I placed the DVD down on the table excitedly, bright yellow and featuring the jutting out visage of a forlorn looking zombie. I had watched Dawn of the Dead (1978) only the night before and I was ready to experience the next chapter. While the bright yellow color of the packaging seemed a bit out of place tonally, the idea of the sun rising as the zombies emerged into the daylight did strike me as a fitting conclusion to the work that had come before.
Night of the Living Dead (1968) offered something I didn’t know I needed: a cathartic dissection of death in American society. The implications of grief and loss. The rituals. The expectations. The chore of it all. The fact that, ultimately, it is humanity’s inability to simply let go that will lead to their destruction.
Dawn of the Dead continued that tradition, expanding the scale and scope of its predecessor, taking the first’s concepts around death and the dangers of power, prejudice and sexism in our society and expanding upon them. Dawn of the Dead analyzes commercialism and comfort, asking the question: in a capitalist society are the two one in the same?
Day of the Dead (1985), as I discovered later that night, furthered the dialogue surrounding both Night and Dawn, confining a larger group of people to a cave-like bunker, this time soldiers and scientists: human extensions of the higher power that the rest of the country would hope is out there solving the problem of the apocalypse. Brutal, angry and mean, this film explores the result of long-term confinement in the face of hopelessness. And yet, hope and goodwill are present, offered up by way of the very monster humanity is so desperate to destroy.
The film offers some of the best gore effects in the franchise, and the genre as a whole. The urgency of the characters and desperation present in every scene heightens the interpersonal drama that might otherwise fall flat or seem out of place. Where this sentiment is most prevalent is when the film focuses on Bub the zombie. A trained, even slightly affectionate creature, Bub brings both levity and a poignant take on the solution to the zombie problem. The ghoul’s plight was as innovative as it was a powerful exclamation point to the message that George A. Romero had began to express in 1968: people must let go– evolve… or face annihilation.
The movie offers a great deal of worthwhile scenes and set pieces that amplify the tension or meaning of the moment, but it’s Bub’s stand against Rhodes toward the end of the film that resonates the most strongly with me. What better way to exemplify the de-evolution of man than to have the mindless mechanism of his own undoing extinguish Rhode’s life in the stead of justice as opposed to carnal instinct?
The screenplay harnesses a similar idea, but in a far more bombastic fashion. It’s no secret that George A. Romero’s script was forced to succumb to dramatic edits due to time and budgetary concerns, forcing the master’s hand toward a more simplistic exchange between the two characters. Still, the end result is a quick and perfectly executed swan song for Romero’s original zombie trilogy exemplified by the manner in which the maestro translated his big ideas to screen in a sentimental and yet fittingly gruesome arrangement.
THE SCENE
Rhodes grabs an assault rifle and encounters Bub in the hallway while attempting to escape. He fumbles with his gun and Bub raises a gun of his own and fires. Rhodes flees but is struck in the shoulder by a second bullet. He struggles to make his way down the hallway, but Bub catches up to him, firing off several more shots. Wounded and trailing blood, Rhodes finally makes his final attempt at evacuation, only to find the door he opens crowded with mindless zombies on the other side. Rhodes turns and watches as Bub again fires his gun, striking Rhodes in the stomach and providing one final salute to Rhodes just before Rhodes is torn apart.
THE SCRIPT
[Scenes 158-160 omitted]
THE SCREEN
RHODES comes face-to-face with…you guessed it…big BUB.
Immediately its clear that George A. Romero’s screenplay details events in a conversational and exciting manner, as though being recollected through the larger than life imagination of an omniscient narrator years later. The words hold weight and the moment on screen does as well.
On screen Rhodes pauses and fumbles to load the assault rifle he had only just acquired. That’s when Bub raises the gun and fires. Bub, unlike Rhodes, isn’t afraid, faltering or hesitating in any way. Bub is a creature impervious to such emotions – devoid of the types of personality traits that the film has so wonderfully pointed out cause lasting societal structure and human survival to be altogether unlikely.
The screenplay, being a much more action oriented affair in general, paints Bub like a cowboy, a hero who has been trained to fight but does so in a cavalier fashion. He’s described as ready to draw those SIX-GUNS that hang at his hips and a gun-totin’ RED COAT. In the script, Bub slaps his leather and fires off three expert shots in quick succession, as opposed to the two haphazard ones depicted in the film. Rather than being the result of intensive training or a rudimentary soldier, in the film Bub is more akin to an adolescent, learning and exploring his own capabilities.
Still, both the script and the film describe the same outcome: ONE BULLET BITES HIM ON THE BACK OF HIS SHOULDER. Rhodes is hit and he flees. He is angry and afraid, certainly, but not as he would be of a monster but rather as he would fear a man. In the screenplay, it says: BUB follows, his boot heels CLICKING the way RHODES’ own heels once clicked.
In the film, the jangling of Bub’s broken chain and shuffling of his dragging feet announce his approach. The screenplay speaks to an inversion of roles, an evolutionary passing of emotional and personal power, brought to life by the clicking of his shoes – Bub essentially becomes the new sheriff in town. There’s something far more emasculating about that than simply seeking Rhodes as a source of food.
