Zombies have been enjoying a lot of popularity in recent years. They have essentially taken the place of Nazis as the new go-to movie villains. Of course, we all have George Romero to thank for the common depiction of zombies in pop culture today. (often called Romero-zombies) Out of his Living Dead series of films, Day of the Dead is my personal favorite. When the movie begins, the world is already overrun with undead; it's more of a zombie post-apocalypse film. In fact, our small group of survivors are relatively safe and secure in an underground military compound outside of the Florida Everglades, at least from zombies. The humans in this film are divided among scientists, how are trying to find a way to make the zombie population docile so order can be restored, the military, who are tentatively supporting the scientists' efforts but are getting impatient with the lack of results, and a few civilians that provide indispensable skills like John (Terry Alexander) who is a helicopter pilot and Bill (Jarlath Conroy) who looks like Mr. Bean. We see most of the story through the eyes of Sarah (Lori Cardille) who assists head scientist Dr. Logan (Richard Liberty) as he studies and experiments on undead that the soldiers have captured and corralled within the tunnel. As this research has led to not concrete method of pacifying or otherwise defeating the legions of zombies on the surface, the ranking officer Captain Rhodes (Joe Pilato) is losing patients with the science team and becoming increasingly more confrontational. At one memorable point early on, he even threatens to shot Sarah in the head if she disobeys his order to sit down.
Dr. Logan's experiments to end up showing some results, as he runs test with a zombie he has dubbed 'Bub' (Sherman Howard) that seems to be more tame than most other undead. Bud actually shows that he retains some memory of his former life when he reacts to objects like a telephone, a facial razor, and a gun and apparently knows how to use each one. Sarah soon finds out that Dr. Logan has been using a positive reinforcement technique with Bud, feeding him fresh flesh when he reacts in a manner that the doctor likes. This meat, however, is coming from Captain Rhodes' soldiers that had dies previously that were kept in cold storage, and when Rhodes finds out about it, he goes through the roof and threatens to shut everything down and abandon the science team. Things soon fall apart as the zombies being held inside the base break their bonds and run amuck and only a select few people manage to escape with their lives. What I love about this story is that both the scientific head and the militaristic head were completely corrupt and neither were able to find a solution. Usually in science fiction or horror type movies like this, it is the scientists that eventually discover a very simple solution or a complex plan that eventually defeats a world ending threat. The military is often impotent when it comes to stopping such a threat, but here, both sides are equally incapable, and the zombies end up the winner. All any of the humans can do is try to survive.
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