Once rejected by fans because it wasn't as garish or outrageous as 1979's Dawn of the Dead, George A. Romero’s Day of the Dead was the hungover morning after Dawn's wildly over-the-top party. Released 40 years ago today after being filmed smack in the middle of the Reagan era, budget issues forced Romero to downsize his concept considerably, resulting in a claustrophobic, bleak vision of the last scraps of humanity still squabbling over things that didn't even matter anymore. In its own way, Day could well be the best — and now most relevant — of Romero's original trilogy.
Night of the Living Dead (1968) was the first film in Romero’s groundbreaking horror cycle, while 1978’s Dawn of the Dead was an audacious game-changer both artistically and commercially (the producers took the risk of releasing it unrated rather than trim its plentiful gore) that tapped into the era’s zeitgeist. Its images of zombies wandering around a shopping mall made the film more than just a gut-munching shock show, and its satirical edge found purchase not just with fans, but with critics too.
