Note: In the following review and in subsequent comments or emails I will not acknowledge existence of any and all Day of the Dead spin-offs or follow-ups not involving the director of the original.  

Talk to any self respecting zombie film fanatic — and boy, are there a ton of them — and you'll generally hear one of two things. The first: “ROMERO WAS GOD.” The second: “ROMERO IS GOD.” To your average sane human being neither of these sentences makes sense by itself, but to this esoteric clique, these sentences aren't just specific, they define exactly where along the zombie spectrum you sit.

Most of the diehards live by the former, believing that the beloved director George A. Romero, creator of the Living Dead (or just plain Dead) series, has produced his best work, and will never reach the heights he reached in the sixties and seventies. The latter, mostly latecomers to the zombie phenomenon, are people who are ready to believe that Romero has, or is just about to, come out with another masterpiece.

While both of these arguments can be debated, there is one Romero film that has been abandoned by both the diehards and the latecomers, 1985's Day of the Dead. I'm writing this as a Romero devotee, one of the people who do believe that Land of the Dead was worth creating, and that Diary of the Dead is a step in the right direction. Hell, I think Diary of the Dead is a movie and a half, to be honest. But this column is dedicated to the sole purpose of defending the original Day of the Dead, in hopes of elevating it to a higher state of critical respect, which I sincerely doubt will ever arrive.

To approach Day of the Dead, you first have to realize that Dawn is gone. This is not a funny film. There is no elevator music or humorous physical comedy to grant you reprieve from this nightmare. It is a dark, almost suffocating production and it contains some of the most gruesome violence ever burnt into your brain, despite the 23 years of technological developments in brain-bashing good fun that have been made since. While less of an all-encompassing world catastrophe film, Day shows the alternative to blindly fighting the incoming masses — studying. Albeit with a conclusion that is hardly foregone.

It takes place in a (then) modern missile silo, where two teams of people have grouped together in an unstable symbiotic relationship. The scientists and the military have formed an uneasy bond between them, one weakened by the inheritence of control by Captain Rhodes, a terrifying quasi-fascist dictator played by Joe Pilato. The protagonist, Sarah (Lori Cardille), is torn between the two sides as she is the core of the scientists, but is also romantically involved with a mentally breaking down Miguel (Anthony Dileo Jr.).