Friday 18 November 2011

The Day Has Come

I just don't understand this "music" the youngsters listen to
If you have guessed from my attempt to be punny, that is right, I had never seen the original Day of the Dead up until tonight. I watched the remake (it had some really awesome one sheets), but that is as much as I will say about it, let us never speak of the unrelated "remake" again. Lets get back to basics, by which I mean the original.

The opening scene would have got me in quite the holiday mood had it been that time of the year, Halloween that is (note to self zombie movie taking place during Christmas). Staring at a picture of a pumpkin patch then zombie hands bursting out of the walls. If that doesn't just scream Halloween time then I don't know what does. Once again we have a helicopter playing a major role in the opening of the film, George must have dreamt of being a helicopter pilot as a child. It was nice to see some biodiversity in this film, at the beginning we learn that zombies and alligators co-habitate in abandoned buildings. I suppose they bond over their love of biting people. Of course the cheesy 80s synth background music keeps the atmosphere, well I wouldn't call it suspenseful, dark or creepy, so it was more on the light side.
Don't worry guys, the coast is clear.

Now there was a lesson to be learned at that army bunker, you should always use at least two layers of fencing to protect you from the undead hordes. The second fence acts as a backup incase the first fence is breached. I was hoping that as a part of their military training they would have learned the effective technique of the zombie face punch, but alas not even a zombie pistol whip to be seen. The closest they got to the epicness of the zombie face punch in this instalment was the good old zombie two by four which after you knock a zombie out with it you have to give a big HUAH. The cleverness of the line "all the shopping malls are closed" definitely was not lost on me though, it was given a smirk and an eyebrow raise on my part.

Now we come to my favourite character "Dr. Frankenstein". He may be crazy, but he is so crazy he's awesome. The best thing about him though is the way he talks. That is definitely a voice I want to add to my repertoire. His domestication of the zombie idea was probably not the smartest, we saw what can happen with that in Fido. And everyone should know, when you give a zombie a gun it will ask you for some bullets, when you give a zombie some bullets it will shoot you, when a zombie shoots you it will then eat your face.

And finally the zombies themselves in this film. Once again we have the zombie costume party, but this time it has been taken to a whole notha level. You've got graduation zombie, clown zombie, used car salesman zombie, football zombie, bride zombie, ballerina on point zombie, and just to prove zombies don't discriminate, muslim zombie. The animatronics of the 80s allowed for a pretty neat decapitation scene near the end. The biggest disappointment of the film was its lack of Tom Savini, I was hoping at least for him to make a cameo as a zombie.

Well I have now completed the original George A. Romero zombie films. I am so very glad I was able to share the experience with all of you (music signalling wrap up your speech) and I would like to thank Dan from school for lending me Dawn and Day of the Dead. And I would like to thank my father for introducing me to zombies, and my mother for giving birth to me and and.... Okay I will stop rambling now.

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