Back in the good ol' rebellious '60s, George Romero blessed generations of horror fans to come with possibly the greatest independent film ever shot in Pennsylvania, the original black & white zombie-a-go-go, Night of the Living Dead. Zombie moviemakers to come would look to Romero's creation for years to come, drawing influence (and in some cases blatant copyright infringement) for their own works. How do you follow such an epic piece of undead cinema? With an even better one! And so, along came Dawn of the Dead.
Romero's second installment to his now legendary “Living Dead” Quadrilogy, Dawn of the Dead continues Romero's flesh eating ways, injecting what would become his patented social views into the mix to help peasants like you reading this to better relate, thereby allowing you to enjoy your movie and get a poignant life lesson in the process. Kinda like "School House Rock", only now the conjunction junction guy's trying to eat everyone. Our story opens soon after the events of Night of the Living Dead, as the entire nation has fallen victim to the zombie plague and people are trying to keep their beloved friends and family from ripping out their throats and eating their still warm flesh. Our focus is on Philadelphia (so we're still in PA for all those geographically challenged out there), where chaos runs rampant and a manic television station continues to try and make it through all the havoc without everyone becoming the blue plate special! Guess everyone REALLY needs the overtime. In the middle of all the frantic screaming and broadcasting and such, goofy-eyed news producer Fran and her new chopper flying boyfriend-of-sorts Steven plan to escape the madness, courtesy of the news chopper... stealing at a time like this?! Where are their morals at? I don't care if they are saving their own asses, how will I be able to find out the daily traffic report while hiding away in my basement as zombies pound on my door and moan and scream for my brains? Damn inconsiderate jerks!
Elsewheres in good ol' Philly, the S.W.A.T. team is having an old fashioned
Dirty Harry shoot-out with an apartment building full of drug terrorists and hostages... and the living dead! Two survivors of the mayhem, Roger and Peter (Ken Foree!), become fast friends and the two hook up with Steve and Fran. The four escape and head out into the sticks in hopes of finding somewhere the plague has yet to reach, or at least a plague ridden place where there aren't so many rioters. Now that I think of it, why in the fuck were the cops and drug dealers so worried about killing each other when they should've been pooling their ammo to ventilate more ghouls?! Probably just some symbolism by George I suppose… Anyway, on their flight North they witness one of the movie's funnier and more thought provoking scenes, as we see groups of rednecks and military personel out in the backwoods areas, picking off the zombies like it was all a big carnival shooting game. It shows us humor because of this, but also induces a subconscious moral that rednecks are all heartless jerks to whom killing is second nature... I guess. I don't know, I just hate those pick-up driving moonshine swilling hillbillies!
Soon after their tour of hick country, our heroes land at an aviation refueling
station to plunder some petrol. They find only a small amount of fuel, but they
do find some more zombies! Aside from the introduction of flesh eating children
and one zombie whose head is just a LITTLE too big to be standing around helicopter blades, we also see an uneasiness develop between Steve and Pete, when Steve, intending to shoot a marauding undead dude, doesn't notice Pete standing behind the thing, and nearly blows his black ass away! Pete, understandably, is upset by this, and holds Steve at gun point for a little while before they finally get their asses back into the sky. I'd say Steve's not on Pete's "People I'd Give A Kidney To" list anymore. After this happy interlude, the quartet finally arrives at an abandoned shopping mall (check the little Easter Egg at the bottom of the review for fun). Shit, I thought that even a zombie holocaust wouldn't be enough to keep people from the mall, but I guess I've finally been proven wrong... of course, keep in mind this was made BEFORE the Gap brainwashing began, so my theory could still hold true. Landing the whirly bird on the mall roof, they peer inside to find there are a few after hours shoppers left. Sure, they're dead, but not even eternal damnation can keep them from shopping for deals on tattered clothing and sales on Grade 'H' meat ('H' for "Human" of course).
Letting themselves in through the upstairs storage room, the gang sets up shop and discovers... SPAM. Yes kids, if you find yourself on the run because your loved ones are trying to chow down on your liver for dinner, make sure you buy plenty of SPAM for the trip! It's got it's own key! Actually, no, canned mystery meat frightens me, so maybe you should just stay away from such products. After figuring out a plan of action and finding out how to execute to the greatest extent, it's not long before our heroes lock up the outside of the mall, blocking off the front doors with freight trucks and locking them up from the inside. This is where the first real bad news hits though, as Rog winds up a victim of a hungry pair of ghoulish fangs. Sure, he's doomed to become a zombie sooner or later, but until then they can keep him fairly sedated with morphine from the first aid kits and he can still help out in securing the place. As for transport, the now handicapped Roger is pushed around in a little handcart by Peter... I shouldn't be laughing at the crippled and unfortunate, but he just looks so damned cute in that little cart! HAHAHAHAHA! First, the undead already inside the mall need to be taken care of. So, after breaking into the mall's guns and ammo shop, they do some not-so-big game hunting. After exterminating the rodent problem, they pack the re-dead into a big freezer to keep from stinking up the place. Now it's time to set up their new happy home. But first, a trip to the arcade! Oh, and by the way, in case Rog's new infection wasn't enough to deal with, did I forget to mention that Fran's also 4 months pregnant? Just thought I should inject that somewhere before I forget.
