Franchises: Romero's Dead Series. Dawn of the Dead (1978).

Night of the Living Dead may be the movie that started the flesh-eating undead craze and remains George Romero's most well known film when it comes to the general public, even if they don't know his name, but for pretty much every horror fan under the sun, this sequel made a decade later is the absolute king of zombie movies. I'm not sure I know of any horror movie that has a more rabid, loyal fan base than Dawn of the Dead, one that rivals other fanbases like Star Wars or even Trekkies. It's so heavily lauded, in fact, that when I finally watched it when I was 18 (I had seen bits of it before, mostly on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments), I was skeptical that it would live up to the hype, which sometimes happens when I sit down to watch a movie that's so well loved and acclaimed. It's like, "Okay, show me what you got. Impress me!" And at first, I didn't want to like the movie because I was afraid that it would seem like I was simply following the herd. I was just like, "It's alright." But, after repeated viewings, I finally decided, "Oh, who am I kidding? This is awesome!", and there are many different reasons as to why that is. First off, the movie has a very different tone from its predecessor. While it still keeps the feeling of apocalypse and doom as the characters watch news reports of the ongoing zombie outbreak, which you can tell is only getting worse as time goes on, it has more of a feeling of fun than the previous one, often coming across more like an action movie with zombies than a straight up horror film. It's also shot in bright, vibrant color, already giving it a more lively, comic book feeling, which is helped by a richness of the film stock they used, and it's much bigger in scope. It's still a very low budget movie (albeit one with a lot more money to work with than Night of the Living Dead; $1.5 million, to be exact) and, again, mainly takes place within an enclosed setting, but the difference is that the size of the shopping mall and other setpieces make it feel much more like an epic. Its two hour running time, which is unusual for a horror film, also makes it feel like a big movie. But, above everything else, it's a very entertaining, fast-paced movie, which is something you just can't quantify but have to experience.

In the years between the two films, George Romero had initially tried to avoid being typecast as a horror film director by following up Night of the Living Dead with There's Always Vanilla, a romantic comedy. This did not pan out at all and even Romero himself calls it his worst film (I haven't seen it, so I can't comment), so he returned to horror with Season of the Witch, which he filmed as Jack's Wife and was originally released as Hungry Wives!, and The Crazies (which I don't like at all). Neither of those films did anything either and he disappeared for a while before returning in 1977 with Martin, a vampire flick that was a success on the arthouse circuit. That, unfortunately, is another movie I haven't seen but I've heard a lot of good things about it. It was right after Martin that Romero visited the Monroeville Mall and got his inspiration for Dawn of the Dead. I think this is a very important film in the context of his career because, while Night of the Living Dead was certainly quite an introduction, this enormous cult success firmly established him as one of the "masters of horror" and gained him legions of fans.

The film seamlessly moves from the previous film into the new storyline right from the beginning. The zombie outbreak that began in Night hasn't stopped; in fact, it's getting worse, with whole cities being evacuated and SWAT teams having to force people out of their homes. The very first scene dumps you right in the middle of this craziness with a newsroom that's in absolute chaos, where you have them running out of rescue stations to tell people to go to (Romero has a cameo very early on), arguments about whether or not to keep up stations that aren't running anymore just for the sake of ratings, people pulling out, random people mocking the show that they're still trying to broadcast, and such. But it's when the second scene kicks in that you know you're in for a wild ride. You have a SWAT team bursting into a building where a number of Hispanics are holding up, refusing to surrender their dead to the authorities per martial law, when one of the SWAT members, Wooley (Jim Baffico), a guy who's obviously got serious race issues, goes berserk and starts blasting away everyone he sees. We're not even twenty minutes in and someone's head has been blown off, zombies are chewing on people, and one poor guy who couldn't take it has blows his brains out! And as if that wasn't enough, our two heroes, Peter and Roger, go down into the basement to clear out the rest of the zombies and find a horrific scene with a bunch of reanimated corpses, some with no legs or arms, chewing and eating various body parts. Peter, despite being severely disturbed by this sight, has to man up and blow them all away. It's as if Romero said, "We had the slow buildup in the first movie. Now, let's hit them hard and fast!"

