Dawn of the Dead

Dawn of the Dead (also known as George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead, Zombie internationally, and alternately called Zombie: Dawn of the Dead) is a 1978 American / Italian horror film, written and directed by George A. Romero. The film stars David Emge, Ken Foree, Scott H. Reiniger and Gaylen Ross. It was the second film made in Romero's Living Dead series, preceded by 1968's Night of the Living Dead, and followed by Day of the Dead in 1985. Dawn of the Dead contains no characters or settings from its predecessor, and shows in larger scale the apocalyptic effects a zombie epidemic would have on society. In the film, a plague of unknown origin has caused the reanimation of the dead, who prey on human flesh, which subsequently causes mass hysteria. Several survivors of the outbreak barricade themselves inside a suburban shopping mall.

Dawn of the Dead was shot over approximately four months, from late 1977 to early 1978, in the Pennsylvania cities of Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Monroeville.^[2] Its primary location is set in the Monroeville Mall. The film was made on a relatively modest budget estimated at US$650,000, and was a significant box office success for its time, grossing an estimated $55 million worldwide.^[1] Since opening in theaters in 1978, reviews for the film have been nearly unanimously positive.^[3]

In addition to three official sequels, the film has spawned numerous parodies and pop culture references. A remake of the movie premiered in the United States on March 19, 2004. Labeled a "re-imagining" of the original film's concept,^[4] several major themes, including the primary setting in a shopping mall, remain essentially the same. Cultural and film historians read significance into the film's plot, linking it to critiques of large corporations and American consumerism and of the social decadence and excess going on in America during the late 1970s.

Plot

Philadelphia

Following the scenario set up in the previous movie, the film depicts the United States of America struck by a pandemic of reanimated human beings, who now have no other desire than to feast on the flesh of the living. As in the previous film, the cause of the plague is not fully understood by the scientific community. Despite desperate efforts by the U.S. Government and local civil authorities to control the situation, society has effectively collapsed and the remaining survivors seek refuge. Although several scenes show rural citizens and military fighting the zombies effectively, cities, with their high populations and close quarters, are essentially deathtraps. Increasingly infrequent television and radio broadcasts imply that chaos is spreading throughout the country.

The film opens in the television studio of the fictional station, WGON in Philadelphia, where confusion reigns. Following some introductory exposition, Stephen (David Emge), the station's traffic helicopter pilot, and his girlfriend Francine (Gaylen Ross) plan to steal the helicopter in order to escape the zombie threat.

Meanwhile, Roger (Scott H. Reiniger), and the rest of the city's SWAT force raid a tenement building because the residents are ignoring the martial law imposition of delivering the dead over to National Guard and evacuating private dwellings. The most violent residents are slaughtered by SWAT operatives in a shoot out, while the peaceful residents are attacked by their own dead relatives, who emerge from their rooms, reanimated by the zombie infection.

During the raid, Roger meets Peter (Ken Foree), part of another unit. Peter suggests deserting their SWAT force and fleeing the city in his friend's helicopter later that night. Soon, they find the basement packed full of undead that the living residents had kept from being seized by the National Guard, and the two kill the zombies with shots in their heads.

Later that night, Stephen and Roger meet up with Francine and Stephen on the rooftop of the TV station and they escape Philadelphia in the station's helicopter, with the intention of reaching the safety of the Canadian wilderness. During their long flight north they pass over countryside where National Guard troops and redneck vigilantes are taking the situation in stride, both combating zombies out and holding a party.

The group stops for fuel at a private airstrip, where Stephen and Peter are both almost bit.

Monroeville Mall

Looking for a place to rest, they find a mall and stop to check it out. After finding that much of the mall is free from zombies, they look for a way in. They find a hidden storage room filled with food, to which they can get to by breaking a skylight and climbing down a ladder. Finding the area safe, they rest and eat some rations.

