Day of the Dead (1985) [Divimax] – DVD|[Collector’s Edition] – Blu-ray Disc

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****/****
DVD – Image A
Sound A
Extras A
BD – Image A
Sound B
Extras A
starring
Lori Cardille, Terry Alexander, Joe Pilato, Richard Liberty
written and directed by George A. Romero

by Walter Chaw
SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Far from the weak sister that critics and
fanboys have branded George Romero's conclusion to his zombie trilogy, Day
of the Dead is at once the most hopeful and the most
melancholy of the trio while falling short of the stark satirical
perfection of the first (Night of the Living Dead)
and the bloated satirical imperfections of the perhaps over-celebrated
second (Dawn of the Dead). In fact, I find Day
to be the equal of Dawn in almost every way and
to exceed it in terms of its alacrity–its relative tightness in the
development of its ideas about the nature of man unfolding against the
backdrop of a rise of a new society. The obvious precursor to the
zombie mythos is the Christian faith, with its saviour a zombie
installing a new order (covenant) with its key ritual dedicated to a
celebration the eating of the saviour's flesh and blood: a literal
consumption of the Host that incorporates into its rite terms of
infection and contagion. In fact, Day of the Dead,
of the three, seems the most serious in exploring that
spiritual/thaumaturgical connection with the introduction of what is
essentially a demigod–an offspring of thought and body in the same way
that Christ was meant to be God made flesh in all its weakness–in the
form of the much-reviled Bub (Howard Sherman).

The prisoner/guinea pig of mad Dr.
Logan (Richard Liberty), Bub is secreted away in an underground bunker
with a collection of scientists and military that, by their dual
natures, sets up another dichotomy between mind and meat. The surface
of the planet probably overrun by flesh-eating zombies, these
survivors, their numbers ever-thinning, start to fly apart in the
maelstrom of conflicting philosophies and the steady snuffing of hope.
While the military advocates a campaign of extermination, the
scientists seem willing to play with the idea of a cure–with the
never-spoken hope, perhaps, that there could one day be something of a
détente between the humans and their inhuman predators. The
relationship between man and eater-of-man, then, is a fascinating one
in that the superiority of each over the other in their respective
positions (civilization vs. hunger) is never in question (serving to
explain, at least thematically, why the shuffling zombies are always
able to catch the fleet humans), and so Bub, as he learns to appreciate
Beethoven and Stephen King and eventually avenge the death of his
creator, becomes more a Promethean creation than a Frankensteinian (Dr.
Logan's unkind nickname).

Sarah (Lori Cardille) is the only
woman of the survivors, a civilian voice of reason saddled by the twin
horns of being female and sleeping with a "spic," the emotionally
fragile Salazar (Anthony Dileo, Jr.). The power of Day of
the Dead is that its satire is focused not as specifically
as the consumerism of its direct predecessor nor the civil rights
struggle of its primogenitor, but rather has a broader allegorical
concern about the existential crisis inherent in the nature of man,
represented here as a creature that literalizes the mission of the mind
to leash the urges of the body. A scene where Bub grabs Dr. Logan's
arm, only to release it when he hears the opening strains of the "Ode
to Joy", is as literal and, in its way, heartbreaking as any moment in
Romero's trilogy: its humanism, and the gravity of hope that causes man
to search for the soul in soulless places, is affecting and powerful.
Bub also represents the problem that many have with Day of
the Dead in that Romero seems to be departing from the
hopefulness of the first two films inherent in the idea that man is man
and zombie is zombie–muddying the distinctions by essentially making
Judith O'Dea's undead brother suddenly take on the responsibility of
remorse with the possibility of mercy.

That injection of hope proves to be
the cruellest stroke of Day of the Dead by
declaring that no matter the rosiness of the picture's desert island
conclusion, no matter the intoxication of dreaming (and this film
features a couple of genuinely haunting dream sequences), there is at
its heart no escaping that man nurses monsters at his breast–that any
one of the men, at any moment, can become one of the enemy in action or
flesh. In this way, the madness of men in a guerrilla war of attrition
is commented upon, complete with an examination of atrocity and
perversion, while the realization of a common humanity, as it so often
does, comes too late. (Day of the Dead is more
the continuation of Romero's The Crazies in
thought than the other zombie pictures.) That blindness to our slide
into the primitive–the polarized tribes of thinkers and
warriors–renders the humans of Day of the Dead
the enemy doomed to self-destruction and the zombies the post-modern
casualties to our modern cultural apocalypse. It's Invasion
of the Body Snatchers and the pods are the heroes. Though Day
of the Dead ends with a bloodbath only surpassed in modern
mainstream genre memory by John Carpenter's amazing The Thing,
the picture is more involved in existentialism and gender/political
divides than bloodletting, and though Tom Savini has justifiably
identified this film as his masterpiece, so too has Romero identified
it of late as his favourite of the Dead films.

