Day Of The Dead – More standard-setting reanimated dead from Romero

So I asked myself:

“Self? What’s a horror trilogy without all three films that make up the trilogy?”

A few years ago this very month, I gushed strange and unsettling love on one of my all-time favorite films, the classic that started it all, Night Of The Living Dead.

A few weeks later, I gushed about its worthy successor made 10 years later, Dawn Of The Dead.

Fast forward two Halloweens to the present day: I’m finally completing my little circle of creepy love with the endpiece to Romero’s trilogy, Day Of The Dead.

This 1985 film falls somewhere after the events of Dawn Of The Dead with the remnants of society, government and the military overrun by the undead and struggling to locate survivors while seeking a solution to what caused the zombie outbreak. A collection of scientists and members of the Army are holed up in an underground base experimenting in an effort to reverse the effects of zombification. Several scientists have seen limited success with their experiments — one in particular, Dr. Matthew “Frankenstein” Logan, houses a prized specimen of the undead (“Bub”) who retains some of his past and a few memories, dense and stupified though he might be.

Of course, things go awry. Tensions mount, tempers flare, the military gets itchy around the scientists and all their undead charges, the close quarters crowd in on everyone and the inevitable happens: All hell breaks loose.

DotD isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, but it has its moments. Key to the film is the experimentation that goes on with the ghouls, especially in the case of Bub the zombie. He’s a kick and a half and loveable as all get out. (As loveable as a reanimated corpse can be, at least.)

Romero had big plans for the DotD, not the least of which was his dream of releasing it unrated. That’s just a shade this side of a death knell for a film as you can imagine. (The result of that decision was the reduction of its budget from $7 million to $3.5 million. Zoinks!) Throw in the fact there were equipment complications, prop flaps and all sorts of other problems and it’s a wonder the film was completed.

But completed is was. And, somehow, with all its foibles, it managed to garner a coveted Saturn Award for its make-up effects master Tom Savini who was of course instrumental in the first two films as well.

(One of the more interesting things about DotD was one actor in particular: Private Johnson. Johnson was played by none other than Gregory Nicotero. Yep … the same Greg Nicotero responsible for the effects, direction and production of a little program you might know by the name of The Walking Dead.)

As stated, DotD isn’t an elite film by any stretch of the imagination … but it is a nifty little corner piece to Romero’s legacy of original standard-setting films.

Now … how ’bout a little Bub for your Halloween dining and dancing pleasure … ???