| Dawn of the Dead Released: 1978 MPAA Rating: R Genre: Zombie Nuts and Bolts: As society falls prey to armies of the dead, a small group of survivors take refuge in a shopping mall in Pittsburgh. When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth. Summary: A television station runs amok with emergency news reports. Society is quickly going down the shitter as hundreds upon hundreds of the walking dead slowly take over the Earth. The President has forbidden citizens to live in private residences and special rescue centers have been set up to contain the surviving populace. Station producers Stephen Andrews and Francine Parker decide to hijack a helicopter and escape the demilitarized zone. Meanwhile across town, a SWAT team raids an apartment complex containing illegal residents. One of the field leaders, Wooley goes completely ape-shit and begins shooting innocent humans as they emerge from their rooms. Roger DeMarco tries to control him but this guy is just fucking insane. Finally, the extremely super smooth Shaft-like marksman Peter Washington steps onto the scene and blasts a hole through Wooley’s back. Washington and Demarco go down into the lower basements. They discover that the citizens of the apartment have been corralling the zombies so that the local priest can administer the last rites. Soon after, they find Stephen and Francine ready to escape from the city. Roger is part of the escape effort and he invites Peter to go with them. They take off from the city and head towards Pittsburgh. The helicopter gets about as far as Harrisburg Pennsylvania when they have to touch down to refuel. Zombies are wandering all over town and the local rednecks are taking great pleasure in blowing the shit out of them with their buckshot rifles. Leaving Harrisburg, the group reaches a mall in Pittsburgh. They touch down on the roof and head into the loading docks of the mall. The entire mall is infested with zombies and the group has to take extreme measures to provide themselves with a secure haven. Francine stays behind to cover the warehouse while Stephen, Peter and Roger try to clean the mall free of zombies. After several hours of punching kicking and shooting, they manage to squeeze the rest of the deadheads outside. The mall is theirs! Making it their official home, the group takes advantage of every perk available to them. They sleep on beds from the mattress store, drink wine from the restaurants and they even still equipment from the sporting goods store. As the group begins to bond, it becomes revealed that Francine is pregnant with Steve’s baby. Roger and Peter decide to take some of the moving trucks and use them to block the other entrances to the mall so that the zombies are adequately sealed off. As they execute the operation, Roger is bitten on the leg. He hops into Peter’s van and they take him back inside. Normally, such a wound wouldn’t really be a problem, but if one is bitten by a zombie then they risk becoming a zombie themselves. Roger’s wound eventually becomes infected and he turns into one of the living dead. Peter is left with little choice but to shoot him in the head. Only the destruction of the brain can stop these ugly fuck rags. The following day, a large motorcycle gang known as the Raiders comes upon the mall and well…raids it. Breaking through the windows they mow down a score of zombies with their cycles. Now one would think that the living cycle raiders would team up with the mall rats in order to fight against the zombies right? Nope. These pricks will pretty much shoot at just about everything. Peter does his Shaft thing and ducks and weaves and jumps around corners avoiding gunfire. Steven however gets a little too possessive about the mall and begins opening fire on the bikers. Peter tries to get him to return to base camp but flyboy isn’t hearing it. A group of zombies huddle up on Steve. He tries to escape but they nail him in the elevator shaft. Peter returns to the room where Francine is and the two collect their things. He knows that the zombies will eventually wade through the bikers and that they will get past their defenses. Steve is now a zombie and shambles down the hall. Peter shoots him in the head and orders Francine to go up the steps to the helicopter pad. He will hold them off. Francine closes the door behind her leaving Peter with the zombies. He puts his gun to the side of his head but at the last minute decides that he would rather fight than die. He shoots past the last horde of flesh eaters and escapes on the helicopter. Acting/Dialogue: The acting is pretty straightforward here. I know it seems like I’m making fun of Ken Foree’s character by calling him Shaft, but he really IS the coolest guy in this whole flick. I always enjoy watching characters that totally have their shit together. One bad mutha. The dialogue is actually quite exceptional for a film of this caliber. It’s more than just your typical frantic Blair-Witch style screaming and cursing. The dialogue shown during the newscast bits is pretty fucking ripe too. Gore: This is the movie that made special effects wizard Tom Savini the household name that he is. The gore is plentiful and eerily realistic looking. We get a healthy dose of: gunshot wounds, exploding heads, zombie teeth tearing at the flesh of hapless victims, zombie heads being sheared off by helicopter blades, zombies gnawing on dismembered limbs, and blood and blood and blood. (Did I forget to say blood?) The only downside to the gore is that the blood is a little too bright looking in some scenes. But overall, it is some of the most spectacular work that I’ve seen in a movie before or since. And if you think THIS is gory, wait till you check out Dawn of the Dead’s little brother Day of the Dead! Guilty Pleasures: We see one of Francine’s breasts. That’s pretty much it. The Good: Now while director George Romero doesn’t concentrate much on plot with this film, there is an underlying theme that becomes fairly prevalent pretty early on. We are shown the depravity of American consumerism in all of its ugliness. The character of Steve Andrews even comments that the zombies return to the mall out of a sense of instinct; because the mall represented something important in their lives. In this film, we see the mall patrons milling about with blank expressions on their faces and wide empty eyes as they are herded from store to store. It’s not really all that different from reality is it? I like how Romero balances the moral ambiguity between the surviving