Day of the Dead (1985) is an American post-apocalyptic zombie horror film written and directed by George A. Romero. It is the third film in Romero’s original Dead trilogy, following Night of the Living Dead (1968) and Dawn of the Dead (1978). The film is set after the collapse of civilisation, with the remaining survivors divided between a small group of scientists and an increasingly unstable military unit living in an underground bunker. Lori Cardille stars as Dr Sarah Bowman, with Terry Alexander as John, Joseph Pilato as Captain Rhodes, Richard Liberty as Dr Logan and Sherman Howard as Bub, the zombie used in Logan’s experiments. Day of the Dead (1985) is darker and more claustrophobic than its predecessors, focusing less on the first shock of the zombie apocalypse and more on what happens when the last humans begin to turn on each other.
Day of the Dead (1985) was filmed in Florida and Pennsylvania, using a sharp contrast between sunlit emptiness above ground and industrial darkness below. The opening scenes were filmed in downtown Fort Myers, where the abandoned streets, old buildings and gathered zombie extras create the impression of a dead city. Locations around Hendry Street and First Street appear in this material, including the Edison Theatre and the former federal courthouse building now known as the Sidney & Berne Davis Art Center. Sanibel Island was used for the beach and base-exterior material, including the area around Bowman’s Beach Helistop, where the film creates the entrance to the underground military facility. The bunker itself was filmed far from Florida, inside the Wampum Underground Commerce Center near Wampum, Pennsylvania, a former limestone mine converted into a storage facility. Its long tunnels, heavy pillars, low industrial lighting and cavernous scale give the film much of its oppressive atmosphere, making the underground base feel less like a safe refuge and more like a tomb for the last remains of human organisation. Additional Pennsylvania locations, including a former Nike missile site near Pittsburgh, were used for pieces of the bunker entrance and military-base illusion. This split location structure is central to the film’s mood: Florida provides the bright, empty surface world where civilisation has visibly ended, while the Pennsylvania mine creates the buried world where the survivors are slowly destroying themselves.
The Edison Theatre
The Edison Theatre has appeared in Day of the Dead (1985). George A. Romero used the theatre and the surrounding streets of downtown Fort Myers for the film.