Felsher's production no–er, a notepad filched from the desk of Dr. Logan

THE DVD
Anchor Bay is the king of genre pictures; that there are a few
contenders out there now (Blue Underground springs to mind) speaks
volumes of the influence this distribution house has had on the
industry. With Day of the Dead, though they've
courted controversy by using a slightly tweaked dialogue track (six
small changes, none substantive), Anchor Bay produces what should be
the definitive DVD release of the picture, two DVDs packaged in an
innovative "Bub-cro" gatefold that houses a wonderful booklet
containing an essay by Michael Felsher (left). The first disc finds the
picture in a lovely 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer made using a
HiDef conversion process Anchor Bay calls "Divimax." If the image
suffers from a bit of edge enhancement, it nevertheless blows away that
of every previous home video incarnation of the film. Dolby Digital 5.1
EX and DTS-ES 6.1 configurations of remixed audio feel a little like
overkill, but little complaint can be made of the fidelity with which
they pipe music and effects throughout the soundstage. A very fine 2.0
audio mix is also serviceable and may even have the advantage of
reproducing dialogue with slightly more clarity.

The first disc also houses a pair of feature-length commentary
tracks, the second of which, from filmmaker Roger Avary (one half the
team that wrote Pulp Fiction and director of the
underestimated Rules of Attraction), is
disposable fanboy fare indicated by a lot of fawning and reverential
silence. The first supplemental track, however, features Romero,
Savini, Cardille, and production designer Cletus Anderson; warm and
informative (if not extravagantly so), the yakker details some of the
budget problems attached to an unrated feature that forced Romero to
pare down his huge vision to this claustrophobic character study. While
I might theoretically enjoy a battle between trained zombies and the
free-range variety, Day of the Dead is pretty
special just the way it is.

Find on the second platter a new
40-minute documentary, "The Many Days of Day of the Dead".
Although it unfortunately regurgitates much of the commentary, it's the
very definition of an expert info-piece that resists the temptation to
recap and self-congratulate. Thirty-one minutes of behind-the-scenes
footage, sans dialogue, of Tom Savini and his mad crew creating their
astonishing make-up effects (in the "Many Days" docu, Savini repeats a
story from legend that has his idol Dick Smith calling to ask, "How'd
you do that?") is ported over from the Elite LaserDisc and an audio
interview with Richard Liberty is fun for the completist. Outdoing
themselves, Anchor Bay has dug up a promotional video for the
mine/storage facility where Day of the Dead was
filmed, and rounds out the DVD presentation with a typically
well-written/well-researched bio for Romero, numerous trailers and TV
spots, a breathtaking wealth of stills galleries and
production/promotional images, and a DVD-ROM offering of Romero's
fascinating original screenplay as well as various production memos.
All in all, I can't say enough about the disc, the film, and Anchor
Bay: The picture isn't for every taste, for sure, but for it to be
treated with this level of respect and seriousness is a shot of
adrenaline to a jaded cineaste's heart. You owe it to film to support
this company–and to yourself to give Day of the Dead
another chance. Originally published: October
3, 2003.

THE BLU-RAY DISC
by Bill
Chambers Scream Factory's Collector's Edition Blu-ray of Day
of the Dead features a different transfer than the Anchor
Bay release,
which came out very early in the format's history and seemed to leave a
lot of
people dissatisfied. I never saw it myself, but the common complaints
were a
dirty source print and too much black crush, neither of which are in
evidence
on the new disc, whose 1.78:1, 1080p presentation is the best this
movie could
hope to look without scrubbing all the lo-fi '80s charm out of the
image. Day
of the Dead has a fine-grain, glassy look in this
incarnation, along with a
ripe, natural palette and excellent dynamic range. It's a little
soft and
grubby per aesthetics of the auteur/genre/era, but every ounce of
artistry and
technique has been brought to the fore; that the first few opening titles are out of
register, almost like 3-D without the glasses, is a troubling artifact
that
proves very temporary. Comparatively disappointing, the 2.0 DTS-HD MA
mono
audio sounds flat and thin, with Terry Alexander's dialogue, in
particular,
full of sibilant s's. Strange that the DVD's surround-sound remixes
were
abandoned–maybe they were proprietary to Anchor Bay.

Extras-wise, the disc recycles most
of the
Divimax DVD's bonus content save Michael Felsher's "The Many Days of
the
Dead", replacing it with an all-new Felsher retrospective, the
feature-length, slightly more elegiac The World's End: The
Legacy of Day
of the Dead (85 mins., HD). Nevertheless, it inspires much déjà vu,
although the
actors' appearances have changed even more radically over the past ten
years
than they had in the 18 years between the film and the previous making-of.
(White-haired, orange-skinned Anthony Dileo Jr. is unrecognizable,
while Joe
Pilato seems to be morphing into George C. Scott from Firestarter.)
George Romero, for his part, sets the record straight about his
original
script, insisting that he never regretted sacrificing some ambitious
action
sequences to get final cut because they were ultimately irrelevant to
the story
he wanted to tell. On the other hand, DP Michael Gornick clings to the notion that
the film
is an artistic compromise angrily manifesting itself on screen in an
allegory for Romero's troubles with financier Salah M. Hassanein. Romero also
says Day
is his favourite of the series, followed closely by Survival
of the Dead; hard
to believe Survival didn't exist at the time of
the old documentary, and
that he's completed three Dead pictures since
then. Most of the B-roll
in The World's End is taken from Tom Savini's
videotaped home movies,
again included in full. Rounding out the new material is "Underground:
A
Look Into the Day of the Dead Mines" (8 mins.,
HD), one of those
then-and-now set tours that turns into an oddly moving farewell address
by Skip
Docchio, the facility's retiring operator, who has fond memories of the
production as well as his decades underground. The only other
supplement
dropped for this Collector's Edition was the ROM-based screenplay.

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