The film opens with Sarah, Miguel, John and McDermott flying into an abandon city to try search for any survivors. They land and Sarah and Miguel head off a little further from the helicopter and use a bullhorn to get the attention of anyone that may be there. We are shown that the streets are awry with rubbish and abandoned cars until we hear footsteps and are greeted with a zombie with its jaw missing. Around the city more zombies are awaken by Miguels voice and follow it. Both Sarah and Miguel see the horde slowly coming towards them, knowing that it is futile and there is no one left alive as far as they can see and head back to the helicopter and head home to the base.
Back at base, Miguel who is under a lot of stress and is not coping with how life now is, is asked to go with Private Steele and Private Rickles to collect more specimens for Dr Logan, who they have nicknamed Frankenstein. Sarah intervenes and says she will go instead as Miguel is suffering from exhaustion. Miguel not impressed argues he is fine and goes along with them. They get to a place where they have fenced off and have behind the fence some zombies that they have for experiments etc....
An incident occurs where Miguel drops the ball and a zombie nearly attacks Rickles and a small disagreement between him and Steele happens where Sarah is forced to threaten Steele with her gun. With Miguel not being a hundred percent, Sarah later gives him a sedative to help him sleep.
During this time, they also find out that Major Cooper who was in charge has passed away and now Captain Rhodes is now running the place with worsening tensions between him and the scientific team due to them losing more men compared to them.
Sarah goes along to see Dr Logan, who has been cutting up their specimens left, right and centre to which she expresses her concerns that if they run out, she doubts the soldiers will head out on top to collect more. She also is concerned he is going round in circles with theories that had been debunked or proven at the start of the crises, though Dr Logan states he has some progress and interesting news he must share later on. However, with one of his experiments Sarah notices he has used the corpse of Major Cooper and asks who they have buried, to which Dr Logan says a dead specimen and that Cooper is now helping them more now than he was alive. Sarah disgusted by this tells him that Rhodes better not find out or it could mean the end for him and the team.
A meeting is held later where Rhodes spouts off that things are going to change and is further wound up by Dr Logan arriving late. Rhodes angrier throughout the meeting announces if people do anything he doesn't like they will be court martialled and then executed.
Later Sarah goes to the lab where she and Dr Fisher see Bub, Dr Logans star zombie pupil do stuff they never expected from the dead to do. Dr Logan has been working on trying to train Bub to do stuff and seems Bub can recall items from his past life. Bub then shocks them more when Dr Logan presents a telephone to him and he gets Bub to speak!
This is interrupted by Rhodes and his men who are shocked to see what is going on. Even more so when Bub sees Rhodes and salutes him, giving an idea that maybe in his past life Bub was part of the military. Dr Logan gets Dr Fisher to pass him his gun but to take the bullets out of it and hands it to Bub to see what he does. Bub aims the gun the at Rhodes and fires, but nothing happens. Bub checks that there is no magazine in the gun showing that he has the ability and a memory of how a gun works. Rhodes is not happy with this and wonders what the hell they are trying to achieve and threatens to live in the helicopter with his men.
All seems to settle for a bit, and Miguel and the other soldiers go to get more specimens from the other side, however one of the zombie’s breaks loose and rips the throat out of one who fires his gun and kills another soldier. Miguel is bitten in the chaos and runs off. Steele goes to see the soldier who has been bitten and he tells him to kill him which Steele does. Sarah runs after him and they get to where John and McDermott live and knocks Miguel out then proceeds to cut off the bitten arm and burns the stump to prevent further blood loss.
Rhodes with Steele and Rickles come round and want to kill Miguel before he turns but Sarah argues that she caught the infection in time and if he does turn, she will kill him herself. Rhodes agrees to this for now.
Sarah needs to get further medication to treat Miguel so she and McDermott go visit Dr Logans lab where they discover he has been feeding Bud the bodies of the recently dead soldiers, however Rhodes finds out and loses his mind over this and blasts Dr Logan to death and takes the weapons off Sarah, McDermott and Dr Fisher.
They march to Jon and McDermott's place and tell Jon that he is going to fly then out this way and to make room, Rhodes shoots Dr Fisher in the head. They place Sarah and McDermott in the gateway to where their specimens are kept and open the door, while during this Rhodes has Steele beat Jon up.
During this Sarah and McDermott make a run for it as there is an old missile silo they could get to and get out of the place they are. Unbeknownst to the others Miguel has dragged himself out and used the lift to go topside, he damages the controls from inside and while outside he opens the gates to let the undead in. He lays down on the lift platform and lets the zombies attack him while he presses the button to let the lift take him and the horde into the base. Hearing the lift Rhode gets Steele and Rickles to go investigate and when they are gone Jon takes control and knocks Rhodes and the other remaining soldier out and takes their weapons and heads off to find Sarah and McDermott.
