The Day of the Dead

The opening scenes are unforgettable. A helicopter searches for survivors of a zombie holocaust, the camera cutting to the empty streets below. A lone figure is stumbling across the street, lifting its face to the sky as it reaches the camera. Whats left of its face, that is. Its all messed up, perhaps eaten up, and it is an unsettlingly ugly sight. It lets out a low moan as the titles appear and before you can say "Yeah, gimme more zombies!"‚ the streets are full of them. The rotting, smelly, walking dead. All over the place, shambling between discarded newspapers and an escaped pet alligator (which you just know has devoured its owners). There's something utterly convincing them. They look how corpses should - pathetic, pantomime shells whose features have been emptied of all expression, all life. You laugh, not because they are portrayed badly, but because their absurdity is so spot on.

'Day of the Dead's plot is similar to its predecessors 'Night of the Living Dead' and 'Dawn of the Dead'. Zombies are on the rampage, and a small group of survivors find themselves trapped and fighting for their lives. A simple plot, but one which allows for all manner of subtexts. Director George Romero has an uncanny knack of reflecting social situations of the day. 'Day of the Dead' depicts a ruthless dog eat dog world, where society's progress (and in this case survival) is hampered by competition and divided interests. The characters are based in a nuclear bunker, and while zombies shamble ever closer outside, the gathered scientists and soldiers bicker over how to deal with them. The scientists want to understand the zombies, perhaps even pacify them, while the soldiers want to blow their brains out - and the first half of the movie depicts the deterioration in the relationship between the two groups to the point of murder.

There's a wonderful twist on the Frankenstein theme, with an obsessed doctor trying to domesticate one of the captured zombies, and towards the end Romero takes a bit of back seat, letting Tom Savini's special effects take the limelight in a gloriously wild and gory finale. Intelligent, witty and provocative - and to my mind equal to its immediate predecessor, this film is superb.