The Good
A great movie is given the Blu-ray touch.
The Bad
I honestly didn’t notice too much difference between this Blu-ray disc and its Standard DVD counterpart.
Day of the Dead picks up where Dawn of the Dead left off only this time it is really apparent just how outnumbered the human beings are. Taking up residence in an underground facility, a group of scientists constantly butt heads with a renegade group of soldiers. The scientists seem to think that the zombies can learn and be rehabilitated (which in certain ways they can). However the soldiers only see them as people they are fighting against and as such there is a constant war between not only the humans and the zombies but the humans and the humans. This continues over the course of the film until it sadly becomes clear that nobody is going to win this stalemate.
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
Like George A. Romero’s other zombie movies, Day of the Dead, is certainly filled with its fair share of commentary on society. A great film.
Features
They have put two audio commentaries on this track. There is one with Writer/Director George A. Romero, Special Make-up Effects Artist Tom Savini, Production Designer Cletus Anderson, and Actress Lori Cardille. There is also another one with Filmmaker Roger Avary. Even though I would have preferred to have listened to Romero do this track by himself, I certainly wasn’t going to pick the track featuring somebody who really had nothing to do with this movie. Yes, there were a lot of people on Romero’s track which sort of bothered me, however I say this truthfully, I could listen to these production tales for hours. Certainly check out this track even though I believe it was simply ported over from other releases.
Fast Film Facts
“The Many Days of Day of the Dead " Featurette and Behind The Scenes
In this making of piece we see this production broken down. It doesn’t go into the minutiae so much as it takes us into the world of the production. We are given a birds eye view of the whole affair, and I loved seeing how some of the more iconic looking zombies got made up. They have provided us with a decent amount of production and talking head footage, all of which makes this segment stand out and something that deserves to be watched. Lastly, I included the Behind The Scenes segment on this release mainly because it played like an extra feature to the “The Many Days of Day of the Dead " Featurette.
Audio Interview with Richard Liberty
Video
Aspect Ratio: 1.85 Anamorphic - 1080p AVC MPEG-4 transfer. Let me simply say that I had expected this movie to look better than it did. It didn’t really look bad it just didn’t seem like it benefitted from the Blu-ray treatment as much as Dawn of the Dead did. I found that the images from the almost flat look that Day of the Dead had remained on this release, but they also did look that way on Standard DVD as well. Maybe it’s just the source print?
Audio
Uncompressed 5.1 PCM - Dolby Surround 2.0 - Original Mono. Fans of the music from George Romero movies can rejoice because things sounded pretty solid here. While I admittedly prefer the sound work of John Carpenter, I will say that things were pretty solid for this release. The music seems to be paced like the zombies. They both move in a slow, cumbersome way, but they always seem to get where they need (or who they need) to be.
Package
The thing I most love about these Blu-ray Discs is that they simply take the artwork from the original DVDs and port them over to these cases. This artwork features the shots of the zombies walking in unison, while the back cover gives buyers a description, Special Features listing, credits list and technical specs.
Final Word
All in all, Day of the Dead seems to be more of a cerebral comment on society. There seems to be the idea at work that man becomes a victim, often a slave, to his/her own inventions. Also, there is a statement about the futility of war especially when we see how much the fighting destroys everybody involved. In addition to this, I gleaned a lot from the idea that perhaps the humans could have actually learned something from the zombies. There seemed to be a point in the movie where this was possible, yet the situation that the humans were facing with the zombies encroaching on them was so dire that it didn’t seem to really have any other way of resolving itself.
The amazing thing about Day of the Dead is how it can play as two different films. Those who want the simplistic tale of flesh eating zombies certainly get that. While those that wish to go a little deeper also get that as well.
Day Of The Dead was released July 3, 1985.
