What's the best of Romero's original zombie trilogy?

[thelostclassics]

I voted for Day of the Dead and it would be my personal favourite - by a very small margin. I love the zombie fx in it, the bleak feeling of the living scratching existence underground while the dead roam the daylight and the Captain Rhodes /Bub dynamic is great. Something that I think Romero went too far with in Land of the Dead and its Big Daddy character.

In saying that I watched Night and |Dawn before it and loved both, I still regularly watch them too. I'd say Dawn is the one I'd put into the DVD/Blu ray player the most.

[wayfarer]

Some great opinions so far, that I can't "like" unfortunately, from my work computer.

it is indeed a very difficult choice to make and one I'd rather cop out of by saying that each has it's moments.

Like others, my first watch of NOTLD was the colorised version, as that was the only available VHS copy at the time. It's a powerful movie and I agree that it is an important movie in cinematic history.

I first saw a cut version of Dawn, frustratingly, but it left a huge impression. Like any of the trilogy, there are such deep subtexts if you care to look. One, potentially original take that I have on Dawn (original as in i've never seen it written anywhere but it's obvious as heck) is that Fran's mental state was being tested by all sorts of factors, but one subtle one was her relationship with Steven. She learnt, during the course of time that the movie covers, that she didn't really like Steven a whole lot. I actually feel sorry for Steven in this film; a mixture of pity and irritation. He's annoying, but he isn't built for the world he's escaping into. Yet, it's Roger who loses it.
I think Roger lost it in the tenement building when he sees the young probie shoot himself in the kitchen. After the other probie gets shot in the head, 2 seconds into the breaking of the siege, something starts to slowly unravel. It takes some time for Roger to mentally fall apart and start saying things like;

"We got this by the ass!"

The realism portrayed in relationships elevates Dawn above the hokey EC Comics and 70s style that it has.

I was lucky to see Day in the cinema upon it's release. I was a bit bummed that scenes pictured in Fangoria mag had been cut but there was so much gore it hardly mattered in the end. It was a great movie but Day became my least favourite of the three. AS i got older I developed a new appreciation of it. I recognised that as over the top as Joe Pilato's performance was, it wasn't outside reality. People sometimes do get like that, scarily enough. Sarah's breakdown gets to me more now. I'll admit that when I last saw it my eyes stung. I put it down to life lessons and knowing more about loss than I did when I was 16 and first saw it.

Apart from zombies, one thing all three have in common is a weird score. NOTLD has library music as does Dawn, along with the iconic Goblin score. Dawn really has some interesting cues taken from library sources, particularly the cue used at the airport (and at the beginning of Shaun of the Dead). John Harrison's score for Day is oddly upbeat but I can't imagine any other music being used.

So, after my long diatribe of musings on the trilogy, my choice is Dawn. It had the most impact and is the richer movie of the three, in my view.

[bedorca]

Dawn for me by a country mile
Then Day
Then Night

[Vampix]

For me personally it's got to be Day of the Dead, I find Night boring and Dawn a little too long-winded although I still like it a lot.

[Phurious]

Day for it's pitch black humour, uber gore and nihilism.

Night is fantastic, but I can rewatch Day over and over.

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and generate some hatred probably, but I've never liked Dawn and I much prefer Snyder's remake (Saying that though I still haven't watched the Argento cut of the original, but I seriously doubt that it would change my mind).

[Slippery Jack]

Aw Night has slipped back in the rankings, it was in the lead when I voted yesterday. As much as I love colourful gore, zombies just look cooler in black and white (as do most things admittedly) . . .

[wayfarer]

Originally Posted by Phurious

Day for it's pitch black humour, uber gore and nihilism.

Night is fantastic, but I can rewatch Day over and over.

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and generate some hatred probably, but I've never liked Dawn and I much prefer Snyder's remake (Saying that though I still haven't watched the Argento cut of the original, but I seriously doubt that it would change my mind).

I love Snyder's remake, but I hate the sprinting zombies; it's even more ludicrous.

[Slippery Jack]

Heh, the old SHUFFLE vs RUNNING debate.

There's room for both in my book, running zombies work fine for Snyder's film . . .

[Phurious]

I like both too. Took me a while to get used to Fulci's glacial undead, but the focus there is the wonderful putrefying and decaying corpses, whilst Romero's walking dead present a good negative of the hustle and bustle viewers associate with life.

The Linford Christie zombies up the ante though and really added to the much faster-paced and kinetic qualities of Snyder's film or even Boyle's and Fresnadillo's 28... films, or the Rec flicks (although I know these aren't considered 'classical' zombies).

[wayfarer]

The REC folk aren't zombies at all. I'll let them off. Same with 28 Days Later - they're supercharged humans on the rage virus. I can live with the running zombies in the Dawn remake because of the increased threat level and that it's a hugely enjoyable movie. But they run so damn fast!

Check out that Asian dude in the first act, outside the mall. He could win races