Despite how strong he may be however, Rog does eventually succumb to the plague, gaining a craving for Homo Sapien. But, as Rog requested before his death, Pete takes him out with a single round between the eyes. This should be a sad and somber moment when we reflect on our lives, appreciate our friends, etc. etc. etc., but it's not, as Rog is then buried in one of those little patches of decorative vegetation on the main floor of the mall... whether death is funny or not isn't the question here, it's whether Romero means to make me laugh this much when it happens! After Rog's death we skip ahead a little bit, jumping a few weeks or months into the near future. Despite their hopes that the zombies would get bored and leave after a while, the heroes are still harassed by the ghouls, who continue to bang on the front doors day in and day out. Can't they read the sign? NO SOLICITORS OR UNDEAD! The remaining crew begin to get more irritable as time passes, Steve and Fran have minor arguments ever 10 minutes, Fran's starting to show her pregnancy, and Pete's just chillin' like a brother should. Then come the bikers...
Like modern day cutthroat buccaneers, a roving gang of nomadic motorcycle riders (much like those stereotyped in Roger Corman movies and Australian flicks) find the mall, notice the chopper on the roof, and decide it's time for some pillaging! They swarm in as if they were a crew of Viking raiders on steel ships. Well, actually, I guess a more appropriate comparison would be steel dingies... Ready to defend their ill-gotten gains, Pete and Steve strap on the firearms once again. Moving the trucks form the front doors, and mowing down hordes of the undead from the front entrance, the leather clad pirates ride into the cheery music of the mall, prepared for some robbery! Our heroes could've just let the gang ransack the place while they hid out in the upstairs storage area, but no, thinking he earned all the crap in the mall (which he'd never use all of anyway), Steve decides to take up arms and open fire on the hooligans, despite the fact they out-number he and his friends by about 50-to-1... with all his stupidity, incompetence, and ignorance, Steve should've died LONG ago! Roger should be there right now, and Steve should be a bloated corpse back in Philly! Justice is finally served though, and Flyboy Steve is winged by a marauder's gun, setting him up for becoming a zombie main course!
Soon after, the villains decide it's time to escape, as the zombie population has greatly increased all of a sudden, and they weren't exactly prepared for guerilla warfare from a couple of city boys... weren't prepared my ass! They had machine guns and grenades and other large forms of weaponry in their arsenal! What did they need, a Howitzer?! In their retreat, Pete kills their swashbuckling leader (played with mad fun by FX God Tom Savini), so it's good thing the movie's winding down. With the FX guy dead there's not really much more you can do. So, after the bikers leave, Peter and Fran, the final participants of "Survivor '79", prepare to escape in the helicopter. Pete stays behind to fend off the zombies and buy Fran some extra escape time, and it looks like he's finally had enough of all this fighting and bloodshed and he's gonna blow his brains out and end it... But, since he already gave us the tragic ending for NotLD's brother man hero, Romero decides instead to give us (and Peter) a happy-ending, as he turns his gun from himself to his re-animated pursuers, drop kicking a few more ghouls (all to some victorious G.I. Joe music) before scaling to the roof and grabbing onto the chopper Commando style, pulling himself in so he and Fran can make their triumphant journey into the sunset.
Romero has done it again. Combining his efforts with future horror greats Tom Savini and Italy's Dario Argento, Romero has made a gory, bloody, humorous, action-packed dedication to the materialism of America. A surreal trip fueled by the music of Argento's friends in Goblin, it all makes for one of the cinema's fucking greatest oddities! The comedy is very bizarre. One moment the zombies will be stumbling around like brainless drunkards, and the background sound will be wonky elevator muzak or something that sounds like a generic version of Isaac Hayes's classic Shaft theme! The next minute though, Romero will work his horror and suspense mojo with mobbing zombies, trying frantically to sink their decayed fangs into the good guys, while the freaky synthesized terror of Goblin eggs them onward through "Resident Evil"-like locales and "close call" situations. The different scenes (underlying humor and myopic evil) play one after the other. Right after a good humored scene of hope and enjoyment, there's always a scene of tragedy and defeat. It's GREAT! The FX by Savini are excellent as always, though they would later be improved in the next “Living Dead” sequel: Day of the Dead.
Dawn of the Dead is a model for aspiring zombie lovers everywhere.... sometimes, it's almost an exact model though for those laziest of plagiarizers out there... just without the cool special FX and all that talent... don't need those weighing down a movie, do we?
The Moral of the Story: "Where there's no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the Earth".
DVD X-tras: my flimsy DVD from the folks at Anchor Bay includes a commercial for the Monroeville Mall (the mall at which the movie was shot); some bland extra scenes from the Euro cut from Argento, Zombi; and a one theatrical trailer... such a great movie, but such a lousy effort! Anchor Bay sux!
H.O.P.E.L.E.S.S. Rating: 
- Between all the gore, the mall based cavorting and the cheesy '70s action and soundtrack, there's nothing not to like here!
Sequel to: Night of the Living Dead
Sequels: Day of the Dead ;
Land of the Dead
Unofficial Sequel: Zombi 2
Remade as: Dawn of the Dead (2004)
If You Liked This Flick, Check Out: Dawn of the Mummy or
Night of the Zombies
Second Opinion: Check out what Nix had to think...
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