The film handles Rhodes’ change in fear and reasoning in a similar fashion. The sounds of an approaching zombie, in a world long overrun by zombies, has meant a certain brand of fear for a long time. An emotion on par with facing a dangerous animal: a powerful, unrelenting and devastating predator. But now Rhodes fears the intent and purpose of the creature’s moral fortitude: Bub’s desire for justice. This is a change that represents a far more damning loss than simply Rhodes’ life.
The screenplay depicts Bub as he FIRES OFF ALL TWELVE rounds and starts to reload. The film again simplifies, showing another shot and then another, this one striking Rhodes in the back. Rhodes falls to the ground and begins to crawl forward, leaving a long trail of blood. Gone is the western flare of the screenplay, distilling the action down to its more carnal nature.
The following several paragraphs in the screenplay depict a showy action set piece totally absent from the film. A standoff in a lab occurs, complete with explosive liquids in test tubes and a high-noon style draw which sees Bub fire off more rounds in succession:
BUB DRAWS! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! EACH ONE OF THE TWELVE BULLETS HITS RHODES.
Bub is described as a golem in this sequence working slowly and calmly.
On screen, Rhodes simply continues to pull himself down the hallway. All the while, the metallic clink of Bub’s hanging chain resounds louder and louder behind him, closer and closer as Rhodes’ fate draws nearer. There’s something haunting about the approaching notion of death, as was written… golem-like. Rhodes had believed himself in charge, impervious to any sort of moral code or higher law. The violation is in many ways an intimate one and therefore seems fitting that so too is the method of his demise.
Rhodes reaches the end of the hallway and opens the final door. A medium close up reveals Rhodes’ reaction to the viewer as he screams in utter terror. His bulging eyes depict the petrification typically reserved for the monstrous and serves as a final reminder that the world no longer belongs to mankind. He turns, once again staring at Bub. His screams continue to echo in the hallway as Bub pulls the trigger once more, striking Rhodes in the gut. Rhodes screams stop as he acknowledges his final moment.
The script leaves the character like so: RHODES BODY slides down the wall and crumples to the floor in a heap.
The film, for the first time during this sequence, goes decidedly bigger and more elaborate than what was written. Rhodes is grabbed on all sides by the zombies and physically torn apart: his torso separates and his intestines spill out.Rhodes watches this happen, watches as the creatures drag his bottom half away and begin to eat him.
He chokes out his final words as this happens, meeting his end with the same level of vitriol and unwillingness to accept defeat as he harbored in life:
“Choke on ‘em!”
This passage of the screenplay ends with an explosion caused by a zombie’s inability to avoid volatile chemicals. Bub is left in the bunker as it crumbles around him, staring at Rhodes’s corpse: He slaps his SIX-GUNS back into their leather HOLSTERS, then he shoots off one of those military salutes of his…just as the walls fall in on him.
In the film, Bub surveys Rhodes as well. As the creatures close in on him, Bub straightens himself a bit and, indeed, shoots off one of those military salaries of his. Both iterations involve Bub’s ironic display of respect, however the film allows Rhodes to experience it too… just before he witnesses the horrific and unsavory dismantling of his form. The screenplay may have been larger in scope, but it was the film that ventured into far more complex physical, psychological and emotional territory.
After all, as Bub wanders off clutching his gun, there is no resolution as to what becomes of him. Having doled out justice, the golem, as it were, returns to the darkness. Whether or not humanity remains a forgotten memory or perhaps a new path is irrelevant.
And that’s when the zombies feast.
THE BLOODY CONCLUSION
In the special feature “World’s End: The Legacy of Day of the Dead” found on the Scream Factory blu-ray release (Available for purchase here), George A. Romero reflected on how the script changed in the transition to the screen:
“Basically all I lost were some action sequences that are absolutely unnecessary to make the point of the film… I took the essence of what was it and reduced it down.”
Day of the Dead is a movie with grand ideas placed on a small stage, confining the elements of the previous two films in the series and distilling their more dissonant elements. The film is a reaction to the crumbling trust people had in their government, society and each other at the time and is more or less an amalgam of the work George A. Romero had done in the genre up until that point.
I was excited to watch Day of the Dead all of those years ago, not only because Night and Dawn had meant so much to me, but because they had opened my eyes to the powerful social commentary horror could offer. When I saw that bright yellow cover I questioned its luminescence, failing to see the irony in its presentation.
Humanity is toxic. The sun emerges when that toxicity is finally cleansed.
And there, staring up from the cover, is Bub. A character that embodies the core concept at the heart of George A. Romero’s zombie epics, bridging the mindless monsters with the mindful humans the series had become known for. Bub offered a path that could have been taken, but wasn’t- for as long as there are people like Rhodes in charge, there is no hope for alignment. No future.
Romero’s screenplay is an exciting read. It presents the various core concepts at the heart of Day of the Dead and the film condenses it, extracting the meaning behind the big set pieces and actions of the script. In the end, the film supplies something far more affective than any action based zombie flick could ever hope to be.
After all, Romero put it best in his commentary for the film found on the aforementioned blu-ray disc when explaining what his zombie films are really all about:
“People trying to get along in their own little environment despite what’s going on upstairs.”
Either way, the sun will rise. Bright and yellow, in the wake of the night and at the behest of the dawn, a new day will begin- regardless of who’s there to see it.
Day of the Dead (1996): Written & Directed by George A. Romero