One of the reasons the film is so well loved is the great ensemble cast. Ken Foree would pretty much be forever associated with his role of Peter, another strong, badass black man in the vein of Ben from the first film. Like Ben, you don't know much about him other than his name but that doesn't matter, as he's a tough, gun-toting SWAT guy who doesn't stand for any crap and knows how to take care of business. Scott Reiniger is also great as Roger, the energetic, too sure of himself SWAT officer who ultimately gets himself bitten as a result, becoming a burden for the others when he loses the ability to walk, and eventually dies and becomes a zombie. The scene where he's reanimated, forcing Peter to kill him is a great scene and it's made even better by the sound of the evangelist-like Dr. Rausch on a nearby TV talking about how hopeless the situation at present seems to be. David Emge as Steven, whom Peter refers to as "Flyboy" (and who I have an interesting connection with as he accidentally stepped on my foot at a convention; he apologized up and down for it, though), comes across as a little bland and even a bit dickish at first, getting into squabbles initially with Peter, but eventually comes into his own, learning how to use weapons in order to become Peter's right-hand man when Roger is put out of commission, and is ultimately a very likable character. Unfortunately for him and his friends, he gets too caught up in the idea that the mall is theirs and starts a war between themselves and the biker gang, which is what leads to his death and reanimation. And finally, there's Gaylen Ross as Fran, the female of the group, who is a bit of a drag and a sarcastic nag at first, not to mention the fact that she's pregnant, but I will say that she's a big improvement over Barbra: much more proactive and able to hold her own against the zombies when she needs to.

Other interesting characters appear on the news. At the beginning, you have Dr. Foster (David Crawford) and Sidney Berman (David Early), two guys who are trying to hold a show about what's going on about as the station around them devolves into chaos and anarchy. The two of them aren't exactly cordial with each other either, as Berman is siding with the general public and isn't willing to accept Crawford's less than sensitive suggestions to burn the bodies of the recently deceased as soon as possible, whereas Crawford knows it's the only way and tells Berman to stop trying to sugarcoat everything, saying, "You're not running a talk show here, Mr. Berman. You can forget pitching an audience the moral bullshit they want to hear!" That leads him into the popular line, "Every dead body that's not exterminated becomes one of them. It gets up and kills! The people it kills get up and kill!" It's also hard to forget Dr. Rausch (Richard France), an even more extremist version of Crawford who appears on the television to tell people that the zombies are no longer their friends and family and, "Must be destroyed on sight!" He becomes more and more deranged as time goes on, suggesting that those who are bitten should be fed to the zombies, feeling that they're not worth saving, and going as far as to say that all major cities should be bombed, despite the fact that they're may still be people there, saying, "They won't run out of food. That's the problem, you see. And they won't run out of food as long as we're still alive." He's also not at all tolerant of others trying to argue with them, continuously yelling, "Dummies!" until everyone shuts up at one point as well as insulting others for their perceived lack of intelligence. The last time you see him, he's quietly repeating the notion that they all must remain logical, looking as if he's saying this because he himself is about to reach the breaking point. When the commentator says that they just can't abandon their moral code, he says, "We've got to. We've got to remain logical. There's no choice. It's that or the end."

When I first saw this film, I knew that Tom Savini did stunts (he appears throughout the film as various zombies who get shot or hit) along with makeup effects but I didn't know that he also actually acted, so I was quite surprised when I first saw him as the biker known as Blades. He's definitely one of the standout characters of the biker gang, along with his friend and assistant, Taso Stavrakis (who also does a number of stunts in the film), as Sledge, the hammer-toting biker who has quite a gruesome death, and, although don't remember if they ever named him, the very enthusiastic guy who's spying on the mall with Blades during their first scene. I don't know what it is about this guy but the quiet and yet, at the same time, over-the-top way he delivers his lines, like, "Son of a bitch!" and, "Yeah, trucks!", as they see how our heroes have got it made in the mall is hilarious.

