Director/writer/editor: George A. Romero
Photography: Michael Gornick
Music: Dario Argento, Goblin
Cast: David Emge, Ken Foree, Scott H. Reiniger, Gaylen Ross, Tom Savini, Michael Gornick, George A. Romero, approx. 233 zombies, a suburban mall
I was surprised when I went looking for all-purpose filmmaker George A. Romero’s original 1978 Dawn of the Dead to find it virtually unavailable on streaming, at least for the moment. It’s September so maybe that means they are holding it back for October, which I guess makes some sense. Instead, I kept running into Zack Snyder’s 2004 remake in search results, which reminded me I hadn’t seen that yet. I was thus forced to turn to my battered old VHS copy, acquired some years ago. My VCR remote is long gone, if it ever had one, which means watching a VHS has become something of an in-home drive-in experience: the picture and the sound are noticeably crappy, no English subtitles are available (often a necessity, sad to say), there’s no jumping back 10 or 30 seconds at a time to pick up dialogue and/or plot points I might have missed (I’m starting to miss this in theaters too), and my living room is full of the moral equivalent of randomly honking horns and flashing headlights.
Among other things, it means I may not have been able to give a fair chance to a movie I have always struggled with. Dawn of the Dead is one of those sequels many consider better than the original (see also Bride of Frankenstein, The Godfather Part II, and The Road Warrior) but for me all the best of the franchise and indeed the zombie project at large is in the 1968 Night of the Living Dead. This includes the invention of the modern zombie template as we understand it today. It’s frequently given various untoward reworking, as I would see in the Snyder remake (which I did get around to looking at, not least because it’s conveniently on streaming). Dawn of the Dead boasts a fair amount of visible growth in Romero’s filmmaking abilities but in general they are turned toward making an action / adventure / disaster picture as opposed to a horror. In this particular case I will say that tone added to my in-home drive-in ambience, as most of the relatively few drive-in movies I ever went to always seemed to be of the disaster ilk, e.g., The Poseidon Adventure.
I was surprised when I went looking for all-purpose filmmaker George A. Romero’s original 1978 Dawn of the Dead to find it virtually unavailable on streaming, at least for the moment. It’s September so maybe that means they are holding it back for October, which I guess makes some sense. Instead, I kept running into Zack Snyder’s 2004 remake in search results, which reminded me I hadn’t seen that yet. I was thus forced to turn to my battered old VHS copy, acquired some years ago. My VCR remote is long gone, if it ever had one, which means watching a VHS has become something of an in-home drive-in experience: the picture and the sound are noticeably crappy, no English subtitles are available (often a necessity, sad to say), there’s no jumping back 10 or 30 seconds at a time to pick up dialogue and/or plot points I might have missed (I’m starting to miss this in theaters too), and my living room is full of the moral equivalent of randomly honking horns and flashing headlights.
Among other things, it means I may not have been able to give a fair chance to a movie I have always struggled with. Dawn of the Dead is one of those sequels many consider better than the original (see also Bride of Frankenstein, The Godfather Part II, and The Road Warrior) but for me all the best of the franchise and indeed the zombie project at large is in the 1968 Night of the Living Dead. This includes the invention of the modern zombie template as we understand it today. It’s frequently given various untoward reworking, as I would see in the Snyder remake (which I did get around to looking at, not least because it’s conveniently on streaming). Dawn of the Dead boasts a fair amount of visible growth in Romero’s filmmaking abilities but in general they are turned toward making an action / adventure / disaster picture as opposed to a horror. In this particular case I will say that tone added to my in-home drive-in ambience, as most of the relatively few drive-in movies I ever went to always seemed to be of the disaster ilk, e.g., The Poseidon Adventure.
The great point of Dawn of the Dead remains the inspiration of setting most of the action inside an upscale shopping mall in heartland America exurban Pennsylvania. Most of the great lines make reference to mall life in the before times. “What are they doing? Why do they come here?” says one character. “Some kind of instinct,” another responds. “Memory of what they used to do. This was an important place in their lives.” Snyder picks up all the great lines for his remake, including my personal favorite, also featured in trailers: “When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the Earth.” It’s doubtless also why Romero gets a writing credit on the remake.
Romero’s Dawn of the Dead is a shrewd and often very funny sendup of mall culture. But there are many points where Romero and crew seem to lose track of what they’re doing and start to have too much fun with the setting. The picture is full of weirdly whimsical musical cues, which are there under cover of being mall muzak, but no mall ever played muzak this corny and on-the-nose, not even in the ‘70s. There are even scenes where a gang of biker outlaws plants cream pies on the faces of zombies. I thought going to the biker outlaw trope at all was too much, speaking of the drive-in experience. For example, one of the biker outlaws brandishes and then uses a switchblade mustache comb. The more I think of it the more I think I may have seen Dawn of the Dead in ideal conditions. I looked at it twice and enjoyed it much more the second time, even with all the flaws.
