Dawn of the Dead (1978)
- written July 2000
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It is the next day after the end of “Night of the Living Dead.” Stephen is a chopper pilot for the local TV station and Francine is his pregnant girlfriend reporter. Together they take off for safety with 2 military men: Peter and Roger. While searching for safety they come across a massive mall that although crawling with zombies, may indeed be the safest place to be. Their initial plan is to scavenger for supplies and keep going but after figuring out the zombie’s habits and weaknesses, they decide to decoy them all outside and then they get the mall to themselves. Life goes on well for them but soon after, some bikers also looking for safety decide to crash the party and doing so lets the zombies back in. Can the world survive this zombie invasion?
Overall: My original thought was that the movie was boring the crap out of me. Granted the " The Worm Hole” author thought this movie has some awesome cult stuff, like the old video games and the like. I liked that too but I felt this film was doing nothing for me. Yes, I see the social satire that Romero is selling with the film. Romero wants to point out (at least back in 1978) that our society was too dependent on consumerism...that people had become too caught up in material goods that relationships and talking had been replaced in human relationships. I can see that. Basically as you watch the film, the characters act out what they had been doing in a pre-zombie world as they stay in the mall. They basically act out everything they were used to, even those things don't necessarily make sense anymore. I buy that. Romero also wanted to point out how human would react to the broad political implications of worldwide destruction and hopelessness. Again, I get this. but he spends so much time trying to show the audience how silly they are by being mall-driven consumers, he forgets he created a horror movie. We spend so much time watching ourselves in his character that the zombies almost take a backseat to the film. See the real problem is, the film is slow and lacks realism in the fact we see the heroes return to their lives in the midst of zombies just standing around for upwards of 9 months. It lacks credibility because frankly, I don't buy that these people would just sit here forever and ever and not do anything. And again, the zombies are slow, useless and plodding that every time someone ends up dead, you gotta be thinking: "And how did they get caught?" Add to that that so many of the good guys die at their hands, making the heroes seem even more useless. If you can’t escape slow-footed, no-brained zombies, then what’s the point. The actors in the film spent much of their mall time sprinting by the slow zombies. You’d think they’d never get caught. Yet practically all the good people die by the end making is fairly embarrassing for their characters. I have caught the special edition which includes countless documentaries and other fun stuff. In particular, I focused on the "The Dead Will Walk" featurette with 80 minutes of interviews about the film from writing to theatre release. Very interesting stuff, but again not enough to change my views above. I'll give the film all the credit for the gore and effects for 1978. I'll be more than happy to give Tom Savani his due. But the film still is slow. It takes its time. The featurettes are more fun than the film is. Yeah, so we have some good zombie deaths and a biker-gang sequence involving a pie-fight. And yet as Ken Foree described the original ending, that got my attention quicker. Does the film work on a higher level? Maybe. But it simply lies dormant for 2 hours with bits of excitement in between. How much enjoyment am I supposed to get by watching the female lead cook dinner for her boyfriend and the military guy? The film is slightly amusing showing such silly zombies doing monotonous things. But, how can I like the protagonists if they are too stupid to out-run the brainless? And it's for all these flaws that I find the remake in 2004 a superior film. Version #1: Theatrical Version (127 minutes) - this is the one put into US theatres. It's what Romero wanted, so in essence it's the true "Director's Cut." Version #2: Extended Version (139 minutes) - this is also referred to as the "Cannes" cut...the cut the studio made for the film festival before the official US release but not what Romero wanted. Version #3: European Version (117 minutes) - This is the Dario Argento cut. He got the rights to air the film in Europe, so he cut anything that looked funny or satirical and made just an action packed version. He also replaced the original score with his own, then titled this film as "Zombie" which Lucio Fulci followed up with a year later with his film called "Zombi 2". Comparison: Night of the Comet meets Clueless |
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Dawn of the Dead Review Page
Dawn of the Dead (2004) Review Page
Day of the Dead (1985)
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