different movies take different sides. In the pro-military films, the scientists are usually cold fish with little regard for human life (or they’re profiteers). In the pro-scientist films, the military are violent oafs with tank shells for brains.
Day of the Dead sticks up for the scientists, but what makes it unique is how Romero is careful to show that EVERYONE is losing their marbles. Seriously. Nothing here feels healthy. The military extreme is represented by Rhodes (Joseph Pilato), an over-the-top, screaming, glowering, hair-trigger who’s making everyone suffer, at gunpoint, through his mental breakdown. Meanwhile, the scientific extreme finds body and soul in Dr. Logan (Richard Liberty), a crazy-haired egghead constantly covered in blood due to his ghastly experiments on zombies deep in the bowels of the compound. Even some of the other scientists are put off by the slaughterhouse that he calls a laboratory. Logan’s most intriguing discovery so far: the famous Bub (Howard Sherman), a rare docile zombie who’s on his way to being a fully domesticated house pet (in a witty stroke, Bub gives off signs of being a military man in his former life). What good is that, though? I don’t know. George Romero doesn’t know, either.
This film’s REAL voice of reason is the Jamaican helicopter pilot (Terry Alexander), who doesn’t understand why everyone doesn’t just focus on finding a sunny, secluded island somewhere off the coast to chill out and feel good for once.
There’s a life lesson here. Be versatile. Keep your joints loose. Have a coherent goal, as opposed to some others who operate on instinct and haven’t thought it through; they haven’t questioned enough. Staying alive is vital, but so is your sanity. Be the unpopular guy if that’s what it takes. Don’t need to be important. Don’t care about that at all. Maybe the greatest survival skill of all is the ability to raise wings and fly away.