• Written and directed by George Romero
• Starring
  • Lori Cardille
  • Terry Alexander
  • Joe Pilato
  • Jarlath Conroy
  • Antone DiLeo
• Produced by Richard P. Rubenstein

See, this is why I concentrate on lesser-known movies whenever I can. Romero’s Dead trilogy is one of the most-viewed, most-analyzed set of films ever, and the odds of my being able to say anything both insightful and original approaches nil. So I’m going to do the only thing I can do: Pretend that all of those other reviews and commentaries don’t exist, or at least that you haven’t read them, and thus you can be amazed at the depths of my penetrating intellect.

“Whoa — Spring Break hit hard this year.”

George Romero’s most palpable show of cinematic intelligence is that in each of the three zombie movies he demonstrates that a story can’t be about zombies. A story is about people, set against the scenario of a sudden uprising of the living dead. Thus in each movie of the trilogy, Romero confines a group of people whose temperaments and goals conflict sharply, and forces them to cope or fail to cope with each, under the tension provided by the shambling corpses outside. If the living would simply get on the same page, the dead would be no danger; it’s because each band of survivors can’t arrive at a concensus or achieve any sort of organizational purpose that these slow-moving, almost brainless zombies have a chance to overcome the living.

As has been noted elsewhere (including comments by Romero himself), each of the Dead films also showcases a social concern of the decade in which it was made. Thus, Night of the Living Dead (which you’ll never see reviewed on this site — even I know better than to think that I have anything new to offer a discussion of one of the greatest movies ever made), made during the counter-culture movement of the late ’60s and the domestic conflict over the Vietnam War, has a strong subtext of an older middle-American generation desperately trying to maintain control in the fact of an energized younger generation, as well as that of revered sources of authoritative information and interpretation losing relevance. (Racial themes, while easy to read into the finished product, are completely accidental, as the script was written without regard to character race and was cast “colorblind.”) Dawn of the Dead, produced in the “Me Generation” of the late ’70s, takes on issues of habitual consumer culture, and skewers the selfishness of a capitalist fantasy paradise. And Day of the Dead, made smack in the middle of Ronald Reagan’s military playing-for-keeps oneupmanship with the Soviet Union, embraces both criticisms of military culture in microcosm and examinations of academic scientific research divorced from a strong social endgoal. While neither as grittily immediate as Night nor as culturally incisive as Dawn, the third movie of the trilogy combines greater storytelling skill with technical improvements to portray a tale of humanity at its extremities, a portrait in which the living as a whole come off looking far less sympathetic than the dead.

It’s too damned easy to do a “buffet!” joke for every zombie movie review.

The current scenario looks at a small, hastily-constructed research project installed in the underground Seminole Storage Facility in Florida, with scientific researchers working on the “dead problem,” supported by both civilian workers and a military detail. In the indeterminate time since the dead first began rising, though, the intended power structure has turned upside-down; the military troops, being the ones with the biggest guns, have asserted themselves under the newly-inherited command of Captain Rhodes (Joe Pilato), a man whom pressure has refined into all of the worst qualities of tin-plated authoritarianism, anti-intellectual paranoia, and the pure sadism of one committed to maintaining his Alpha Male status. It’s a credit to both the screenplay and the actor that Rhodes is simultaneously a 100% unsympathetic exhibition of absolute antagonism and an entirely believable portrayal of humanity at its worst.

On the scientific side, now on the defensive against Rhodes, are our protagonist Sarah (Lori Cardille) and Dr. Logan (Richard Liberty), who are using different methods to try to understand the entire living-dead phenomenon and either reverse it or at least neutralize it. Logan, in his quest to find a way to leash in the dead and socialize them, blithely pursues avenues of research — involving mutilation and simple obedience training — which simply can’t be stomached by Rhodes and his men. He’s quite insane, you know. And Sarah finds herself caught in the lowest-common-denominator political struggle between Rhodes and Logan, protecting Logan from Rhodes’ observation while finding herself less able to justify Logan’s methods and goals. The tension between Sarah and Rhodes forces is exacerbated by the fact that she is at the tail end of a sexual relationship with soldier Miguel (Antone DiLeo), who is himself near the emotional breaking point, and that relationship becomes a focus for the inevitable sexual tensions in a degenerating closed community with exactly one female.