After finding out that Francine is pregnant, Peter and Roger go out to look around and see what else is in the mall. They find the control room, where they turn on everything electronic in the mall (including the escalators which allows the zombies to travel to the second floor), and where they find blueprints and the building's keys. They take this opportunity to go into a department store and get some more supplies, leaving Fran to watch Stephen as he sleeps.

When Stephen wakes up, he takes their last weapon and searches for the others, leaving Francine in the storeroom alone and without protection. After narrowly escaping an undead security guard, he finds them. Meanwhile, a zombie moves towards the storeroom. The men trick the undead so that they can escape unnoticed through an elevator air shaft, and make it back to the hideout just in time to save Francine.

The men now decide to make the mall their own sanctuary, and though Fran is skeptical, they start enacting their plan.

First, to keep the undead from entering the mall, they block the large acrylic glass entrance doors with semi trucks. During this endeavor, Roger acts recklessly and is bit by one of the undead. Next, the group drive around in a display car, locking up entrance doors. Last, they destroy the remaining undead inside with armament they acquired from a gun shop inside the mall.

Now that the mall is safe, the four settle in. As they make a new life, they indulge their every material desire. Through infrequent television broadcasts, they learn that society outside of the mall is continuing to collapse. Roger slowly succumbs to the infection, but asks Peter to wait to kill him as he wants to try "not to come back." Following the rules for zombie infection set in the previous movie, the infection kills Roger. Peter gives him his chance, but the body is reanimated, and he shoots it in it's head.

The film then skips ahead several months. During this time, Stephen has taught Francine how to fly the helicopter. Francine now appears to be near the end of the second trimester of her pregnancy. All emergency broadcast transmissions have ceased, though Stephen still clings to the faint hope of another broadcast. Stricken with boredom and hopelessness, the novelty of their materialistic utopia wears thin.

One day, some members of a biker gang spot Stephen and Francine in the helicopter as he gives her a flight lesson. That night, the three survivors receive a short wave radio call from the gang, announcing that they are going to attack. The bikers, intent on looting, break into the mall, letting in hundreds of the undead. Angered, Stephen interrupts their plundering and initiates a gun battle with the bikers, which Peter joins. Stephen gives up and tries to escape back to the living quarters, but is found by some bikers. They shoot him, leaving him to zombies, who attack him. Peter waits with Fran in the living quarters to give Stephen a chance to return.

Hours later, Stephen has bled to death, and is reanimated. Quickly, he leads the undead back to the living quarters, through a false wall they had built to hide the entrance way. Peter sends Francine to escape to the roof, but stays behind and boards himself in a bedroom intent on ending his life before the zombies attack him. At the last second, He decides against this and fights his way to the roof and into the helicopter as Francine pulls away from the landing pad. The film ends as the duo flies away from the mall at dawn in the low-fueled helicopter.

Alternate ending

The vaguely uplifting finale in the final cut of the film was not what Romero had originally planned. According to the original screenplay, Peter was to shoot himself in the head instead of making a heroic escape. Fran would commit suicide by thrusting her head into the helicopter's propeller blades. The end credits would run over a shot of the helicopter's blades turning until the engine winds down, implying that Fran and Peter would not have had enough fuel to escape.^[5] During production it was decided, however, to end the movie on a more hopeful, upbeat note.

Much of the lead-up to the two suicides was left in the film, as Fran stands on the roof doing nothing as zombies approach, and Peter puts a gun to his head, ready to shoot himself with a Derringer before suddenly deciding to live and escape with Fran. While Romero has said the original ending was scrapped before being shot, behind the scenes photos show the original version was at least tested.^[6]

