Dawn of the Dead
Ok, you had to know that a George Romero movie would be on the list, right? I mean the guy came up with the most popular version of the zombie! (The slow shuffling, decomposing, mostly speechless ones.) The film series started in 1968 with a very low budget black-and-white film called Night of The Living Dead, which was independently financed and was considered one of the goriest movies of the time. It's stark, bleak, and horrifying if you take the time to think about the film. It's basically a few people holing up in a Pennsylvania farmhouse as the recently deceased come back to life. It's also a commentary on race relations and the coming of a new generation in America of the 1960s. This film was a slow-building success just like most horror films before the boom in the 1980s were. Dawn of the Dead followed a full 10 years later in 1978. Very different from Night, this one is like a pulp novel or a violent comic book, right down to the color palette. It's more of an action-adventure film than a horror film. As critics would say, "It's a rip-roaring good time." It's fun, it's violent, it's cartoony, it's suspenseful... It's amazing. It opened to great reviews and box office despite its not being able to be advertised in most newspapers or on TV due to its being not rated by the MPAA, who wanted to give it an X rating. The film was followed by Day of The Dead in 1985, which was considered a disappointment when first released. However, it has grown in stature over the years and is now considered just slightly less good than the first two films by most. It was also the first of the films to be paid for and released by a major studio. (Universal) There was then a long gap between the Dead films until 2005, when Universal released Land of The Dead. It did okay at the box office and starred John Leguizamo and Dennis Hopper. It is not, however, considered as great as the first two or three films. An unrated version of the film was released to DVD and blu-ray featuring added CGI blood-splatter and added scenes. This is, so far, the end of the official Dead series, though Romero would go on to do Diary of The Dead, which is a found-footage film dealing with a student film crew being stuck in the start of the zombie apocalypse. It got mixed reviews, though I liked it. This was followed by the not-so-good Survival of The Dead. It's really not worth speaking of, and Romero should have been ashamed to have directed it.
Now, let's talk about Dawn of The Dead, shall we? Here's the plot. A couple working at a news station decides to leave Pittsburgh by helicopter (the male part of the couple is a helicopter pilot) while they can as the zombie apocalypse grows. Meanwhile, there is a raid on a co-op housing building full of black and Puerto Rican immigrants that have been keeping their zombified dead in the basement. Well, that raid goes horribly wrong and two of the men decide to join the two newscasters on the helicopter, one of the men being a friend of the pilot. The four of them fly over Pennsylvania until they get to a mall, which they land on. They decide to fortify themselves inside and make it a home. That's basically the first 30 minutes of the movie and the rest involves trying to fortify the mall, make it unnoticable that they are there, trying to stock up the attic, keep the zombies out. and fight off a band of motorcycle thugs. The film is supposedly an indictment of late 70s consumerism. Big indoor malls were a new big thing, popping up all over America, and the mass consumerism of the Reagan era was just about to start. This point of view is one of the things that got the film great reviews from the more high-society critics like Pauline Kael, who is my favorite critic of all time. Like the first film, the movie has an iconic lead role for a black American. Indeed he's the lead character, and the member of the group that takes charge. George Romero was one of the first directors to do this, and it was so back when he did Night of the Living Dead as well.
A lot of younger horror fans don't like this film. The zombies slowly shuffle along, seemingly not a big threat. Again, as shown in the film, it's the fact that they're quiet and gang up that's the real threat. Also, more harm comes from other humans than the zombies. This is always true in Romero's films, and in zombie films in general. Even The Walking Dead shows this from time to time, especially with the General character. The film is also quite a bit of a slow mover. There are large gaps with no zombie activity. It's supposed to draw you into the lives of the characters we're following. Its supposed to show that living in a mall isn't all it's cracked up to be. The characters have moments of happiness, but in total there's this feel of unhappiness in them while they're there. After all, the world is falling apart around them. They're just delaying the inevitable. Despite this fact, it's still a very fun film to those of us with any attention span.
Stylistically, the film is amazing as well. It's not a real horror film, as I stated before. Its an action-adventure film shot in a cartoonishly bloody way. This film being in color, unlike the first installment meant that the special gore effects had to either look real, or they had to choose to shoot it in a way that such things weren't important. They chose the latter. Think of a comic-book come to life. That's what this film is. The blood is more orangish than blood-colored and the zombies are a greenish-grey color.
The music has become iconic over time. A combination of music from Goblin, the same group that did music for Dario Argento's Suspiria, and stock music that George Romero could use for free, the music ranges from the whimsical piece that's become the most remembered queue from this film called The Gonk, to the primal bongo/sythesizer sounds of Goblin's main title theme, the music is well remembered. The Gonk has been used in parodies and in referencing films since the movie's release in things like Robot Chicken (end credits music done in chicken-cluck style), and in Shaun of The Dead.
I first saw the film probably when I was 17. I rented the VHS tape from a local rental store and immediately fell in love with the film. I was so surprised at how fun and playful it was. It's nothing like the preceding film or the ones that come after it. It's also very different in tone from it's 2004 remake, which wasn't too bad either. Romero's zombie movies are not about the zombies. The zombies are MacGuffins in a way, used to thrust real people into positions they wouldn't be in otherwise. Usually MacGuffins are a goal or object that the main character is trying to get to or find; one that's not really explained or is unimportant to the plot. Hitchcock used those a lot and came up with the term. The zombies here are unexplained. They are an outside threat and used to keep our characters confined in this one place for most of the movie. That's the one reason they're there. Towards the end of the film, they seemingly have separated themselves from the zombies and everything seems like it will be okay. In the end, its other human beings that mess everything up and cause the most damage. When a zombie film becomes about the zombies, it becomes boring, stale, and usually gets horrible reviews. Romero even started to make that mistake after a while, when he got the zombies to start evolving, especially in the last film. It kind of worked in Day of the Dead, as it's only one zombie that's effected, but by Survival of The Dead, they start getting into domestication of them and such and it got silly. Still, if you're looking for a great zombie film, but don't want to just watch people having the dead jump out at them, this is the film for you. Please note that the film is gory, but not in a lifelike way. It's very cartoonish. Please not that the film is also a product of the late 70s. Full of garish fashions and 70s style music. It's part of the reason I like the film so much, but I know most don't have a 1970s obsession like I do. The film's just so damned fun and surprisingly adventuresome.
* There are many different cuts to this film. In America, there's the theatrical cut, which is Romero's preferred version, and the one I recommend as it flow's best. There's also an extended cut, which Romero says is not his preferred version, but it's there if you'd like to see it. There's also a cut made by the co-producer, Suspiria director Dario Argento, which called either the Argento cut or the European cut, as it's what the film was released like in Europe. It cuts out most of the humor, adds some more gore, and doesn't use the stock music. It instead uses more stuff by Goblin. I gave it a try and it didn't really work for me. Go with the theatrical cut.
And if you want to know what The Gonk is, you probably heard it before. Here it is...
No comments:
Post a Comment