victims and the zombies. The zombies are clearly the antagonists of this feature and yet, they are really little more than dumb animals. They don’t act out of a sense of violence or hate, but rather they become simply creatures of instinct. But their presence causes such a radical redefinition of the human condition. Early on in the film, we see a SWAT team member who can’t wait to open fire on the citizens of one of the shelters. He flagrantly eschews racial epitaphs and it becomes clear that he will shoot down the opposition with no discrimination. (Ironic eh?) We see this strange contrast again later during the mall scenes. The Raiders seek nothing but their own destruction while the zombies actually want to reproduce. There’s an especially poignant scene where a biker destroys a television and he doesn’t even know why he’s doing it. Steve finally falls to his own human depravity and sense of possession. Having lived in the mall for several nights, he believes that he and his friends have the sole right to live there and so he regards the bikers as trespassers. The fact that Steve is a trespasser himself never seems to enter his mind. The characters of the film have been defined by their consumerism. It is interesting to note that the only ones who survive this movie are those that manage to shake off the effects of this sense of ownership. Throughout the movie the main characters become enraptured by the immenseness of the mall and they take full advantage of every perk it has to offer. Francine however is usually set apart from the others preferring to remain behind the scenes contemplating her own mortality as well as the future; not only the future of civilization but the future of her unborn child as well. By the film’s climax, the character of Pete is preparing to commit suicide. He recognizes the fact that he can’t escape the perils set before him. But in a final burst of self-confidence, he manages to overthrow his own sense of weakness and rejoin the human race. It’s no wonder that these two are the only ones to get out of the mall with all their pieces intact. George Romero breaks from the traditional story writing formula by simply dropping us into the middle of a world in its death throes. There is no beginning, middle or end. No explanation is given as to the origins of the present condition and we are given no reason to believe that mankind can realistically survive such an apocalyptic climate. We are literally dropped into the middle of this world, and we are as disturbed and as confused as the characters in the film itself. Now this break from tradition may upset many viewers, especially those who like their films summed up in a nice neat tidy package. This was not Romero’s goal however, and movie audiences may be disappointed by his mis-use of structure all the same. Dawn of the Dead offers us a snapshot of a possible dystopia where the future of mankind has been overrun by the reflections of our own avarice. The Bad: The biggest detraction to this film is the music. Composed by Dario Argento and the Goblins (Sometimes referred to as just Goblin), this film produces some of the most audibly shrill music scores I have ever heard. I suppose that it is thematically fitting for the context of the movie, because it basically sounds like department store Musak that has been run through a colander and then collected into a syringe only to be injected directly into our cerebellum. But it is hopelessly dated and unforgivably cheesy. There is an especially corny scene where Peter is preparing to commit suicide. Since Peter is obviously designed to be the fan favorite of this flick, the audience is saddened by his imminent demise. But then at the last moment, our boy takes his BAD pills and decides that he would rather whoop some zombie ass! Now while this is actually a pretty cool sequence, it is practically ruined by the heroic cheese dick music that begins playing as soon as Peter decides not to kill himself. If you’re a fan of George Romero films than you will probably know that composer Dario Argento is also one of the more prolific film directors of the Italian Giallo horror genre. But if there is any proof to the old adage, “Don’t quit your day job!” then this film certainly serves to drive home that point. Hey Dario, stick to making suspense thrillers okay bud? Leave the music composition to Danny Elfman. The only character that I really didn’t like was flyboy Steve Andrews. This guy is just a dick. Completely useless, he manages to fuck up nearly every scene he’s in. He almost gets Peter killed and he fumbles about the mall without having the slightest clue as to what he is doing. It’s not surprising that he dies, and his final moments serve to accentuate all of the dipshit qualities that he has shown us throughout the course of the film. What a fucking loser. This is not a reflection on the actor mind you, but merely the character. Like many zombie films, Dawn of the Dead is not necessarily motivated by a compelling plot. In fact, the plot is all but absent in this. Now while I understand that it was not George Romero’s intention to show us a plot driven spectacle, I think this film would have definitely benefited from at least having the backbone of a story fused in between the random zombie scenes. Without a story, Dawn of the Dead proves to be an exceedingly long film that shambles through its scenes with the same speed and passion as the zombies themselves. An average film, Dawn of the Dead is a good flick to pop into the VCR after WWF Raw goes off the air. Great Lines: “When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth” --Peter Washington relaying a story told to him by his grandfather. “Every dead body that is not exterminated becomes one of them. It gets up and kills. The people it kills get up and kill.” --Doctor Foster speaking to a talk show host. Heavy metal band White Zombie has featured sound bites from this line of dialogue in some of their songs. “What are they doing? Why do they come here?” ”Instinct, memory. This was an important place in their lives.” --Fran and Steve watching the zombies entering the mall. “These creatures are nothing but pure, motorized instinct. We must not be lulled by the concept that these are our family members or our friends. They are not. They will not respond to such emotions. ...They must be destroyed on sight!” --A scientist appearing on another talk show. Overall Rating: 6 out of 10 severed heads. |
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