OK, everything's fucked, to put it mildly. With zombies now outnumbering humans by 400,000 to 1, mankind is at the bottom of the food chain and things are looking bleaker than a Scottish winter. Needless to say, a disparate band of survivors hole up in an underground military complex and bicker, argue and generally fight amongst themselves in Romero's bleakest vision yet.

Day of the Dead, Romero's '80s entry in his Dead franchise is the most overt attack on human nature yet. Save for a handful of sympathetic characters, Romero populates his film with appalling villains, from leering and mocking grunts, to the utterly black-hearted Captain Rhodes (Joe Pilato, who appears briefly as a different character in Dawn of the Dead), who is already unhinged when we meet him and rapidly heads south from there into gibberdom. In this, when the zombies attack, it's generally a relief, while famously Romero works hard to humanise, for the first time, a major zombie character, in the shape of Howard Sherman's sympathetic and likeable Bub.

The secondary protagonist, with Terry Alexander's John a laidback Haitian helicopter pilot who is content to sit out the simmering civil war tearing the group apart, until fate -- and zombies -- force his hand. It's a departure from the ass-kicking Peter of Dawn, but Terry is a more cerebral character.

The hero - and the strongest female character in Romero's canon. Sarah (Lori Cardille) is a scientist trying to keep it together in the face of extreme provocation: her colleagues, particularly Richard Liberty's demented Dr. Logan, are ineffective fruitcakes. Her army 'protectors' either want to kill her or rape her. And her boyfriend, Miguel, is a soldier who makes Captain Rhodes look sane. Sympathetic and three-dimensional, Sarah isn't a saint by any means, but she's more proactive than any of Romero's previous heroines.

Off the chart, with Savini coming up with grotesque new gags that forced Romero to reduce his vision for the film, after his financiers offered him a larger budget in return for an R-rating. Refusing to compromise, Romero rewrote his massive script for Day, plumping for a smaller budget but more gore. And boy, are we glad, particularly in the iconic moment when Pilato is ripped apart by zombies, yelling "choke on 'emmmmmm!" as zombies drag his entrails across the floor.

The aforementioned "Choke on 'emmmmmm!"

Damon Albarn's cartoon band, Gorillaz, sampled John Harrison's theme for M1 A1, a song on their debut album.

"I love Howard Sherman in that movie. Some of the stuff he did, I was just in awe. The moment when he picks up Salem's Lot -- wow!"