Hash Import 2026 05 18 12 34

Day of the Dead (1985)

★★★★★ — Day of the Dead (1985)

George Romero completed his original Dead trilogy with this third entry, arriving seven years after Dawn of the Dead (1978) and representing the most troubled production of the three. Romero's original script was far more ambitious (and reportedly twice as long), but budget constraints forced significant cuts, bringing the shoot down to around $3.75 million, considerably less than he had hoped for. The film was shot largely on location in the Wampum mine complex in Pennsylvania and at a Florida military base, giving it the claustrophobic, underground texture that defines its atmosphere. Released in the summer of 1985 during the Reagan era's anxieties about Cold War militarism, it found a smaller theatrical audience than Dawn, partly because Romero refused to accept an X rating from the MPAA and released it unrated, which limited its cinema playdates.

They're Dead! They're F-ing dead and you wanna teach em TRICKS?! Day of the Dead is Romero's greatest work in my opinion. Yeah... Night is more influential and Dawn is more well known but Day is a masterful culmination of the Zombie genre. The Tom Savini effects are absolutely top of the game, and no doubt a huge influence on Greg Nicotero who also has a supporting role here. Joe Pilato who played Captain Rhodes is one of the best villains in movie history. "I'm running this Monkey farm now frankenstein!" Is a quote I repeat regularly. Now... onto the main event. Bub... I've shown this movie to probably 10 people now and every single time they get to the part where Bub is trying to use various household items and when he tries to speak into the phone they've ALL gone "woooah" Like for a split second... they forget its a movie and they're astounded by the zombie. I might even have to make this a 5* film. Masterpiece of horror.

Rating: ★★★★★ | Year: 1985 | Watched: 2025-04-13

View on Letterboxd →

Where to watch (UK)

Stream: Shudder
Rent: Apple TV Store · Amazon Video
Buy: Apple TV Store · Amazon Video
Physical: Amazon UK

Affiliate disclosure: Movies With Macca may earn a small commission on purchases or subscriptions started via these links. It costs you nothing extra.

Related on Movies With Macca

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) arrived at a strange crossroads in American cinema: too modest to be a prestige picture, too unsettling to be a forgettable B-movie. Adapted from Jack Finney’s serialised novel The Body Snatchers and shot at Allied Artists on a budget barely

Fantastic Planet (1973)

René Laloux’s Fantastic Planet (1973) is one of those films that doesn’t really fit anywhere: too cerebral for kids, too odd for animation festivals, too steeped in European political theory for the Saturday-morning slot, and too visually fearless to ignore. A 72-minute French–Czech co-production designed by the

Viy (1967)

Viy (1967) is a strange and almost solitary object in Soviet cinema: a horror film, an actual horror film with monsters and demons and supernatural set-pieces, in a national cinema that mostly didn’t make horror at all. Officially endorsed by Mosfilm and based on a Nikolai Gogol folktale, it

Alice in Wonderland (1951)

Disney’s Alice in Wonderland (1951) is the studio’s middle-period work par excellence: technically polished, commercially tested, narratively cautious, and just slightly off. Made between two of Disney’s commercial successes (Cinderella in 1950, which had rescued the studio from one of its periodic financial near-misses, and Peter Pan

Read more

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

Fantastic Planet (1973)

Viy (1967)

Alice in Wonderland (1951)