The basic idea here is that the zombie epidemic seen in Night of the Living Dead has grown to overwhelming proportions and everything is now breaking down at scale. Our wooden quartet of no-name players (David Emge, Ken Foree, Scott H. Reiniger, and Gaylen Ross) have escaped the television station where they all work(ed). As seen frequently in self-serious comic books, ongoing newscasts in the background are handy for exposition and the source of more great lines: “Every dead body that is not exterminated becomes one of them. It gets up and kills! The people it kills get up and kill!” and “They must be destroyed on sight!” Escaping by helicopter (yeah, right), these four end up in the mall. Dawn of the Dead is the story of their survival, such as it is. It’s more than two hours packed full of lurching zombie mayhem and chaos, with interludes of zombies chowing down on obviously human body parts.
It gets a little monotonous for me but there are many isolated elements to love. The music is often great, especially the contributions from Dario Argento’s house band Goblin (credited here as the Goblins). Argento gets a music credit too, which I assume is for the orchestral passages. He may also be the author of the unfortunate wacky music too. Romero was also one of the best colorblind directors of his era too. Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead are both diverse in a natural way most filmmakers still have a hard time managing.
The picture ends on a bittersweet departure from the mall by helicopter in the early morning hours—the dawn of the dead, don’t you see. There would be more sequels. I haven’t seen them all. I suspect it’s sacrilege to say that the Snyder remake is a better movie, just in terms of working more effectively as a thriller. But it’s hardly perfect, full of Snyder’s flourishes of going too far as well as making his zombies fast. They aren’t inhumanly superfast, like some zombie franchises have done, but rather just athletically fast. When they charge it just doesn’t seem fair. I’m a fan myself of the rumbling stumbling zombies that never stop coming at you slowly. That’s the classic Romero zombie and it is full on display in Dawn of the Dead.
Romero’s Dawn of the Dead is a shrewd and often very funny sendup of mall culture. But there are many points where Romero and crew seem to lose track of what they’re doing and start to have too much fun with the setting. The picture is full of weirdly whimsical musical cues, which are there under cover of being mall muzak, but no mall ever played muzak this corny and on-the-nose, not even in the ‘70s. There are even scenes where a gang of biker outlaws plants cream pies on the faces of zombies. I thought going to the biker outlaw trope at all was too much, speaking of the drive-in experience. For example, one of the biker outlaws brandishes and then uses a switchblade mustache comb. The more I think of it the more I think I may have seen Dawn of the Dead in ideal conditions. I looked at it twice and enjoyed it much more the second time, even with all the flaws.
The basic idea here is that the zombie epidemic seen in Night of the Living Dead has grown to overwhelming proportions and everything is now breaking down at scale. Our wooden quartet of no-name players (David Emge, Ken Foree, Scott H. Reiniger, and Gaylen Ross) have escaped the television station where they all work(ed). As seen frequently in self-serious comic books, ongoing newscasts in the background are handy for exposition and the source of more great lines: “Every dead body that is not exterminated becomes one of them. It gets up and kills! The people it kills get up and kill!” and “They must be destroyed on sight!” Escaping by helicopter (yeah, right), these four end up in the mall. Dawn of the Dead is the story of their survival, such as it is. It’s more than two hours packed full of lurching zombie mayhem and chaos, with interludes of zombies chowing down on obviously human body parts.
It gets a little monotonous for me but there are many isolated elements to love. The music is often great, especially the contributions from Dario Argento’s house band Goblin (credited here as the Goblins). Argento gets a music credit too, which I assume is for the orchestral passages. He may also be the author of the unfortunate wacky music too. Romero was also one of the best colorblind directors of his era too. Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead are both diverse in a natural way most filmmakers still have a hard time managing.
The picture ends on a bittersweet departure from the mall by helicopter in the early morning hours—the dawn of the dead, don’t you see. There would be more sequels. I haven’t seen them all. I suspect it’s sacrilege to say that the Snyder remake is a better movie, just in terms of working more effectively as a thriller. But it’s hardly perfect, full of Snyder’s flourishes of going too far as well as making his zombies fast. They aren’t inhumanly superfast, like some zombie franchises have done, but rather just athletically fast. When they charge it just doesn’t seem fair. I’m a fan myself of the rumbling stumbling zombies that never stop coming at you slowly. That’s the classic Romero zombie and it is full on display in Dawn of the Dead.
My pet peeve for the most incredibly preposterous feature in fantasy/horror are the killer Orcs in the Lord of the Rings movies. Monstrously big and ferocious, they descend on the good peoples of the seven kingdoms, or whatever, in oceanic waves of genocidal fury. But then a handful of Elves and Dwarves and the Hobbits of the Shire and pale humans that look like Hollywood depictions of Jesus rally together and start slashing through Orcs like marshmallows toasted black over a campfire.
ReplyDeleteWikipedia says Peter Jackson modeled the appearance of the Orcs after Harvey Weinstein, after some beef between them. I can see this possibly adding a little to the spectacle of watching the slaughter of Orcs but haven't had time yet to test it out.
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