DAY OF THE DEAD @ 40 (Spoilers)

During the zombie apocalypse, a group of scientists and soldiers hole up in a massive underground bunker. The boffins are studying the living dead and performing experiments with them (mortisection?) though no one is quite certain as to the purpose of the work. The soldiers are getting restless and the scientists are running out of time to produce a reason for the doings in the lab. Tensions are high and things are on course to break. The zombies just keep shuffling outside the gate. There is a helicopter.

George Romero's third Dead film (after Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead) was the close of a trilogy until the late '90s. The three are related only by premise - the dead rise and besiege a group of people - but the change of setting offers a difference in approach and theme. Very broadly, Night explored racism, Dawn consumerism and Day the military industrial complex. Because of Day's business with the face off between guns and test tubes it can suggest a kind of coldness of execution but this is a hot one.

An opening dream sequence given as a real event will be repeated a few more times to good effect and allow the film to establish its gore horror credentials. The tension rising from a sole young woman in a micro society of macho men is a constantly unsettling slowburn. The danger of the zombies is established early as it needs to and even the firmly constructed bunker offers only as much protection as a mistake will reverse. And then there's Bub. Bub is the zombie that the chief scientist is rehabilitating with the idea of creating a servant class. He's already experimented on the corpses of soldiers killed in zombie duty and has a whacked out showroom that would fit comfortably into Jeffery Dahmer's daydreams. Yes, it's the science can but should it deal that surfaced more comfortably in Jurassic Park in the following decade.

Romero's characterisation can swing wildly between caricature and grown-up depth and we get the lot here. The soldiers are mostly callous oafs and their officer a scowling, trigger happy paranoid. The head boffin, Logan, is a loud academic type with an entitled bluster. Romero's expert blocking of authority in scenes is clear with Logan's entrance in a scene. He strides in with a loud self announcement, defusing the tension between the soldiers and the junior boffins, prepared to blarney his way out of the threat in the room which soon turns to him. This opens up on the later discovery of the ghastliness of his experiments by which point disgust and morality get explosively confused.

The film culminates in the generic zombie swarm and the deaths of almost everyone at the tearing hands and penetrating teeth of the living dead. Will the final trio get away? The point of zombies that can only shuffle rather than run is that their progress is as inevitable as death and doesn't care much if the living flesh gets devoured or gets away. But when it does catch up ... That's why all three of the first trilogy always work.

The score is an '80s electronic wash very much in the style of John Carpenter's music for his own films except that in this case it just sounds quite dated. Night used sound library music. Dawn had Dario Argento collaborators Goblin and Day quotes a signature motif at one point. Day's music isn't bad as such, but it does push the film into the mid-'80s shelf more than any other production element.

Romero's conceptualising is strong in these films. His output can vary wildly in quality, depending on how much of himself he was able to invest in each. I find Creepshow soft for its slickness but Martin tough for its conviction. It was taken a fair few revisits for me to get on with Day of the Dead as I was only able to retain the cartoony soldiers in memory and let the more textured character interplay fade. It lies there, though, the warmth and heart of what really is a zombie epic with very little subtext or subtlety. From the 2000s on, the zombie trend expanded into disparate universes, all feeding from the rules of the Romero films. He even contributed with updated takes that hinder the reputation of the first three. You only need stop here and smile as the final images play out and you know that you have seen the third and final of a trio of a collective masterpiece. It will feel like seeing it before it was cool.

Viewing notes: I watched my Umbrella Blu-Ray for this review. It's getting on and is not of the crispest quality. To my knowledge there is no 4K of this available nor planned for its anniversary. Pity. This version can be seen on Brollie (Umbrella's streamer) for free or with subscription to Shudder and Prime.