Day of the Dead

Zombie movies are films whose subtext is undeniably that of a shuffling, mind-benumbed society slowly eating itself. The corpses are stand-ins, perhaps for the bourgeoisie, perhaps for the Third World (ironically enough) as has been suggested by one critic. Whatever the case, the dead return, again and again, to shuffle mindlessly in the worm-encrusted clothing they wore on their last day; inarticulate, slow, shambling, and having a relentless hunger for human brains.

Methinks there is indeed, a metaphor in there.

The original Dawn of the Dead was set in an American shopping mall, a unique institution of the recent past that has slowly slipped into cultural oblivion in the era of the internet, Amazon, and DoorDash. Oh well. Something in that set in a SHOPPING MALL thing.

The Dawn of the Dead was a little long and somewhat tedious for this reviewer, but he'll get back to it soon enough. Day of the Dead, a film I rented almost thirty years ago from a little, down-at-the-heels store in a little ugly shopping center in beautiful Gas City, Indiana (which was catty-corner to the McDonalds I wasted valuable years of my ever-dwindling stock of days working at for minimum wage), retains much of the power to entertain it possessed even back during that naive and innocent period. However, I'm almost certain even better films have been made since, and even better zombie flicks.

Written and directed by the late Zombiemeister George A. "Night of the Living Dead" Romero, Day features a no-star cast of characters, virtually none of whose names I can remember right off hand. Performances aren't bad, though, and a woman scientist ("Dr. Sarah Bowman," played by Lori Cardille), a Jamaican helicopter pilot (Terry Alexander), an Irish stereotype that likes to chuck back cheap hooch from a hip flask (played by the redoubtable Jarlath Conroy, who seems to have missed his chance for a shot on Star Trek as the hybrid offspring of James Doohan and Deforest Kelly), and Miguel (Anthony Dileo Jr.), who is on the verge of a nervous breakdown, inspect a town up the California coast and find it thoroughly zombified. Big surprise. Miguel is catholic and thinks it's the Apocalypse. And if the "dead rise and walk the Earth," who am I to dissuade him?

They return to their government compound and we're introduced to two scientists and a few soldiers on loan from Lloyd Kaufman, including one badass psychopathic fascist captain ("Rhodes," played by Joe Pilato), and a giggling merc who looks a little long in the tooth but is racist, sexist, as husky as a pro-wrestler, and, as obnoxious as hell. His little buddy is also a giggler. They both, I take it, escaped from Straight to Video Purgatory.

A doctor whom everyone refers to as "Frankenstein" ("Dr. Logan," played by Richard Liberty) walks around in a filthy, bloody lab coat, looking as if he smells really, really bad, and, down below the government facility, where the Jamaican helicopter pilot and his drunken Irish friend have their diggs, is the "Dead Corral," a place where zombies shuffle around until they're needed for Frankenstein's experiments to "tame" them.

He gets one pet zombie, "Bub," (Sherman Howard) to start acting rather cordial before being fed his bloody repast of severed limbs, and, while all this is going on, the soldiers and toughs upstairs (all stereotypes borrowed from OTHER bad movies) and become insulting and then menacing, and threaten to kill the "eggheads" (scientists). Does all of this make sense?

It doesn't end well for those guys, let's just say.

The special effects are good, gory fun, excessively bloody, sickening, and brutal, and the action doesn't have the mind-numbing, plodding, living- dead pace of Dawn, which went on just too damn long.

It's a cinematic horror comic (er, maybe a graphic novel?) and it is as entertaining as hell. The female egghead has a few dreams that are like cinematic jump-cuts (what else?), and one of them right up front, with hands protruding from the lavatory walls is pretty ginchy.

The Jamaican helicopter pilot tries to put it into perspective, saying how we have "got too big for our breeches," and that God was getting us back, or teaching us a lesson, for "fucking with his shit."

Maybe.

But zombie films--depicting the literal reanimated dead coming to life in filthy, shambling, rotting throngs to continue to consume, even ambling down a shopping mall in search, not for Cinnabuns, but for BRAINS, well,, that's a jab to the eye (or a thumb up the ass) of Western consumer culture. Or at least, one supposes.

Capitalism rots...er, I mean ROCKS. Yeah, that's what I meant to say.

Finito.