“And once I find out who washed my pants in hot water, there’ll be hell to pay!”

The third group, the civilian contractors, is comprised of Bill (Jarlath Conroy), the alcoholic Irish electrician, and John (Terry Alexander), the Caribbean helicopter pilot. These two realize that they have the greatest personal worth of anyone on either side, thanks to their irreplaceable skills, and try as well as they can to stay out of the middle of the conflict, only choosing sides when the military types force their hand with a burdgeoning “with us or against us” attitude.

Notably, this is also the first of Romero’s trilogy to feature an actual dead “character”: Dr. Logan’s prime experiment in socialization, a zombie nicknamed “Bub” (Howard Sherman). After long weeks, Logan has trained Bub to the point where he no longer immediately tries to eat any live human he sees (just as well, since the dead don’t actually digest what they consume). He can also remember vaguely several common tasks of his former living existence: dragging a razor across his face, putting a telephone to his ear, even saluting a superior officer. Deprived of his violent reaction to the living, Bub takes on the character of a childlike innocent — almost as much of a contrast against the stressed and numbed human characters as his zombie status. In fact, the most emotionally moving moment centers on Bub, as he discovers that Dr. Logan has been killed by Rhodes (whoops, there’s a spoiler); watching his dim mind come to grasp Logan’s death, and his consequent grief, gives an almost Frankensteinian aura to the character, who would have been happier had never been “blessed” with comprehension of such things.

“Can you hear me now? Good!”

Bob represents a development in the Romero zombie. Those in Night of the Living Dead are simply killing machines; those in Dawn of the Dead mindlessly shuffle around wherever they were habitually drawn to in life. And here, the dead (or at least one of them) is aaaalmost on the threshold of cognition. As Logan says in a line that is almost the thematic heart of the trilogy despite its casual delivery, “They’re us.”

But if they are us, it’s equally true that we are them, and a parallel devolution among the human characters can be traced through all three movies. In Night, the characters are seeking any sign that the “normal” order of things will be reestablished, and constantly reassert themselves in terms of their place in that order. In Dawn, the protagonists willfully enter a state of conscious denial, deliberately adopting a cordoned-off fantasy version of normalcy in the face of chaos. By the time of Day, even the option of the fantasy version has largely passed away. The military characters exemplify the basest human traits, with Rhodes demonstrating the lust for power, and his two knuckle-dragging cronies Rickles (Ralph Marrero) and Steel (G. Howard Glar) regressing to violent sexuality and fierce xenophobic rage. When Dr. Logan launches into his long explanation about how civility is essential to civilization, he’s nominally talking about his work with Bub, but his words apply equally to Rhodes and his men.

Everybody wants a piece of a man in uniform.

It’s truly a loss for horror cinema that Romero was never able to put together a Dead project in the ’90s; in addition to speculating on the social trend that would have been the basis for thematic subtext, one can also surmise that, in a fourth installment, the upward trend of the dead and the downward spiral of the living might have met, and perhaps even passed each other. Maybe instead of the much-bandied but never used possible title Twilight of the Dead, such an entry in the series would have been entitled Twilight of the Living.

(There. If that kind of critical essay doesn’t entitle me to renew my English Lit degree for another five years, I don’t know what will.)

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 10
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 0
• dream sequences: 3
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 1
  • Howard Sherman (Bub) played “Captain Endar” in the TNG episode “Suddenly Human,” “Syvar” in the DS9 episode “Shakaar,” and “T’Greth” in the Voyager episode “Prophecy”