Cast

• David Emge as Stephen: A helicopter pilot who gives traffic reports for the local station, WGON. He set the plot into motion by deciding to steal the helicopter and flee to the safest area they could find. He is inexperienced with firearms and combat tactics, which almost leads to his downfall on several occasions. By the end of the film, he has become very materialistic, which leads to his own death.
• Ken Foree as Peter: A member of a local SWAT team, he is forced to take down an unruly and racist SWAT member on Roger's team. Afterward, he takes up an offer by Roger to flee with his friends Stephen and Francine. He is a leader, and is the first to suggest staying at the mall. His grandfather, a native Trinidadian, was a voodoo priest that taught him the film's tagline: When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the Earth.
• Scott H. Reiniger as Roger: Much like Peter, he is a member of the Philadelphia SWAT team. He is friends with Stephen. After several of his team members are killed or commit suicide while clearing out an apartment building, he decides to flee and take Peter along. During their attempts to lock up the mall, his recklessness leads to his being bitten by a zombie.
• Gaylen Ross as Francine: The girlfriend of Stephen who has recently discovered she is pregnant. She is the only one of the group who is initially repulsed by the idea of staying at the mall, hoping instead to continue their helicopter journey to Canada. Though initially unable to fend for herself, she learns marksmanship and how to fly the helicopter.
• David Crawford as Dr. Foster: A government employee of the fictional organization, OEP. He is interviewed by Mr. Berman in the film's opening scene and verbally spars with Berman and several crew members at the station for giving government orders that the citizenry disagree with.
• David Early as Mr. Berman: The lead interviewer at WGON. He is seen only during the opening segment in the TV station.
• Richard France as Dr. Millard Rausch: A government scientist whose abrasive personality and lack of empathy bring him at odds with the audience at his press conferences and interviews. He is a proponent controversial solutions to the situation, such as dropping nuclear weapons on all major cities, and feeding the undead with preserved bodies over a course of time to keep them away from the living.
• Howard Smith as the TV Commentator: A seemingly unwitting news anchor of a local television station.
• James A. Baffico as Wooley: A racist and out-of-control SWAT team member bent on eliminating all occupants of the apartment building, zombie or otherwise. After entering a homicidal rage and attacking zombies, civilians, and SWAT team members alike, he is killed by Peter.

Development

Pre-production

The history of Dawn of the Dead began in 1974, when George Romero was invited by friend Mark Mason of Oxford Development Company—whom Romero knew from an acquaintance at his alma mater, Carnegie Mellon—to visit the Monroeville Mall, which Mason's company managed. After showing Romero hidden parts of the mall, during which Romero noted the bliss of the consumers, Mason jokingly suggested that someone would be able to survive in the mall should an emergency ever occur.^[7] With this inspiration, Romero began to write the screenplay for the film.

Romero and his producer, Richard P. Rubinstein, were unable to procure any domestic investors for the new project. By chance, word of the sequel reached Italian horror director Dario Argento. A fan of Night of the Living Dead and an early critical proponent of the film, Argento was eager to help the horror classic receive a sequel. He met Romero and Rubinstein, helping to secure financing in exchange for international distribution rights. Argento invited Romero to Rome so he would have a change of scenery while writing the screenplay. The two could also then discuss plot developments.^[8]

Romero was able to secure the availability of Monroeville Mall as well as additional financing through his connections with the mall's owners at Oxford Development.^[7] Once the casting was completed, principal shooting was scheduled to begin in Pennsylvania on November 13, 1977.

Production

Principal photography for Dawn of the Living Dead (its working title at the time) began on November 13, 1977 at the Monroeville Mall. Use of an actual, open shopping mall during the Christmas shopping season caused numerous time constraints. Filming began nightly once the mall closed, starting at 11 PM and ending at 7 AM, when automated music came on.

As December rolled around, the production decided against having the crew remove and replace the Christmas decorations — a task that had proved to be too time consuming. Filming was shut down during the last three weeks of the year to avoid the possible continuity difficulties and unavoidable lost shooting time. Production would resume on January 3, 1978. During the break in filming, Romero took the opportunity to begin editing his existing footage.^[9]

The airfield scenes were filmed at the Harold W. Brown Memorial Airfield in Monroeville,^[10] an airport located about 10 miles from the mall that is still in use.^[11] The scenes of the group's hideout at the top of the mall were filmed on a set built at Romero's then-production company, The Latent Image.^[12] The elevator shaft was located there as well, as no such area of the mall actually existed. The gun store was also not located in the mall — for filming, the crew used Firearms Unlimited, a shop that existed in the East Liberty district of Pittsburgh at the time.

