So I finally saw this excellent, fine, beautiful piece of cinema last night for the first time. First off, I loved it. A very good sequel to the scariest movie I’ve ever seen.
Yeah, standard horror movie cliches abound, but to be honest, I think it’s an Evil Dead thing: they don’t count as cliches because they were new in this movie, and it’s not Romero’s fault that everybody else (Friday 13th, Halloween, etc, ad infinitum) copied him.
The characters were awesome, the social commentary (malls, material culture, dirty cops) was great, and the movie even creeped me out and made me jumpy and nervous.
But I have one major question (and maybe a few more after I finish my 2nd viewing): In the beginning, when the SWAT guys are cleaning “Martinez” out of the tall building, Peter finds the basement cell where they kept all the Living Dead, just chilling out, munching on Leg of Larry and Shank of Sharon.
WTF?? Why on earth would you keep all of those things alive, instead of exterminating them? “They still believe there’s some respect in dying”? Were these people some kind of weird religious group or something? Even if so, wouldn’t you hold more to the sanctity-of-not-being-eaten-to-death-by-zombies, rather than the sanctity of a dead body?
Mods, as far as I’m concerned, any discussion of this fine movie is welcome in this thread. Nothing about Dawn Of The Dead can possibly be off-topic in here.
The cliche I was talking about is the punishment of evil thing. Any characters who are bad, or who do extremely dumb things are repaid. One thing in particular:
Roger got cocky when hot-wiring the tractor-trailers to block the entrances. His cockiness causes him to get bitten and eventually die.
…and…
Steven almost causes Francine’s to get eaten by the Pee-Wee Herman Hari-Krishna, when he runs off exploring and leaves her alone with no gun. Later, he starts shooting at the raiders, causing them to shoot back, instead of getting back to Penney’s. If they had just stayed hidden, he wouldn’t have been killed.
Not exactly, but IIRC it was some kind of freaked-out religious justification; there was a brief bit of dialogue with the priest that was leading them to this effect.
I agree with Enola Straight. The living family members couldn’t “kill” their loved ones, nor allow the authorities to take them away to be “executed”. In their minds, the dead were just sick. If they moved, they were still alive – still Jose and Philipe and Maria instead of horrible flesh-eating zombies.
Did anyone notice that Roger and Peter weren’t using real M-16s? In the airport scene (the one where they seem to be putting gasoline into a turbine-powered helicopter :eek: ) one of them is struggling to load his rifle. You can see that he’s putting a .22LR clip into a dummy .223 magazine that is part of the rifle. Just a minor nit-pick. When you’re working with a low budget, you have to use the props you can get.
Dawn of the Dead is probably the best movie of the zombie genre (with the possible exception of Night of the Living Dead). As Joe_Cool said, it is a good indictment of our modern consumer society.
Gotta agree with the idea that the building folk didn’t want to kill their loved ones. Now here is something to think about.
Was the SWAT team there to arrest Martinez or (and this is what I think) trying to get in their to kill the Dead in the basement.
I can see the whole back story,
Loved ones are dying and rising from the dead. The government is declaring martial law requiring the dead be rounded up and eliminated.
In one building the inhabitants don’t want to see this happen, instead they isolate their dead relatives in the basement. Word leaks out and the police are sent to enforce the law. A scuffle ensues and one distraut relative (MARTINEZ) takes a gun to the police officer. Soon the whole building barracdes itself and the Swat and (It appears) the National guard are called in to end the stand off.
What do you think does that seem to fit with the Movie?
Yeah that makes sense. Now that you guys mention it, I do remember the scene with the priest. “I have given them last rites. Now do what you have to do.”
Johnny L.A., I did notice the .22 magazines in the rifles and the plain old gasoline in the chopper. hahaha But even with all that, I loved it.
One especially poined thing I noticed was how these people are running for safety, and got seduced by the free availability of material goods in the mall. They meant to just rest and stock up on supplies, then all of a sudden their run is over, and they’re living it up at the mall.
