Dawn of the Dead **** (1978, David Emge, Ken Foree, Scott H Reiniger, Gaylen Ross) – Classic Movie Review 1472

Writer-director George Romero’s outstanding 1978 zombie horror movie follows four urban commandos holed up in a shopping mall in Monroeville, Pennsylvania, which is under attack from large groups of flesh-eating zombies caused by a plague of unknown origin.

David Emge, Ken Foree, Scott H Reiniger and Gaylen Ross star as the reanimation of the dead’s four key survivors, who barricade themselves inside the suburban shopping mall. They are two Philadelphia SWAT team members, a traffic reporter and his TV executive girlfriend.

The second part of Romero’s Living Dead quartet sees the zombies gain a pack instinct that encourages them to wander the mall for eternity in search of their highly individual choice of food, tasty human flesh. Mass hysteria breaks out as the zombies threaten, moving in relentlessly and eerily slowly, and proving their most menacing when they gather in their large groups.

If taken seriously, Romero’s screenplay seems to imply a criticism of Americans as consumer zombies, but the movie can also be viewed a pure horror rollercoaster ride that throws in plenty of scares and gore as it pits the heroes against an enemy that they can neither control nor understand. With its small cast, there is plenty of screen time for each of the characters and a resulting emphasis on character development. The story unfolds over a period of several months.

Tom Savini, who puts in a cameo appearance as the motorcycle gang member Blades who gets his stomach torn out, provides the gut-crunching makeup effects that contribute enormously to the apocalyptic terror.

Dawn of the Dead is the first sequel to Night of the Living Dead (1968), though it contains no characters or settings from it, and a prequel to Day of the Dead (1985) and Land of the Dead (2005).

Eat before you watch!

It was made for only $650,000, and grossed $55 million worldwide, earning good reviews and eventually establishing itself as a classic.

The DVD Exclusive Director’s Cut runs 140 minutes, instead of the original 126 minutes. Dawn of the Dead was remade in 2004 in a re-imagining of this film.

RIP George Romero, who died on 16 July 2017, aged 77.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1472

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