Principal photography on Dawn of the Dead ended February 1978, and Romero's process of editing would begin. By using numerous angles during the filming, Romero allowed himself an array of possibilities during editing — choosing from these many shots to reassemble into a sequence that could dictate any number of responses from the viewer simply by changing an angle or deleting or extending portions of scenes. This amount of superfluous footage is evidenced by the numerous international cuts, which in some cases affects the regional version's tone and flow.

Make-up and Effects

Tom Savini, who had been offered the chance to do special effects and make-up for Romero's first zombie film, Night of the Living Dead, before being drafted to go to Vietnam, made his debut as an effects artist on Dawn of the Dead.[13]  He had  had a crew of eight to assist in applying a gray makeup to two to three hundred extras each weekend during the shoot.[14] One of his assistants during production was Joseph Pilato, who played a police captain in the film and would go on to play the lead villain in the film's sequel, Day of the Dead.[14]

The makeup for the multitudes of extras in the film was a basic blur or gray tinge to the face of each extra. Some featured zombies, who would be seen close-up or on-screen longer than others, had more time spent on their look. The film has been criticized for the poor quality makeup of the zombies. Even Savini himself later said it was a mistake to paint them in gray, because many of them ended up looking quite blue on film.^[15] Many of the featured zombies became part of the fanfare, with nicknames based upon their look or activity—such as Machete Zombie,^[16] Sweater Zombie,^[16] and Nurse Zombie.^[16]

A cast of Gaylen Ross' head that was to be used in the original ending of the film ended up as an exploding head during the tenement building scene. The head was shot with an actual shotgun to get the head to explode.^[13]

One of the unintentional standout effects was the bright, fluorescent color of the fake blood that was used in the film. Savini was an early opponent of the blood, produced from 3M, but Romero thought it added to the film.^[17]

Music

See also: Dawn of the Dead (soundtracks)

The film's music varies with each of the various cuts. For Romero's theatrical version, musical cues and selections were chosen from the De Wolfe Music Library, a compilation of stock music scores and cues. In the montage scene featuring the rednecks and National Guard, the song played in the background is called "Cause I'm a Man" by the Pretty Things. The song was first released on the group's LP Electric Banana.^[18] The music heard playing over the film's credits was actually not the mall's music — it was a song titled "The Gonk" — a polka style song with a chorus of zombie moans added over the background by Romero — from the DeWolfe Library.^[19]

For Dario Argento's international cut of Dawn of the Dead, the Italian director used the band Goblin (incorrectly credited as "The Goblins") extensively. Goblin was a four-piece Italian band that did mostly contract work for film soundtracks. Argento, who received a credit for original music alongside Goblin, collaborated with the group to get songs for his cut of the film. Romero used three of their pieces in his version.

The Goblin score would later find its way onto a heavily Dawn of the Dead-inspired film, Hell of the Living Dead.

Post-production and releases

Romero, acting as the editor for his film, completed a hasty 139-minute version of the film (now known as the Extended, or Director's, Cut) for premiere at the 1978 Cannes Film Festival. This was later pared down to 126 minutes for the U.S. theatrical release. In an era before the NC-17 rating was available from the Motion Picture Association of America, the US theatrical cut of the film earned the taboo rating of X (which was and still is typically used for pornography) from the association because of its graphic violence. Rejecting this rating, the Romero and the producers chose to release the film unrated so as to help the film's commercial success.^[20] United Artists eventually agreed to release it domestically in the United States. It premiered in the US in New York on April 20, 1979.^[21]