I think this movie was made for about $900,000, so you take what you can get. You’ll also notice that in the mall you see the same zombies at the end that you saw at the beginning, even though in the middle of the movie the protagonists clear out the whole mall. Zombies cost money!
And of course the makeup is pretty simple; mostly just a blue-grey tinge and some blood. Romero’s third Dead movie, Day of the Dead, had much more sophisticated makeup, but the script just wasn’t as good.
Actually, I can’t wait to see Day of the Dead. It sounds interesting, and even though I’ve heard it’s nowhere near as good as the first 2, I’ve also heard that if it weren’t Night of the Living Dead part 3, it would be counted among the best horror movies ever. That it just doesn’t look as good because it has the rep to uphold.
The blurb on the dvd box sounds like something I’d really like.
Well if you like gore, It has it. If you like people shouting at each other for long periods of time its got that too. I think it is missing that spark that Dawn and Night have. I couldn’t really get into the characters (well except for Bub)
Dawn of the Dead isn’t so much about the zombies plague, but deals more with the humans’ reaction. The four protagonists take the mall and survive, but they quickly dissolve into boredom and estrangement (that scene with Fran and Flyboy lying in bed, not speaking and not looking at each other, speaks volumes). The scenes from TV show the breakdown of the outer society mirroring the breakdown among the four. The movie is a indictment of a soulless consumer society.
What does it profit a man to gain the whole mall, yet lose his soul?
BTW, in early 2003 Anchor Bay is releasing a 3-disc set of DoTD (US theatrical cut, German theatrical cut, director’s cut) with cast commentary, trailers, and more.
In retrospect, I think one of my favorite characters in the film is none other than “The Godfather of Gore,” Tom “Sex Machine” Savini. He actually shows up in at least two roles, as the biker and as a zombie.
There are so many things to love in this film. The “buzz cut,” the zombie children, the goofy mall music, sport-hunting humans from the back of a Volkswagen Scirocco…
Looking over the credits, it seems to me that this would have been a helluva fun film to participate in. Many of the production crew are also given acting credits–as zombies, of course!
I just watched this movie again last night, and now I have a question: were (or are) there actually shopping centers like the one portrayed wherein one could find medical supplies (including morphine!), as well as what appeared to be a fully-stocked supermarket?
D’oh! I was thinking, “I know I’ve seen that guy somewhere…” while watching the movie, but I just couldn’t place where. Now I remember! Thanks.
Actually, the US theatrical cut IS the director’s cut.
The so-called “director’s cut” released on DVD is actually is actually a rushed “preview” cut put together to show the film at a festival well before it’s theatrical release.
Curiously, I have a DVD of the original theatrical cut which has a few brief snippets of material that I never saw in theatres when the film came out in 1979. (I double checked with an old laserdisc to make sure my memory wasn’t fooling me.)
By the way, are you sure the Anchor Bay release includes a “German Theatrical cut”? The film was co-produced with Italian money, and Dario Argento recut the film for distribution in that country – it would seem to make sense to include that cut on a disc for collectors and fanatics.
I’m just going by a DVD preview Web site that included a list of upcoming Anchor Bay horror releases. The US cut ISN’T the director’s cut–the director’s cut includes the full scenen with the cops on the dock, featuring Joe Pilato (Captain Rhodes from “Day of the Dead.”
The cops on the dock scene is one of the “brief snippets” I was referring to when I said the DVD that bills itself as the “theatrical cut” contains material that was not shown in theatres here.
As for whether that constitutes the “director’s cut,” we get into that matter of defining the term. DAWN OF THE DEAD was an independently financed film for which director George Romero had final cut; no studio or executive made any cuts after he was finished. Ergo, we must consider the theatrical cut to be the director’s cut. Anything that happened after that would be a “revised cut.”
Hey, I’m just trying to keep the nomenclature clear, but I fear that all this talk about which cut is which diverts from the true point of the original post, which was to acknowledge that this is one of the greatest horror films ever made.
