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Dawn of the Dead (1978) - George Romero

In Dawn of the Dead, a direct sequel to Night of the Living Dead, we get a better look at what humanity is going through during the Zombie Apocalypse. George Romero had the audience looking through a microscope with Night of... while with this feature we get a telescope. The Zombie Apocalypse is now showcased in full scale. This is the reason for the success of this movie. It gives you so much more. The whole reason people see zombie movies is to be spoon fed destruction and this movie has a whole hell of a lot of destruction.

Four people take refuge in an abandoned mall while the world falls apart around them. The United States has apparently enacted Martial Law and roving hordes of rednecks and psycho bikers are migrating about cleaning out the zombies and looting all they can. The four people, Flyboy, Peter, Roger, and Francine make the mall their home. Everything's great. That is until boredom and stupidity step in. Flyboy makes some of the most palm to face decisions of the whole movie.

The acting is not the greatest. Some scenes really don't make any scenes at all. I'm looking at you Blood Pressure scene. Ken Foree and Scott Reiniger have a great buddy-cop thing going on and they are the most interesting characters. I like, early in the film, when the two veteran warriors have to school Flyboy on just how stupid he is. Sorry, I didn't like that character. Although, later in the film he has some pretty redeeming scenes. The music in this movie was done by our friends Goblin under the direction of Dario Argento and actually this time the music was pretty spot on. Not like in Deep Red.

I really liked this movie, mostly for the wide scale aspect. The mall is such a great place to hide out too. Especially when you're faced with the best zombies. Slow moving ones. Tom Savini goes nuts in this movie with the gore. He really has a grand time with it. So many scenes with outrageous and original gory killings. In many ways this movie is the ultimate zombie film. It's like a zombie opera, I should say. Quite an amazing and fantastic piece of film from the zombie Godfather George Romero. I highly recommend this movie to anyone that actually want;s to take the time to sit down and watch a quality picture like this. .


"Every dead body that is not exterminated becomes one of them. It gets up and kills! The people it kills get up and kill!"

  • In addition to the lead biker Blades, Tom Savini plays the zombie who breaks window of the truck and is shot by Roger with a revolver. This scene leaves a bloody smear on the windshield, the effect was created by Savini throwing himself on the non-moving truck and spitting a mouthful of blood on the windshield. 
  • The skating rink shown in the film was part of the Monroeville Mall. It has since been replaced by a food court.  
  • Extras who appeared in this film were reportedly given $20 in cash, a box lunch, and a Dawn of the Dead T-shirt. 

Comments

WatchingTheDead said…
One of my favourite horror films and responsible for my own blog. Nice write up, check out my review here: http://watchingthedead.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/dawn-of-dead-1978-review.html

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