DAWN OF THE DEAD
Braaaaaaaaaiiiii....wait, wrong zombie movie
It's a rare movie that actually makes me look at the world differently. What an astounding feat for a movie to pull off. I'm a stubborn bastard, and this doesn't happen easily, or often. Dawn Of The Dead is one such movie; it not only sucker-punched a 1979 audience that was getting a little too complacent with the then-shocking graphic horror of Night Of The Living Dead, but turned a twisted funhouse mirror at the voracious consumer society that is not yet in its ebb twenty years later.
As the world spirals into violence, terror and insanity, the zombie epidemic getting well past "out of control" into "that's it, the world is over" territory, two SWAT team members, a helicopter pilot and his girlfriend decide to steal the news helicopter and skip town. Just where they plan to go they don't know yet, but anything's got to be better than the maniacal, zombie-infested shitholes the cities have become. Soon enough, their destination becomes clear enough to them: a zombie-filled (but quite intact) shopping mall in Pennsylvania. They cleverly close off access to the mall, turn on the power, and methodically eliminate and dispose of the shambling dead inside, until the entire complex is theirs to do with as they wish. There's a shade of The Masque Of The Red Death here, as our four heroes make a paradise for themselves inside the mall while the world (somehow) goes even further to shit and beyond outside the walls. And like all paradises, it must come to an end.
The setup for this film is, really, quite preposterous when you think about it. Putting aside the notion of the livability of such a place when no external utility companies should be serving it - plumbing is never mentioned, and electricity is supplied by, well, that's not entirely clear - just how did the mall come to this state of being? The zombies would have had to have walked in, all pretty much at once, when the external doors were open but all the shops were closed. Nobody working in those shops (why else would those external doors be open if it weren't either business hours or just before/after?) took shelter in them? Not even the gun-store employees, who seem likely to have gone down blazing? The zombies would have had to have swooped in en masse during a VERY narrow time window (on a day when the mall was intended to open, but nobody noticed the horde of zombies waiting outside), and nailed the mall denizens very quickly indeed, suggesting an organized behavior never elsewhere hinted at in Romero's Dead trilogy. Maybe not impossible, but pretty close.
There are more characters than the four we spend most of our time with, but they're all fleeting and often of little consequence. Ken Foree stands out the most as Peter, the tall, black SWAT-team guy, who is as savagely playful with his zombie-shoots as his partner Roger is, but more thoughtful; he's brave, and a little cowboyish, but not reckless. Forever mired in the 70's with his slang, Peter is nevertheless too intense and charismatic to seem dated. With no previous relationship with any of the other three, his attachment to them is jovial and warm, but level-headed - he would not feel betrayed when the others make preparations for his possible demise, as is the case with Steven. It comes as little surprise that Foree is the one of the four leads to go on to have the most of an acting career.
Looking uncannily like Leonardo De Caprio, Scott H. Reininger as Roger is also very good, if a little more one-dimensional. It's his friendship with Steven that gets him on the helicopter in the first place, although the movie establishes that he has more of a rapport with fellow SWAT-team officer Peter than he does with the pilot. He's cranked on adrenaline throughout most of the movie, only slowing down for a couple of scenes, most notably his scene with Peter where he pathetically declares that he's...gonna...try.
The character of Steven, half-jokingly referred to as "Flyboy" for much of the movie, is smartly underplayed by David Emge, allowing his anxieties (mostly regarding Francine) to remain appropriately repressed. Anyone else think this guy looks just like Siddig el Fadil, AKA Dr. Julian Bashir from Deep Space Nine?
Gaylen Ross probably is of least note here, and it's of little wonder that her next most high-profile role was in the incredibly bad slasher flick Madman. Romero had the right idea when writing her character - Francine is a woman who quickly tires of having the Anne Archer "supportive woman" role and demands to get in on the action, as much for the relief of her own boredom as for any group benefit. But I dunno, Ross just seems, instead of tired and irritated throughout, tiresome and irritating, always asking the men to not do things, usually just the things we want them to be doing.
Sexual tensions between the four are never made explicit, but often hinted at with varying degrees of subtlety (note the scene where Roger keeps stopping Steven from shooting at zombies and missing, and keeps taking them down with one shot each. As George Carlin said, you don't have to be Fellini to figure that out.). Peter at one point makes a proposal regarding her, not sexual in nature but obviously tied very closely to it (this is a fairly major, if inconsequential, spoiler, so I won't mention it here). Perhaps the most telling early fracture in the foursome's harmony is when Francine demands to be instructed in piloting the helicopter, in case something happens to her lover so that she can fly out with the other men. It may be thinking realistically, but it wouldn't be something you would have liked to have heard from your girlfriend, is it?