While he'd been doing makeup effects for a while by then, this was Tom Savini's first really big film, the one that put him on the map and got him a number of jobs (including the original Friday the 13th) and he absolutely lets it rip as far as the gore is concerned. There are arms and legs being ripped off and chewed on, heads exploding and the tops being sliced off, people being torn into and their guts munched on, a screwdriver being shoved into a zombie's ear, filling it with blood, zombies getting stabbed in the throat, a machete to the head for one zombie... it's a splatterfest, to say the least. The climax where members of the biker gang are getting their stomachs ripped open and the zombies chew on their intestines and other innards is really disgusting. Even me, a guy who has seen a ton of horror films, was like, "Oh, good God!", when I first saw that, and the knowledge that those were real animal guts only adds to the "ick" factor. The only thing that kind of spoils the makeup effects for me, though, is the bright red blood, which looks orange and even pink in some spots. Savini himself has explained that, at that point, he hadn't learned how to create convincing blood, which is why it looks the way it does, and has always regretted that mistake, which I can't blame him for. Romero says he likes the way the blood looks because it helps the film feel more like a comic book but it always kind of takes me out of it. It's one of the film's few flaws, as far as I'm concerned.

The overall look of the zombies has always felt a little bland to me, in that they're mostly just people with gray-colored makeup on (depending on the lighting in a given scene, sometimes they look blue, greenish, or even a little orange!). I have to cut Savini and his effects crew some slack, though, as they didn't have a lot of money or materials to work with and also probably didn't have the time needed to come up with a more impressive general design, as you would see in Day of the Dead, but still, the zombies still look rather generic to me for the most part. That said, though, there are many memorable zombie characters in the film, some of which have interesting and memorable additions to their makeup. For sheer concept alone, you have the nun zombie and nurse zombies, the big fat one in swimming trunks (you have to give that guy extra credit for not only wearing those while they were shooting in the middle of winter in Pittsburgh but also for falling into the fountain inside the mall), and the Hare Crishna zombie, who gets his own little sequence when he finds his way up to the room near the roof where the characters are taking shelter and gets after Fran. Design-wise, some notable ones are the airstrip zombie who has a massive, Frankenstein's monster-like forehead that gets sliced off the helicopter blades, the zombie with the mangled face who's featured on the poster, and some of those seen during the opening action sequence in the apartment building, especially down in the basement, where you have some that are writhing around in body bags and one that has what appears to be dried blood on the top of his head. As far as zombie deaths go, in addition to the airstrip one, you can't beat those aforementioned ones that get taken out by a screwdriver and a machete respectively. And finally, you have the zombies that Roger and Steven become when they die. Roger's zombie look is pretty basic, with chalky-white skin and red coloring around the eyes, but what makes him notable is how Reiniger plays the scene. When he's first reanimated, there seems to be a trace of Roger's consciousness left when he looks around with a confused expression but, when he sees Peter, it appears as if it instantly melts away and the pure animal instinct kicks in as he rises up. But the most memorable zombie in the entire movie has to be Steven. Not only is his look far more memorable due to the damage he took before dying but there's also his twisted way of walking, with one foot facing in the opposite direction, the pistol that's still dangling from his finger, and how he uses the knowledge he retains from his living life to open the way to the stairway leading to up the living area, prompting the other zombies to follow him up there.

This movie is a rarity in that it actually appeals to many who aren't even horror fans because of how it appears to constantly switch genres. When it's not being a flat-out horror movie, at some times it's a comic book-style, action film, at others it's a biker flick, and there's a point near the end where it even becomes a Three Stooges-esque slapstick comedy! Another reason why it has more of a mass appeal is that it has a more upbeat ending than Night of the Living Dead, although at first, it seems like it's going to have another downbeat ending, as Peter prepares to commit suicide and Fran, instead of taking off in the helicopter, appears to accept her fate and gets out to face the zombies. But, at the last minute, Peter saves the day, blasting and punching away zombies as he makes his way to the roof and he and Fran escape. Granted, it's unsure how far they'll get, since they don't have much fuel left, but at leas they've escaped the immediate danger. The ending was a last minute decision by Romero and company, as they were originally going to go ahead with that downbeat ending but decided to just let the characters get away after all the carnage they've been through, as well as possibly because such a downer ending would clash with the more fun tone of this film.

