I’m not an anti-CGI purist or anything, but we’re still several decades away from computers being able to produce gore effects credible enough to compete with Tom Savini on his best day.
There are a handful of horror-related memories that stick out to me from my formative years, basically prior to middle school when I started watching capital-“H” horror movies of my own volition. I was wading into the pool in elementary school, mind you, but I was content in the shallow end with low-risk titles like The Gate and Munchies. Yet the world of adult horror was always right in the margins: A newspaper print ad featuring Freddy Krueger. A glimpse of the black goo from Creepshow 2 while walking through the living room one night when my parents were watching. The glow from an old-school box television that had recently been turned off, specifically after I had seen a commercial for Poltergeist. The ill-fated viewing of Hellraiser 2 at a 5th-grade sleepover which kept me up all night reading Excalibur comics so I didn’t have to face the inside of my eyelids. I certainly wasn’t hard to scare as a kid.* A less specific but still impactful memory I have from that general time frame is related to scenes from Day of the Dead. I can’t pinpoint where I was when it was on, but I have distinct sense memories of both Bub, DotD‘s cuddly zombie mascot, and being absolutely appalled by brightly crimson intestines on full display in one of the many scenes in which that happens. It was most likely my first exposure to George Romero’s oeuvre, and almost definitely the grossest thing I had ever seen at that point in my life. Having re-watched the movie, I can’t be sure if the intestines in question belonged to a zombie or one of their many victims, but my years of horror fandom have not desensitized me to the carnage as much as I might have expected. This is a gnarly movie, and possibly legend Tom Savini’s crowning achievement.
Each of the first three Romero zombie films is a standalone story – no characters repeat, and there are not references to prior movies – but I think we are definitely meant to infer that they occur in the same universe. There is a logical progression that allows Romero to explore new ideas based on the stage of society’s collapse he represents in each film. Night of the Living Dead occurs at the very genesis of the zombie apocalypse, ground zero so to speak. By the end of that movie, impromptu redneck posses might be having some success sweeping through rural farmland and wiping out zombies, but there’s no way that was going to be a comprehensive solution. In Dawn of the Dead, we begin to witness the collapse of society. Our institutions are still intact, but under incredible stress as the spread of infection threatens to overwhelm them. When we drop into Day of the Dead, the world as we know it is over. The film interrogates how we might form clusters of humanity and what it would look like to divide labor based on skills. It also tackles differences of ideology in these micro-communities, and what would ultimately be the deciding factor if sides couldn’t align on the best way to govern themselves. Hint: Bullets trump IQ. Romero is probably taking the military-industrial complex to task, as well, but you don’t need to search for subtext when the text provides such potent fodder for conflict. I would prefer if the sides weren’t so clearly delineated into right versus wrong, however, especially because the complex situation invites a more balanced exploration of the general positions that are represented (generally science versus military, but also long-term versus short-term thinking, and maybe clinging to humanity versus survival at all costs). As it is presented, though, the scientists are nuanced characters and the soldiers are one-dimensional trash people who earn their highly unpleasant deaths at the hands and teeth of the zombie horde.
Day of the Dead is definitely my least favorite of the original Romero zombie trilogy. I didn’t dislike it, though, its just that Night is an undisputed horror classic and Dawn is probably my favorite zombie movie of all time. I will say that he might have helped the situation by providing some civilians, some children, someone that didn’t have such a strong stake in the big ideas at play, and frankly someone who was more pleasant to be around than the characters we got. I think it is probably a problem if the most sympathetic person in your zombie movie is a zombie that is learning to listen to a walkman and fire a gun. I will once again big up Savini for his twisted genius when it comes to creating disgusting practical effects. That remains the biggest impression I am taking away from this movie. I’ll also give Romero his props – this may not be in my top tier of zombie flicks, but there is little question that those three seminal movies laid the groundwork for the themes that every subsequent zombie story would explore for time immemorial. Worth the watch, but not one I’ll return to very often.
* If you are my age, you might recall how something as mundane as walking around the corner in a video rental store could introduce you to terrifying imagery that had the potential to haunt you for weeks. As a parent, it is sobering to think about the infinitely more fraught corners of the internet available for young people to stumble upon. Hmmm, apologies, that is probably more horror than you thought you were actually signing up for when you clicked…
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