Dawn Of The Dead Review

    In 1978 George A. Romero made Dawn of The Dead, a film that many still to this day consider to be the “Greatest Horror Film In History.” The film starred a cast of unknown yet talented performers such as Ken Foree, David Emge, Gaylen Ross, and Scott Reiniger. It also featured Tom Savini in a small role as a biker gang leader. I actually just got done watching it and I must say that I was utterly and completely full of crap when I said in my last blog that Night was the best of his series. The social commentary in this film was, unlike in Night of the Living Dead, was both intentional and well done. It used the idea of zombies to touch on the slow decay in our society caused by corporate greed and blind consumerism. It was symbolic of a true capitalistic apocalypse where the consumers consume each other. Despite all of what was good and entertaining about this film, it was not devoid of weaknesses. The weak parts of this film are almost so bad that it cancels out all that made this film a respected classic.

    My first problem was with the dialogue, or at least what Romero passes off as dialogue. This is a consistent weakness in most of his work in that he seems to be unable to write speech that sounds like an actual human would say it. The actors do their best to make some of these atrocious lines sound good but most attempts are in vain. I had trouble taking these characters seriously at some points. Luckily, the shitty dialogue was only in certain parts and not really consistent. Some of my favorite lines in the film are delivered by Ken Foree, who played the SWAT officer Peter Washington. In fact he was really the only character that I was not hoping would be turned into zombie chow.

    Another weakness in this film is that it runs out of gas around the middle of act two. The film starts off great with the scene in the TV studio. The frantic pace of that scene, the screaming people, and the crew members slow walking off was a very cool way of showing the societal impact of the zombie apocalypse. It was subtle yet twice as effective if they had shown some wide panoramic shot of zombies marching up and down the town square eating everyone in arms reach. It then takes us to a raid on a housing project. The raid is being conducted by SWAT in order to enforce the President’s new law stating that “all private home, no matter how well stocked or secure, are no longer safe to dwell in.” He basically declared martial law and the members of this housing project seem to not have gotten that memo. This is where we meet Peter and Roger. Long story short the tenants were hiding undead loved ones in the basement and there is a very creepy part were Roger and Peter are executing all the restrained zombies in the basement. Later Roger offers Peter a chance to escape the city in a helicopter because as he put it, “lot of people running out there right now.” Peter accepts the invite and they meet with Francine and Stephen who have recently borrowed the local news channel’s helicopter in order to more safely GTFO. Again, everything so far is excellent. They get into small fights with some zombies at a refueling center ending with one zombie getting his head cleaved half off by helicopter blades. Shit doesn’t really start getting bad until they get to the mall.
 Apparently there was enough room in hell for this movie because that is where it goes. Seriously, Romero Trojan horsed my ass with the sudden shift in quality. The film was better while they were on the run, maybe the helicopter should have died at that air field and they are forced to steal a truck and drive through the zombie apocalypse. That would have been so much better. Once they get to the mall the story just starts to get tedious to watch. Yeah they had to secure the mall but that sequence was over far too quickly and left us with almost an hour of these three assholes screwing around in a mall. It was so boring that part of the “we’re safe, yay!!” montage is them shopping. That’s right folks a montage of motherfuckers shopping like this is Mr. Mom of some similar bullshit.

   Sensing the film’s plot was at a dead stop, Romero decided to introduce a new threat to our main characters. The new threat is not undead but a post-apocalyptic biker gang. They scope out the mall and after seeing the helicopter they decide to drop in for some tea and rape. They get in and start looting/fucking around in the mall, one guy even stops at one of those blood pressure machines. Seeing the destruction of their new home and the misuse of their medical kiosks Steven goes nuts and starts shooting the biker pirates, Peter lets the zombies in, and Tom Savini starts yelling racial slurs. It’s all is just kind of corny and a lot of the scenes demonstrate how non-threatening the slow moving classic zombies are. The film ends with the zombies eating a few of the bikers, causing them to retreat. Peter flees to the safety room where he and Francine decide to blow that Popsicle stand. They escape unharmed to the cheesiest music I have ever heard. As the helicopter disappeared into the distance the film faded to black.
 
   This was the best of the Dead films as far as overall quality goes but honestly it is only good when compared to the other movies in Romero’s Dead series. Say it is the best out of that series is like being the strongest retard.

Oh did I mention that the bikers have a pie fight with the zombies, I guess Romero wanted to pay homage to Tex Avery?