“They’re us, that’s all. There’s no more room in hell.”
I hope all of the Screenagers in the US had a great Thanksgiving yesterday! I’m personally thankful for each of you, and for all the folks who work here at ScreenAge Wasteland as well.
Every year I think about watching a Thanksgiving themed horror flick for Black Fear Flashback Friday, but I never get around to seeing Blood Rage or Thankskilling. I even thought about finally watching Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving, but luckily Val took that bullet with her review yesterday.
Besides, it’s Black Friday, not Thanksgiving. Surely something more shopping related is in order? I thought I’d rewatch Chopping Mall for this year, but it turns out I did a review for that back in 2019 for the same reason. I toyed with the idea of watching Night of the Comet, which also features some shopping mall chaos, but then I realized that if I really wanted to watch a classic shopping mall related horror film there was really only one choice.
I saw Day of the Dead before I’d seen any other George Romero zombie film, but I know I’d seen bits and pieces of Dawn of the Dead before then. One of the early scenes with Peter and Roger helping clear out an apartment complex stuck with me – particularly the part with the zombies in the basement. It was so grimy and realistic. It felt horrifying in a way that other zombie movies didn’t. Time and technology has softened the horror somewhat, but this is now my favorite Romero zombie film. Sorry Bub.
This is a pretty gory movie, so here’s you’re warning that we’ll be taking a trip down
The Medium
I have the Anchor Bay Ultimate Editon DVD box set for Dawn of the Dead and I got into my head that I needed to watch one of the alternate versions. So I sat down to watch the European version, the one Dario Argento edited together. It contains some alternate takes, extended scenes and a Goblin soundtrack. However, there are also some scenes removed entirely or edited completely differently. I discovered I was paying too much attention to the differences (like wondering what happened to the helicopter zombie) and not just enjoying the movie. So I stopped it just after the action gets to the mall and started over with the theatrical release. (As an aside, I did like some of the extended scenes – particularly the ones involving Roger – they were small, but they helped set up Roger as a bit of a sarcastic hot-head earlier than the theatrical version.)
There was a US Blu-ray release from Anchor Bay in 2007, but it’s out of print. Second Sight has a region free Blu-ray, but the extras (of which there are many) are region locked.
For streaming options, you can rent or purchase Dawn of the Dead on Amazon. That’s it.
The Movie
In 1978 George Romero returned to the zombie movie after a couple of his other movies fail to make a splash. Dawn is a continuation of Night of the Living Dead, but also an expansion. Moving us beyond the farmhouse into society at large. No half-baked, sci-fi, backstory delivered in soundbites on the TV here. The people in the film are beyond explanations. They’re in the shit, having to deal with the ramifications. It’s triage. We’ll worry about the cause if we survive.
I think most people who are horror fans have seen Dawn, but here’s a quick overview. Four people escape Pittsburgh in a helicopter as the zombie plague starts unraveling society at the seams. Looking for safety, they find a huge indoor mall and set about trying to make it safe from the living and the dead alike.
Sounds almost boring when you put it like that, doesn’t it?
But the movie is anything but boring. It’s violent and funny and moving and exciting. It’s just damn good filmmaking, leaving you satisfied on many levels. Yeah, it’s a bit dated now – hoo boy are some of those fashions dated – but as much as I liked the 2004 remake, this movie has a heart and a, I dunno, a quality to it that elevates it beyond a simple gore show. There’s commentary – on modern society, consumerism, tribalism – but that doesn’t get in the way of the character interaction. The things that they do are natural, human reactions to their circumstances. And that’s what gets some of them killed.
In some ways, Dawn is more hopeful in its depiction of human survivors than other films. The protagonists are two cops – Peter (Ken Foree) and Roger (Scott Reiniger), a helicopter pilot for a news station, Roger (David Emge), and a TV news producer, Fran (Gaylen Ross), who is pregnant. Despite their various backgrounds, these four form a coherent and supportive social group. In Romero’s other films, it’s the main social group itself that has fault lines that contribute to the chaos. Ben and Cooper in Night, the scientists and the military in Day. In Dawn at least the group is cohesive enough that you feel as if they might have survived indefinitely, if not for conflict from outside their consumer’s paradise.
Much has already been written about setting the main action of the film in a shopping mall, and how the very trappings of consumer society serve as both a panacea and a trap. Watching the characters basically ape the actions of a normal life in the mall is both comforting and appalling. The world is falling apart and they’re playing dress up. It’s when a biker gang shows up and attacks the mall, though, that the satire (and the humor) really get cranking for me. The combination of the gang and the undead ravaging their way through the previously calm environs of the mall seem like an obvious reference to the (slightly) less violent behavior of shoppers on days like Black Friday, when our obsession with stuff gets the better of us.
There’s a scientist on the TV early in the film (Is it the same one from Night of the Living Dead? I think it might be.) talking about how the only way for the human race to survive is to be completely rational and logical in its choices while facing this plague. And that’s when you realize that we’re all doomed, because there’s no way in hell that we can be. Human beings are emotional, irrational beings. Nothing shows this more than when the biker gang attacks. All the heroes have to do is let them rampage through the mall, take what they want and leave. But Stephen can’t let it go – he’s fought for this place – it’s HIS, dammit! And that one emotional moment causes the end of all their security.
There’s usually one moment in movies like this that I tend to hang my interest on. One scene or image that stands out in my mind and represents the film as a whole to me. In Dawn it’s the moment when Roger comes back. He’s dead – having been wounded through his own arrogance and stupidity – and he told Peter that he was going to try and not come back. Peter sits in a chair with the pistol, waiting. There’s movement under the covers, the body rises and the blanket slips off revealing Roger’s face. It’s one of the best makeups in the film, the skin seeming to have dried and wrinkled as if Roger has been dead for a long time. And the expression! You can see both hunger and misery on that face. The gunshot is an afterthought – the real horror has already occurred. There is no control, no choice. In the end you’re just a puppet of circumstance, and even death can’t erase your mistakes.
I’ve got to take a moment to praise Tom Savini and his special effects. Dawn was his first full job as a special effects artist (he’d provided smaller effects on earlier films), and his debut is stunning. From exploding head shots, zombie bites (and tears), severed limbs and heads meeting helicopter blades, the gore is relentless and inventive. Some of it has aged poorly – the gray/blue zombie makeup, for instance – but it was amazing and realistic for the time. Savani based much of his effects on real wounds he had seen in the field in Vietnam, and his dedication to that realism influenced a whole generation of special effects artists.
This ending of the movie is strangely hopeful, with Fran and Peter leaving in the helicopter – low on fuel and with no idea of where to go. It’s not quite the end of Day of the Dead, where we see the heroes on a sunny, tropical island – but its miles away from the nihilistic ending of Night of the Living Dead. I know there was a different ending in mind at first – with Peter committing suicide with a gun and Fran decapitating herself in the helicopter blades – but I think this works better. It’s just as reflective of the human condition to have hope, even in the face of utter hopelessness.
The Bottom Line
There are problems with Dawn of the Dead – the gray zombies can be disappointing and the humor is a bit slapstick at times – but they’re all minor. The film is deservedly a classic and remains, to my mind, Romero’s best (though I do have a soft spot for Creepshow). Come for the gore, stay for the satire, and if you go out shopping today maybe keep your eye on your fellow shoppers. That dead-eyed stare might just be fatigue, but you never know if there’s a zombie apocalypse waiting to break out.
