Dawn of the Dead (78) - Review by Blurr

Dawn of the Dead, in case you are not aware, is the 2^nd film in George Romero’s ‘Dead Trilogy’, which begins with ‘Night of the Living Dead’ and ends with ‘Day of the Dead’ (although there will soon be a fourth film thanks to the upcoming ‘Land of the Dead’).  In ‘Night’ we followed a small band of survivors who had found shelter in an abandoned farmhouse.  They knew little of what was going on besides the sporadic news reports that trickled in on their small television.  Before any of them had a handle on what was going on they were all dead.

Dawn, on the other hand, begins with two of our characters at work at a television station.  We first meet Fran (Gaylen Ross) who is some sort of television programmer or something.  She wakes up in the station after taking a short nap, and all hell has broken loose.  Two men are on camera ‘debating’ about what is going on.  People behind camera are yelling and arguing with each other to no end.  We see a scrolling line of ‘rescue stations’ at the bottom of the broadcast window.  While all this is going on we are accompanied by a menacing, thumping and eerily disturbing score (provided by Goblin).  As the arguing continues we begin to hear what the two men on camera are talking about.

Every dead body that is not exterminated gets up and kills.  The people it kills get up and kill!

A chilling thought indeed and some people are having a difficult time understanding or merely believing it.  In comes our second character, Stephen (David Emge).  Stephen is a helicopter pilot for the news station and is also involved with Fran.  Once he finds her he tells her to meet him on the rooftop in a few hours.  Fran begins to protest but Stephen insists that ‘We’ve got to survive, someone’s got to survive’.  A bleak outlook to be sure, but not too far off the mark considering the way things are going.

From here we move on to an apartment building that is under siege by the local SWAT team.  Apparently the residents inside have refused to hand over their dead to the National Guard for proper disposal.  Hence, the police are called in to raid the building and flush out the dead.  As you can tell, at this point in the ‘infection’ or ‘crisis’ the authorities are still trying to maintain the illusion that they are in control.  However, they couldn’t be further from the truth.  Anyways, as we are waiting for the SWAT team to move in we meet another member of the quartet, Roger (Scott H. Reiniger).  Roger is a good guy who doesn’t enjoy killing (as you soon see when they ‘raid’ the building) but rather tries to protect those who can’t protect themselves.  As the raid progresses through the building one of the officers, Wooley (Jim Baffic) begins to go crazy, shooting all that are in his way; zombie or not.  Roger tries to take him down when a masked SWAT member shoots Wooley in the back before he can do anymore damage.  Considering the situation at hand, none of the other officers disagree with the outcome.

As Roger retreats to the basement to take a break from the turmoil around him, he meets the masked stranger who killed Wooley.  They draw their guns on each other as the stranger recognizes Roger as a member of Wooleys unit.  Roger pleads ignorance as to whether or not he saw Wooley die.  The lower their guns and the masked man finally reveals himself and so we meet our final character, Peter (Ken Foree).  They sit and have a smoke and Roger reveals to his new ‘friend’ that he has a buddy who has a helicopter.  He asks him to come with him and of course, with all that is going on around them, he agrees.  After some more ‘business’ at the apartment building they leave and meet up with Stephen and Fran who are fueling the chopper at the Police Dock.  Both Fran and Stephen are concerned about the extra weight in the chopper now that a 4^th person is coming, but Roger insists he is alright and that he come along.

From this point they take off in the chopper and leave the city behind, hoping to find refuge somewhere, although at this point they have no idea where.  As they fly over the countryside they see that the infection is spreading everywhere and is not just localized to the large cities.  With the threat of running out of fuel they have got to find somewhere to catch a breath and fast.  As luck would have it, they stumble across the most unlikely place they could imagine, a shopping mall.  They land the chopper and all get out to take a look.  From their initial observations the mall has power, zombies surround the place but they have no access to the roof and they find a room that doesn’t lead down into the main area of the mall.  They break into the room and decide to sit tight for a while and have a quick lunch on the Civil Defense supplies they find.

Here is where the real story begins.  Rather than counting their blessings for being so lucky, Peter and Roger think of all the stuff in the mall that they could get their hands on.  They take their chances and break into the mall from their disconnected room.  We begin to see the ‘true’ nature of humans.  It’s not survival as we were originally led to believe, but rather greed.  This is a theme we see more than once throughout the rest of the movie.  And here I will stop explaining what goes on as the rest is something that you viewers will have to find out for yourself.  Needless to say there are plenty of zombie battles and gore to please any zombie fan.

Now, onto the movie itself, in regards to the special FX they were very well done considering the movie was made over 25 years ago.  Most of the zombies were done with a simple blue paint to make them look like cadavers, but you see the odd zombie with special makeup on the face or other areas of the body.  My favorite zombie has to be the ‘flattop’ guy they meet when they refuel the helicopter (all of those who have seen the movie know what I am talking about! Hehe).  As for gore FX, they are well done also.  There are some particularly good disemboweling scenes near the end when the zombies begin to take over once again.

As for the characters they are all well written and well played out.  Everyone involved did a fantastic job in conveying the wide range of emotions one would feel in a situation such as this: fear, anger, jealousy, greed, disgust…the list goes on and on.  Needless to say I was really attached to the characters and could relate with them quite easily.  When one of the characters encountered a problem or pain in their ordeals, I felt it as well.  Another aspect of the movie I enjoyed was the music.  Goblin did an outstanding job with the score.  It doesn’t become overpowering but it really does add to the movie.  As I said before, it does well reinforcing a sense of dread and despair many, many times.  Sometimes when I listen to the score separate from the movie (I have it on CD) I get chills, it’s really that creepy.

All in all I cannot think of a single problem with this movie.  Everything comes together in one neat little package.  Characters, story, special FX, setting…everything melds together perfectly.  If you are looking for a great zombie, look no further than Dawn of the Dead (78).  And if you have seen the new one, take a look at the classic that inspired it.  It’s not as ‘action packed’ as the remake, but it will thrill you in ways that no new movie ever will again.