The rest of the cast is quite good in their brief roles - watch for Tom Savini (who hasn't aged a day since) as a biker, and some guy who looks and sounds just like Bronson Pinchot in an early scene in the newsroom. But as good as the cast here is, I don't think anybody ever went to a zombie movie for the cast. Dawn Of The Dead delivers its goods - both in terms of zombie action and Romero's nightmare vision - in style.
The dawn of the dead is, of course, the twilight of the living, and that twilight is shown grandly and with harrowing, unblinking realism by Romero in the film's first 20 minutes. What we?re shown mostly takes place in a super-chaotic newsroom and a SWAT raid on a zombie- and terrorist- (drug dealer? Child pornographer?) infested tenement. Sure, it's only two settings, but it captures the grand scale of the zombie apocalypse well. Later in the film, radio and TV broadcasts add detail to the canvas of doom Romero paints, as additional problems in the world outside (like food shortages) are heaped upon the catastrophes that caused them in the first place.
And yet, part of the point of this movie is that even overrun by zombies, the world isn't really all that different. Watch this movie and compare the shambling zombie crowds to the people you see at the next shopping mall you visit. The zombies aren't there for clear, reasoned human reasons (to buy anything), or zombie reasons (for food), but because they feel that's where they belong. They just don't know where else to go.
The zombies are us, as is said in so many words. When I go to shopping malls, I see people moving about, not intent on buying something specific but just the chance to buy. Ask anybody who's ever worked in one - a lot of people just wander about all day, gazing emptily at things, calling it "window shopping" as if to convince themselves that they're actually doing something.
Haven't you ever entertained fantasies of having the mall to yourself? Shit, I have - thirty-two bucks for an Emperor CD my ass! These guys get EVERYTHING there that they want, except what's in the freezer, which they apparently give up when they start storing dead zombies in there. Sounds like fun ' now how long do you think it would be before the shine of that free reign wore off? Would you be able to survive without it once you'd gotten used to it?
The zombies aren't the only ones who fall prey these conventions of consumer life. Even our heroes go through long-since unnecessary routines like weighing their "purchases" and moving through the queues at the bank, likely because they can't imagine any other way of doing things. The paradise they create in their isolation is a hollow one; fragile to injury from within and without, limited and limiting in what little it ultimately offers. How many times can you play the same fifteen records and keep calling this a paradise?
But, like cast and characters, are theme and satire things people go to zombie movies for? Not usually. Make no mistake, I treasure these things; they're what makes an otherwise "just" great zombie movie one of my favorite movies of all time. But what about the zombie action?
Tom Savini's makeup effects are so incredibly abundant that it's easy to understand why they're often limited. These are not the heavy-latex zombies of Day Of The Dead - they're mostly just extras with gray facepaint on. The gore, likewise, is rather hokey in that it's way too bright, but one stops noticing that quickly. Once one gets used to the look of things, all that blood and guts starts having its intended effect. You name it - if it involves blood spurting, it's here.
The action with the zombies is a curious mix of blood-n-guts horror and a surprisingly 90's, video-game approach. (not quite so 90's, maybe - there is a scene in an arcade with one of our heroes playing a duck-hunt game) The introduction of a biker gang late in the film is quite interesting, in that their goal seems not to take the mall from our heroes but to re-introduce chaos, chaos of course being an idea long personified by bikers. Sure enough, they bring about enough chaos to last out long after they depart.
The music is somewhat cheesy, especially in the climactic moments where one character is suddenly filled with strength and a will to live. I'm not sure if this is the Goblin score, or a different one; there were at least two scores for this movie.
I used to have a problem with one scene near the conclusion where one guy, surrounded on most sides by zombies, for some reason decides to strap himself into a blood pressure checker instead of making any attempt at escape. I don't really have that problem anymore; it's as if the guy just said "I'm dead, but if my last dying act is to have my blood pressure checked, man, that'd be cool!" Hell of a way to go.
There are about a million different cuts of this film; here, I review only the 140-minute so-called "director's cut" that isn't actually Romero's cut. The 126-minute theatrical cut was the most widely available for a long time; I prefer this one. The more leisurely pace makes it less of an intense zombie shoot, but I do appreciate the extra emphasis on character, satire and theme. The widely-speculated "alternate ending" with a double-suicide doesn't sound like a very good idea to me - I have no idea of it was filmed or not, but it doesn't seem like it would do anything effective for the movie; y'know how some people operate on the philosophy "If it?s darker, it's more cool!"? That kind of ending is what always comes to mind when I think of these people.
The mall scenes were filmed at the Monroeville Mall in Monroeville, Pennsylvania; I've heard that the mall has since undergone major renovations and looks little like it does here. I certainly hope they have better mall music. (think about it; would that music inspire you to buy, buy, buy, or to leave, leave, leave?)
Damn, was 1978-79 a good time for horror. I wish I was older than five at the time. Dawn Of The Dead is a near-undisputed masterpiece of the genre; c'mon, Cliff Burton wore Dawn Of The Dead shirts, so you know it's good, right?