Internationally, Argento controlled the final cut for non-English speaking countries. The version he created clocked in at 119 minutes. It included changes such as more music from Goblin than the two cuts completed by Romero, removal of some expository scenes, and a faster cutting pace.^[22] Released in Italy in September 1978, it actually debuted nearly nine months before the US theatrical cut.^[21] In Italy it was released under the full title Zombi: L’alba dei Morti Viventi, followed in March of 1979 by France as Zombie: Le Crépuscule des Morts Vivants, in Spain as Zombi: El Regreso de los Muertos Vivientes, in the Netherlands as Zombie: In De Greep van de Zombies, by Germany’s Constantin Film as Zombie, and in Denmark as Zombie: Raedslernes Morgen.^[21][23]

Dawn of the Dead went on to gross approximately $55 million worldwide, equivalent to approximately $177 million in 2007.^[1] , the return on investment of its roughly $650,000 budget made it a highly profitable film. Its success in then-West Germany earned it the Golden Screen Award, given to films that have at least 3 million admissions within 18 months of release.^[24]

For a thorough comparison of all major releases of Dawn of the Dead, see comparison of Dawn of the Dead versions.

Reception

Considered a classic of 1970s cinema^[25], the film has been heavily praised in film reviews since its release, currently holding a 97% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes.^[3] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun Times gave it four out of four stars, proclaimed it "one of the best horror films ever made". Admitting the film is "gruesome, sickening, disgusting, violent, brutal and appalling", he conceded that "nobody ever said art had to be in good taste."^[26]

In the lone review for the film attributed as negative, New York Times reviewer Janet Maslin could not discuss the merits of the film, as she walked out after the first fifteen minutes of the film due to "a pet peeve about flesh-eating zombies who never stop snacking."^[27]

In the 25th Anniversary issue of Fangoria, Dawn of the Dead was chosen as the best horror film from 1979—the year of its release in the United States.^[28]

Home video

In 2004, after numerous VHS, Laserdisc and DVD releases of several different versions of the film from various companies, Anchor Bay Entertainment released a definitive Ultimate Edition DVD box set of Dawn of the Dead. The set features all three widely-available versions of the film, along with different commentary tracks for each version, documentaries and extras.^[29] Also rereleased with the DVD set was Roy Frumkes' Document of the Dead, which chronicled the making of Dawn of the Dead and Romero's career to that point. The Ultimate Edition earned a Saturn Award for Best Classic Film Release.^[30]

The U.S. theatrical cut of Dawn of the Dead was released in high definition on the Blu-Ray disc format on October 7, 2007.

3D Version

It has been announced recently that the film producer, Richard Rubinstein, is planning to re-release the original Dawn in 3-D. According to Fangoria, he has plans to create a new sequel to the film as well .^[31]

See also

• Dawn of the Dead (2004 film)
• List of zombie films
• Dawn of the Dead (soundtracks)
• Dawn of the Dead in popular culture.
• Comparison of Dawn of the Dead versions

References

External links

• Dawn of the Dead (1978) at the Internet Movie Database
• Dawn of the Dead (1978) at Allmovie
• Dawn of the Dead (1978) review at Internal Bleeding
• Filming locations used in the movie
• DawnoftheDead.net Film Fansite

The Living Dead series Romero's Dead films Night of the Living Dead (1968) • Dawn of the Dead (1978) • Day of the Dead (1985) • Land of the Dead (2005) • Diary of the Dead (2008) • Island of the Dead (2009) Dead series remakes Night of the Living Dead (1990) • Dawn of the Dead (2004) • Day of the Dead (2008) Return of the Living Dead films The Return of the Living Dead (1985) • Part II (1988) • 3 (1993) • Necropolis (2005) • Rave from the Grave (2005) Unofficial sequels & remakes Zombi 2 (1979) • Zombi 3 (1988)  • Children of the Living Dead (2001) • Day of the Dead 2: Contagium (2005) • Night of the Living Dead 3D (2006) Related topics Return of the Living Dead (1977 novel) • Document of the Dead (1985) • Flesheater (1988) • Shaun of the Dead (2004) • Land of the Dead: Road to Fiddler's Green (2005 video game)

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