In the lab, Bub's chain comes loose so he goes to find Dr Logan and finds his corpse riddled with bullets. He picks up one of the guns and heads off to find what is going on.
Steele and Rickles get to the lift and realise that there is nothing they can do and start to run for it when they see the lift coming down with the undead on it, while in the meantime Rhodes and the other soldier wake up to find themselves without any weapons and go run to see what is happening. This all leads to some bloody deaths, Rickles is surrounded and torn apart, and the unknown soldier has his head ripped off as the zombie’s tuck into him!
Steele is shot at by Bub who finds him and so Steele hides in one of the labs waiting for Bub until a zombie pops around the corner and bites him. He takes out a couple but knows he is trapped so makes the decision to kill himself instead and proceeds to blow his brains out.
Rhodes is found by Bub who clips him in the leg with a bullet, Rhodes limps away as fast as he can and opens a door to be confronted by a group of zombies, turns around to get away but is shot again by Bub and falls into the arms of the undead who rip hm in two while Bub salutes Rhodes and walks away.
Sarah, Jon and McDermott finally get out of the base and run for the helicopter, Sarah saying they hope they refuelled it from the other day as watching in the distance that the zombies are still pouring through the open gates. When they get to the helicopter a pair of zombie arms grab out for Sarah and the screen goes black.
We find that later they managed to get away and are on an island, relaxing and Sarah marks off another day on her calendar.
I've always found Day of the Dead to be great, as much as Dawn is my favourite of the trilogy, I found the special effects on the zombies to be a lot more frighting than Dawn and the blood was not as comic book like. I like the start of the film where the city is more or less abandoned until the dead start slowly coming together. There is one goof in the part as when the helicopter flies over, you can see a car driving around on the roads!
Tom Savini and his crew definitely surpassed themselves with their special effects works in this film. Greg Nicotero, who was also a soldier in the film worked on Savini's team and he ended up working on the Walking Dead TV series.
I had read the script had been rewritten but it is still a fairly strong story to it. The script was changed I think more the studio wanting it to get a certain rating but also read that the original script was going to cost too much. Which speaking off, if you have Anchor Bay's DVD from the early 2000s (it is the Region 1 version) the original script is an extra on the DVD Rom part. It involves an island and more zombies like Bub but also a Rich vs Poor scenario. One bit I can remember is a character named Spider who is a deaf mute who near the end has bombs sewn inside her!
I do think Romero did reuse a vast part of this script for Land of the Dead, but if he had got the ok would have been interesting to see how it would have been! Though what we did get was some good horror and some memorable scenes!
Some of the actors in Day have a connection to other Romero films;
Lori Cardille - her father, Bill Cardille was in the original Night of the Living Dead in a small role and also in the 90's remake. He is also a zombie in Day!
Joseph Pilato - plays one of the police officers at the docks in Dawn of the Dead.
Richard Liberty - was in The Crazies
John Amplas - was in the excellent Martin and a small part in Dawn of the Dead.
There is probably more in the film I've overlooked, but Romero used a lot of friends in his films so always had a good selection of people he could use and from commentaries and interviews from people it does seem like everyone was one big family!
Day of the Dead has been remade twice and has had a prequel/sequel made over the last couple of decades.
Day of the Dead 2: Contagium - 2005
I've not seen this, but it is down as a prequel for the first part of the film then a sequel set 37 years later (from the first part of this film not the original Day I think?!).
Day of the Dead - 2008
Remake which isn't very good. Ving Rhames is in this, not for long but he was also in the Dawn remake (which is good I think!)
Day of the Dead: Bloodline - 2018
Another remake, again not great! They have a similar Bub-esque zombie who was a stalker of the main character when he was human and it's just stupid!
I've read that Sy Fy have done a TV series for Day of the Dead for some time in 2021. I read it isn't going to be like the film but more focus on the outbreak and how people survive and join up, though this could change, I guess.
What surprised me more is that it's been announced that Lori Cardille, Terry Alexander and Jarlath are going to reprise their roles from Day in a new film called Night of the Living Dead II. I'm interested in how that will be but fear it won't be as good as it could be, also spoils the ending of all the original trilogy as I liked how they all end in an uncertain way, well more like you want to know what happens after, like in Dawn do they get far and what happens next? With Day I want to know how long do they stay on the island they found etc....
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