The Dead Eat, the Dead Kill

 

I didn't want to move on to something else without concentrating a little energy on the zombies and elaborate gore. Using a shovel to separate half a head with the eyes still moving or a body leaning over with entrails spilling out or a severed head with connecting wires giving pained expressions leave definite awe...and definite shock. But a hand reaching into a victim's eye socket as he screams when a zombie is prying apart his face, neck flesh pulled from the neck by zombie teeth on multiple occasions, a victim's entire head to his neck while crying out in agony is ripped slowly by zombies from the body, and while being held down, a victim's lower torso is opened with all the organs and intestines torn away; "Day of the Dead" (1985), with John Harrison's score seemingly fitting with the zombie carnage expectedly closing the film, wasn't about to lag behind its predecessor in terms of unloading graphic violence on the audience without detailing the destruction of the human anatomy. Not to mention, an arm machete-cut and cauterized after a big bite wound, gun shots to the head with blood spray, a drill into a zombie's skull, machine gun riddled scientist, and an assortment of rotted zombies and mutilated flesh. 

But I never grooved to the film when I first watched this than that opening in Florida as Sara and Miguel are helicoptered to a city in search of survivors. That alligator with zombies at a city hall sure captures the attention! And how the scattered cars and trash, along with the eventual zombies and palm trees needles and residue, tells us how far along the collapse of civilization has progressed. It's a dynamo of an opening. Where "Dawn of the Dead" (1978) shows us a newsroom with people clearly out of sorts and so much bickering and fighting about how to behave as the dead walks among them looking to eat them, "Day of the Dead" reveals that all the politics matters very little now.