This third instalment in Romero's series of zombie films is a mixture of the thoughtful, the satirical and the downright gory.
The zombies are generally more of a sideshow in the early part of the film, with more emphasis on the semi-military group dynamics of the humans under siege. Romero expands upon this theme, by contrasting the 'egghead' Dr Logan (Richard Liberty) with the twisted, action hero-gone-wrong Captain Rhodes (Joseph Pilato). Both are anti-heroes in their different ways, fitting in with the 'Dead' series' clever refusal to countenance good and evil. Logan represents a fascinating, if potentially deluded and irrelevant academia; Rhodes a stunted, shoot-first, ask-questions-later militarism. Both are dismembered, neither approach shown to be 'right' or effective in the face of the undead onslaught.
Again, the zombies are wonderfully crafted, though there is less poetry and surrealism in their depiction than in the magisterial "Dawn of the Dead". Barring perhaps the pivotal scenes of Dr Logan, with his application of behaviourist theory in training a lone zombie in his lab. These experimentation sequences have the sort of evocative use of sound that runs throughout the earlier film: the same sense of melancholy and dislocation, and Romero clearly relishes elaborating the 1978 film's core theme of the zombie regressing to previous learnt behaviour. There is a woozy, ambient calm to the scene where he tries to instill in the zombie a liking for Beethoven through textbook behaviourism. Otherwise, the music tends a bit towards the post-Carpenter 1980s norm.
Performances are excellent, make-up and assorted guts present and suitably incorrect. However, whilst Lori Cardille is excellent, she could have been given more to do, and the progression towards the resolution is rather more contrived than in the previous two films. There are stretches towards the end where it gets close to standard action territory, and several characters are barely developed.
This hasn't quite got the style and engagement of the previous films, but works on the level of a satirical exposure of mainstream action films and of dry academic theory. "Day of the Dead" is an admirably cynical and at times thoughtful piece of entertainment, always holding the interest.
The zombies are generally more of a sideshow in the early part of the film, with more emphasis on the semi-military group dynamics of the humans under siege. Romero expands upon this theme, by contrasting the 'egghead' Dr Logan (Richard Liberty) with the twisted, action hero-gone-wrong Captain Rhodes (Joseph Pilato). Both are anti-heroes in their different ways, fitting in with the 'Dead' series' clever refusal to countenance good and evil. Logan represents a fascinating, if potentially deluded and irrelevant academia; Rhodes a stunted, shoot-first, ask-questions-later militarism. Both are dismembered, neither approach shown to be 'right' or effective in the face of the undead onslaught.
Again, the zombies are wonderfully crafted, though there is less poetry and surrealism in their depiction than in the magisterial "Dawn of the Dead". Barring perhaps the pivotal scenes of Dr Logan, with his application of behaviourist theory in training a lone zombie in his lab. These experimentation sequences have the sort of evocative use of sound that runs throughout the earlier film: the same sense of melancholy and dislocation, and Romero clearly relishes elaborating the 1978 film's core theme of the zombie regressing to previous learnt behaviour. There is a woozy, ambient calm to the scene where he tries to instill in the zombie a liking for Beethoven through textbook behaviourism. Otherwise, the music tends a bit towards the post-Carpenter 1980s norm.
Performances are excellent, make-up and assorted guts present and suitably incorrect. However, whilst Lori Cardille is excellent, she could have been given more to do, and the progression towards the resolution is rather more contrived than in the previous two films. There are stretches towards the end where it gets close to standard action territory, and several characters are barely developed.
This hasn't quite got the style and engagement of the previous films, but works on the level of a satirical exposure of mainstream action films and of dry academic theory. "Day of the Dead" is an admirably cynical and at times thoughtful piece of entertainment, always holding the interest.