"Day of The Dead" is a 1985 Horror film, and what many people to consider the third to George Romero's "Dead" trilogy.
The basic plot to the movie is that a group of scientists and a handful of Army men are living underground away from the zombie apocalypse. Tension is constant as both groups don't get along, and the army men, usually referred to as "The Men", start questioning what the scientists are even doing.
I've watched this movie multiple times over the years, and I can say, that there are new things that I notice nearly every time I watch this. This is not one of those movies where you can watch it once, and completely get it. It makes sense that this film needs multiple watches, because Romero's original idea really huge. The original script can be found floating around the internet today, and many of its ideas were later used in the 2005 movie, "Land of The Dead".
But for what was in this film, I really like it, and always have. I first watched this in 2015, on Amazon, then ended up buying it for myself. I think that I've seen this movie at least 10 times. The most recent time was quite a few years ago, so I re-watched this with fresh eyes in 2026.
When I first watched the movie, I initially wanted the scientists and The Men to get along. I saw both sides having good points, and always thought that, with a mediator, the group could have survived. But as I've gotten older, and with this most recent re-watch, I realize that not having a mediator is sort of the point to the film. The breakdown of the group is because of this.
The Men fetch zombies which wander around the underground bunker, which is said to be about 14 miles long. In the first attempt at catching zombies, there is an accident, and Miguel drops a rod that held a zombie by the neck, who immediately goes after another guy named Rickels. The situation is quickly put under control, but Private Steel wrings Miguel's neck in front of another zombie, nearly killing him.
The film shows tension in all areas, from racial, to mental, to even sexual. The only female character is the main character, Sarah, one of the scientists. She clearly doesn't care for nearly any of the men, and even though she was dating Miguel, it seems that their relationship has deteriorated too.
The other two scientist are Fisher and Dr. Logan, who everyone nicknames "Frankenstein". A title which is a lot more deserving than you'd think.
While the initiative was supposed to be a civilian project, it quickly becomes nearly tyrannical when Captain Rhodes takes charge, after the death of Major Cooper. At the beginning of the movie, Sarah, Miguel, Billy, and John arrive back from a helicopter reconnaissance trip. Sarah looks over at the graves, and notices that there was a new one. Two of the army men tell her that Major Cooper died that morning, though the movie never says why, or how. I thought it was funny that the name "Cooper" showed up again in this movie. For some reason, "Cooper" pops up in all three of the "Dead" movies.
A few scenes later, we're introduced to Dr. Logan, Frankenstein, where all of his experiments are shown. It's a bloody, gory, mess. Dr. Logan was trying to find the scientific reason why the zombies were reanimated, why they ate, and if they could be trained. Logan states that the zombies don't gain any nourishment from eating, it's just from "Deep dark primordial instinct".
We see what is possibly one of the most notorious gore scenes in the film, where a zombie starts to break loose, and his guts fall to the floor. This obviously sticks with Sarah, as she has a nightmare of the same thing happening to Miguel later.
When you watch the movie, you can see that Dr. Logan is a bit out there, but I think it takes a few rewatches to understand how insane he actually was. It's funny, Sarah and Fisher defend Logan at first, as they clearly just saw him as trying to work in the name of science. But when it becomes clear where some of the bodies that Dr. Logan uses comes from, they start to see him as crazy too. One of the bodies Sarah sees is Major Cooper. When she asks who was buried, Logan tells her that it was one of the specimens...a zombie that the army men caught. It's clear that when Sarah sees this, she starts to think that maybe the army guys were right, and things aren't as great as they seem.
The most popular zombie in the film, if not the "Dead" series as a whole, would be Bub. A pet for Dr. Logan in a way, he taught Bub not to immediately attack him on sight. It was interesting. Logan could prove that zombies had some sort of thought process, and could be trained, but of course, the use case was very little. Bub obviously had some sort of memory that could be accessed from when he was alive, as he saluted to Captain Rhodes. Bub even thumbed through a book that Logan placed on the table. It's funny, I rewatched this after watching "Salem's Lot". The book Bub thumbs through is Stephen King's "Salem's Lot". It was unintentional that things ended up this way.
Later, Sarah returns to Logan's lab with Billy, after another accident had happened and a few more army guys were killed. It hadn't even been 24 hours, and Logan had already extracted the bodies to use for science. Depriving them of a proper burial. They find the bodies at a walk in freezer, when the remaining army men and Logan show up. Logan tries to "reason" with them, but they shoot him on sight. Justified? At this point, I would say so. When you think about what Dr. Logan was doing to those bodies, and having people risk their lives to get them...he was nearly a serial killer to me.
Eventually, things devolve to the point where it becomes Sarah, Billy, and John vs. The Men. Miguel gets bit on the arm by a zombie and Sarah chops his arm off and cauterizes it. I'm not sure if this is the first zombie film ever to introduce this idea, but I think it might be one of the more popular ones. I kind of wish they would have explored this idea more in the movie, because I'm curious if they would have had Miguel turn or not.
The zombies overrun the bunker, and The Men are picked off one by one. Sarah and her crew escape to the helicopter, while Miguel sacrifices himself by letting the zombies in from the elevator.
Bub gets loose and sees Dr. Logan's dead body, which sends him into a rage. I found it interesting that they showed a zombie depicting emotions such as anger, and even fondness. Bub finds a gun and eventually shoots Captain Rhodes, who is eaten alive, like all of the other men.
Overall, I enjoy this film. There are so many subtleties that are in it, that make you appreciate it more ever time. The film was unrated when it was released, so I imagine that many things couldn't be said out loud, unless they wanted to risk the film not being shown at all.
According to the history, the film only had a limited a release in theaters, and didn't sell that well initially. It wasn't until the movie was released on VHS that it grew its beloved following and sold well.
This seems to be confirmed by the reviews that I found for this movie in the newspaper archive. From the few reviews I could find, critics didn't care for this Romero movie much, which is shocking. But it seems that some people thought that the characters talked too much, and there weren't enough zombies eating people. I personally find this to be strange, considering how much gore is in the movie!
It's so odd to me that people called this movie a "dud" and a "thud" at first. I guess a part of this comes from that Grindhouse and Slasher mentality, where a lot of movies were just showing blood spurting everywhere.
Strangely, I couldn't find that many ads for the movie in the papers, but I suppose that fits in with its limited release. By 1986, the news seemed to have forgotten about it.
I suppose that this movie was always meant to be a "Cult hit", opposed to an instant success. You'd definitely have to be well acquainted with Romero's movies to appreciate a lot of the references and ties to the previous ones. There's references to "Dawn of The Dead", and Joe Pilato, who was in that movie, is cast as Captain Rhodes.
Of course, Tom Savini did the makeup, which was perfect in my eyes. I love how the zombies were grey, and not blue. I remember reading in the past that Savini based a lot of his zombie makeup off of the things that he saw in Vietnam, and I'm sure that rang true for this movie too.
In my eyes, this is a perfect movie. The makeup, the plot, the music, everything. There are small things that you only notice after watching it over and over again.
I gave this 5 stars on Letterboxd.
But I suppose, that this can 1 slime too. 💚