As I said before, while Night's political overtones weren't intended, George Romero began intentionally putting social satire and statements into his subsequent films, particularly his zombie movies, and Dawn of the Dead is no exception. While there's still some of the concept of dehumanization from the first film lingering in the air here, with the sequence of rednecks enjoying killing the zombies, consumerism and how society makes materialism seem more important are the primary targets here and they're quite obvious, right down to the basic idea of the characters taking shelter in a shopping mall, which were just starting to become a thing at the time. Who wouldn't want to live in a mall, where you have everything you could ever want at your fingertips? It's a notion that the characters take to heart as soon as they get there, grabbing whatever they can get their hands on, and then Peter comes up with the notion that maybe they should stay there. The point really starts to be driven home after they manage to barricade themselves inside, away from the zombies, with Roger yelling, "We whipped them and we got it all!" Yeah, they have it all now, and you have a montage that shows them adapting to life in the mall, in this consumer's paradise where they not only have plenty of food and weapons but also nice clothes, jewelry, cosmetics, arcade games, and even money that Peter and Steven take from one store but, at the end of the day, it doesn't mean a thing when society is collapsing and the human race being driven to the brink of extinction by the zombies. That's what make Steven's demise particularly sad: he started a war with the biker gang over stuff that has no meaning. It gives Fran's earlier line, "What's happened to us?" when she sees how zombie-like they themselves have become a whole new meaning. Speaking of which, Romero also draws some uncomfortably true parallels between the zombies and shoppers in general, with the notion that, even though they're now undead, they still have some vague memories of how significant the mall was in their lives and are trying to get in. And don't those shots of the zombies wandering around the mall aimlessly and gathering outside doors, scratching to get in, remind you of the stuff you see around Christmastime, especially Black Friday? To me, that makes the idea of the monsters in these movies being us very palpable, especially in the consumer-heavy day and age.

There are several different versions of Dawn of the Dead: the American theatrical version, the extended version, which Romero cut together to show at the 1978 Cannes Film Festival before cutting it back for general release, and the European version produced by Dario Argento. I'm lucky enough to have all of these versions on hand to watch in the four-disc ultimate edition by Anchor Bay, although I must say that I prefer the theatrical version, which I feel is just long enough and has a nice mixture of the library music Romero used and the music by Goblin Argento commissioned. The extended version is interesting to see, with its longer scenes (most notably one that features an appearance by Joe Pilato, who'd play Captain Rhodes in Day of the Dead) and more exposition, but its far too long, often dragging at points, and doesn't have any of the music by Goblin which, as we'll get into, is a big factor in making the film special. As a result, I've only watched that cut once. At this point, I've never seen the European version, which is simply called Zombie, although I hear it's not that good. It's the shortest of the cuts and it seems like Argento made it so by removing exposition and a lot of the humor in order to try to make it play more like a straight horror film, something I think Romero frowned upon, as well as making the editing faster.

As I described up above, the film's music varies widely depending on what cut you're watching: you've either got a mixture of library tracks and Goblin's music in the theatrical version, all library tracks in the extended version, or all Goblin music in the European version. I have to say, I personally prefer the Goblin music to the library tracks. That music has such an unusual electronic and acoustic sound to it that it fits well with the movie's tone, be it that driving, "Dun, dun," piece, that bizarre, freakish-sounding theme that you hear in all of the trailers and TV spots, and that action-oriented piece that got re-used a lot in Hell of the Living Dead (as did virtually the entirety of Goblin's score, for that matter). The library music that Romero used has some interesting pieces, like that upbeat piece you hear when things are going the characters' way, that heroic music at the end when Peter, at the last minute, decides to charge his way to the roof and escape with Fran, and that famous polka-like piece you hear most notably over the ending credits, but for the most part, I prefer Goblin's music. As was the case with Night of the Living Dead, the library music is often obviously from somewhere else rather than being written specifically for the film and for me, makes it feel much more cheap than it really is. I'm just glad that this was the last movie where Romero used library music.

To sum it up, Dawn of the Dead is, in my opinion, one of those rare movies that truly deserves all of the praise and love its fans give it. I'm not as rabid about it as its most diehard fans are and there are many other horror films out there that I personally enjoy more but, that said, it not only is on the list of my favorite horror movies but, like its predecessor, would also be in my favorite films of all time period. It's well written and directed, has some great memorable characters and actors, is wonderfully paced despite its running time, with too many memorable sequences to count, is gory as all get-out and inventively so, has some nice social satire, and some interesting and memorable music. While there are some flaws, like the distracting color of the blood in many shots, the bland general look for the zombies, and the quality of some of the library, it's still a very well-done movie that's ultimately meant to just be a fun, gory, exciting two hours. Not all movies have to be really deep; like girls, some just want to have fun (boy, that was gay! Lol!). This is one of them and it works perfectly as such.