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Dawn of the Dead | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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he flesh-eating zombie plague of Night of the Living Dead is spreading. Francine Parker (Ross), a TV news employee, is caught in the middle of a catastrophic breakdown of order at her TV station. A scientist is interviewed on the air as the chaos ensues, warning viewers about the zombies' hunger for human flesh and telling them that they must destroy the brain of a zombie in order to neutralize it. Rescue and emergency stations are shutting down; martial law is being imposed against those who do not hand over the bodies of the recent dead to the authorities.
Francine's boyfriend, Stephen Andrews (Emge), the pilot of the station's traffic helicopter, slips into the studio and tells Francine they can escape using the helicopter. "Someone has got to survive!" says Stephen.
Meanwhile, Stephen's friend, Roger DeMarco (Reiniger), a SWAT team member, is taking part in a bloody shootout in a gang-run housing project. The raid is botched. Ravenous zombies wander the project, but they are not necessarily the most dangerous things the project residents have to face. The situation is partly brought under control by SWAT officer Peter Washington (Foree). In the basement of the project, under a dissipating cloud of tear gas, Roger and Peter meet an old priest, who tells them, "When the dead walk the Earth, we must stop the killing."
Stephen, Fran, Roger and Peter escape the city in the purloined helicopter. They fly over a countryside overrun by zombies. Exhausted, low on fuel, out of food and water, the quartet stumbles upon the deserted hulk of a vast shopping mall. They land on the roof. Through the skylights, zombies can be seen wandering the mall. But there's stuff in there the four need. Will they risk the dangers of facing undead flesh-eaters in an enclosed space in order to get the goods they want?
Savage, brilliant and wicked
George Romero's image of stumbling, brain-damaged, hungry zombies wandering a post-apocalyptic shopping mall is, simply, one of the most savage and brilliant visual metaphors in the history of movies; it's right up there with Slim Pickens as a whacked-out, gung-ho Yankee cowboy riding an A-bomb as if it were a rodeo bull in Doctor Strangelove. The wicked, scalpel-sharp satire of consumerism in Dawn of the Dead in no way diminishes the horror; it enhances the horror.
This is one of the most imitated movies of all time; its influence can be seen in everything from Sam Raimi's Evil Dead to Wilson Yip's Bio-Zombie to Paul Anderson's Resident Evil. None of the films that vulture-pick the legacy of Romero's masterpiece reaches the levels of horror that Romero achieves, despite advances in special-effects technology, higher budgets or (dare one say it?) tighter scripts and pacing. Why? The horror that Romero articulates, even during the film's several slow spots, is potent because of the insight of his social commentary. Zack Snyder's zombies in his inferior remake are faster and more extravagantly made-up than Romero's shambling blue-faced zombies dressed in '70s couture.
Romero's are ultimately more frightening because they are recognizable. Those brain-dead corpses with blind gazes wandering a consumer paradise are us, even though they want to eat us. Those who pastiche Romero usually miss this point, and make their zombies just an unambiguous "other" bunch of bad guys. Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later is the exception to this trend. Because of the strength of his social commentary, Romero can afford to make his zombies the objects of slapstick humor, and make his humans a far more deadly and evil threat than the undead.
The new high-definition DiviMax transfer is superb. Combined with a new Dolby sound mix, Dawn of the Dead looks better than it did in some of the low-rent theaters it played in back in '79. The commentary track with Romero, his wife Chris and makeup king Tom Savini is fun and chatty, but won't give fans much information they don't already know.
I've seen Dawn of the Dead in theaters, at midnight shows and on home video; after 25 years, the scenes of mayhem still get under my skin, and the humor still makes me laugh. It's pretty amazing how prescient Romero was, anticipating the consumer frenzy of the '80s and the gung-ho fervor of the first Gulf War in Day of the Dead. Can't wait for what he might show us in Dead Reckoning, his fourth Dead movie, should he ever get funding for it. — Mike
Also in this issue: Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed and The Winning Season
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