Dawn of the Dead

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Dawn of the Dead

November 5th 2007 23:14

“When there’s no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth.” One of the most enduring taglines in modern horror history to one of the most discussed modern horror movies in history. George A. Romero’s 1978 sequel to his landmark zombie flick Night of the Living Dead (1968) cut down all the competition like a point blank shotgun blast to the head. There hadn’t been a graphic horror movie with such a relentless tone and seared with a scathing satirical edge like this shopping mall mayhem.

Dawn of the Dead opens at a Philadelphia television broadcast station where everything is under pressure. It seems the plague of the walking dead established in the first movie has escalated ten fold. Instead of rogue farmers armed with shotguns taking out whoever looks troublesome, it’s SWAT teams armed with M16s storming apartment blocks killing anything remotely disheveled and evacuating the odd lucky person.

Gaylen Ross as Francine

Two of the TV station employees Stephen (David Emge) and Francine (Gaylen Ross) meet up with Roger (Scott H. Reiniger) and Peter (Ken Foree), two SWAT soldiers who’ve deserted their posts, and steal a helicopter in order to escape the chaos. After flying west they land and seek shelter in an abandoned shopping mall complex outside of Pittsburgh to wait the apocalypse out. They barricade themselves into a small storeroom and clear any unwanted undead from the mall’s interior.

Dawn of the Dead Scott Reiniger, David Emge and Ken Foree

Roger (Scott Reiniger), Stephen (David Emge) and Peter (Ken Foree) scout the mall

But tensions soon arise as the weeks drag on. Zombies linger outside the mall refusing to dissipate. Then a biker gang infiltrates the mall with their own brand of chaos. Looting and rampaging, chopping down zombies for the sheer hell of it, the wheeled marauders cause the movie’s protagonists further headaches. So it’s insult to injury as the four survivalists fend off the lethal bandits and the flesh-hungry zombies in droves, with any plans being scuttled.

One of Tom Savini's special effects

Who will survive, and what will be left of them?

Tom Savini as one of the biker gang

Dawn of the Dead was Romero’s sly stab at the rampant consumerism and apathetic discourse of modern America. Most of this thematic subtext went straight over the heads of Joe Average horror nut, but the critics got the score. Even if it is a parable on the subversive dangers of automatic living, it still has great bite as a gung-ho horror flick. Tom Savini’s special effects make-up serves up some ingenious gore. The blood is the wrong colour though, but hey, he got it right in the next flick – the best of the Dead quartet. Two of the most memorable gore effects sequences are the zombie having the top of his head whacked clean off by a helicopter rotary blade, and a biker (played by Savini) cleaving a machete into the side of a zombie’s head in a single masterly constructed reverse shot.

French poster art depicting Savini's zombie machete effect

Dawn of the Dead was produced by Dario Argento (what a combo!), and Argento was given the opportunity to re-cut the movie for European audiences. His version was shorter by a good ten minutes, deleted all “funny scenes” and kept the movie more action-orientated, whereas Romero’s had more humour, longer dialogue scenes, and was more horror-orientated. Due to the movie’s graphic nature at the time of release and in the years following (ie the steadily growing VHS market, and subsequent laserdisc releases), the movie was cut to ribbons by different countries, mostly removing the violence, but sometimes to simply pick up the pace (Romero’s original cut was well over two hours, making it by far the longest zombie movie).

Zombies meander around the shopping mall carpark

Mall zombies on the loose

In Australasia and the UK the movie was titled Zombies: Dawn of the Dead (distributors were obviously concerned audiences would be reticent about a movie with such a title and needed the subject matter spelt out for them). In New Zealand it was given the unprecedented censorship rating of R18 – contains frequent episodes of graphic violence. I distinctly remember being aged around ten or eleven and going to the movies at the cinema where Dawn of the Dead was being advertised (a huge painted mural depicting the legendary poster art of the zombie half face over the horizon and the ominous tagline) and being somewhat perturbed by the rating; thinking to myself, wow, that looks like one seriously disturbing movie. I didn’t see the movie until many, many years later, but the imagery of the poster art and its tagline had remained with me, slowly gnawing away.

In Italy the movie was simply called Zombi, while Lucio Fulci’s Z-grade zombie island opus which came out in 1980 was given the title Zombi 2 to cash in on Romero’s success. Fulci’s flick was called Zombie in the States and Zombie Flesh Eaters in the UK and down under. How’s that for confusing?!

ZOMBIEEEEEEEE!!!

I’ve always had my own reservations with Dawn of the Dead; it doesn’t have the news-reel, urgent cinema verite atmosphere of Night of the Living Dead, and it doesn’t have the utterly convincing viscera or calibre of acting of Day of the Dead. But it’s a genuinely effective date stamp. The bar had been raised with Dawn of the Dead, even if the special effects aren’t quite as impressive as one would like them to be. It’s not as scary as Night of the Living Dead, although the setting is as oppressive. It’s not as bone-crunching or apocalyptic as Day of the Dead, but it does capture the inherent tone of despair among the survivors, and there's most definitely a putrid chill in the air.

Here is the original US trailer:

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Posted By: Bryn - Category: movie reviews

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Comments

6 Comments. [ Add A Comment ]

Comment by Cibbuano

November 6th 2007 01:05

Hunt Famous
Orble Post of the Day
Fat Cult
Techbreak

it's funny... Dawn of the Dead is often mentioned as people's 'favourite' zombie flick, but out of the three, it has the most weaknesses... long running time, half-assed acting, weird makeup....

I love it, of course... it's not horrifying, but it is a delicious satire of modern society, even today.

Like you said, it doesn't have the nasty fear of Night, nor the cerebral panic of Day, but it's such a satisfying zombie movie to watch...

Comment by Damo

November 6th 2007 01:07

Go Zombies, Go Zombies, I want you to win.

Comment by Bryn

November 6th 2007 02:35

Horrorphile

Cheers Cibby, well put, I'm a-wid you there; "a delicious satire" ... There's a four disc DVD I wanna get myself, three different edits and a bonus disc featuring a great doco made at the time called Document of the Dead.

Damo, chow on down brother!

Comment by Cibbuano

November 7th 2007 04:14

Hunt Famous
Orble Post of the Day
Fat Cult
Techbreak

man, these Romero films beg to be rewatched again and again!

Comment by Miswanderlust

November 9th 2007 04:33

Killer Beats
Ramble On
Hipnotherapy

Bryn
This is another of the "Movies I've Only Watched Drunk". I tried to watch it sober and it was funny (but so much funnier under the influence). I haven't watched it in my middle age. Maybe I will give it a go this weekend!
Mis