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.
