Film Review: DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978)

 THE IMPORTANCE OF LOVING ‘DAWN’

Steven West

“Instinct…memory…what they used to do. This was an important place in their lives…”

For horror fans – or, indeed, movie fans – of a certain age and disposition, George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead has long held an important place in their lives. It doesn’t matter which version – the longest “Cannes Cut”, the more action-driven “Argento Cut” or Romero’s preferred U.S. theatrical version – because, in any form, it’s something to which we return out of instinct, (fond) memory and with (in theory) an older, wiser perspective on something we have appreciated at different life stages.

It was once the subject of washed-out, censored, “Video Nasty”-era VHS tapes that were still thrilling because it’s all we had. Or late-night BBC showings that were snuck under the radar when Mary Whitehouse (of the Dead) wasn’t looking and were censored differently, possibly just for shits and giggles. It was the subject of much playground banter amongst those who were part of a certain unofficial “club”, a club whose mission rarely amounted to anything more ambitious than getting the perfect exploding-head freeze frame on the gargantuan VHS player at home. And it now has as great a reputation in film history as any conventionally “respectable” piece of 1970s American cinema. Admired filmmakers including Jim Jarmusch – with The Dead Don’t Die – and Danny Boyle (28 Days Later) have repurposed its central satirical beats and tweaked its political and cultural commentary for modern audiences but have seldom found anything to say that Romero hadn’t already said over 40 years ago.

Meanwhile, the 21st century just keeps on reminding us of how we have become the unwitting stars of what was once a fictional piece of work. TV news bulletins capture annual images of average shoppers transformed into ravenous zombies thanks to the lure of “Black Friday”, that wonderful time of year when 70 inch flat-screen TVs too big for any average living room sell for the price of a month’s nutrition for that slowly rotting guy laying in his own piss on a miserable November day in the doorway of the long-closed Blockbuster – from which you once rented zombie movies. But it’s OK – if we don’t make eye contact, he doesn’t exist. And doesn’t Avengers Endgame look incredible on that TV?!

In 2020 (and beyond), the world failed to agree on the true threat posed by, and the origins of, the pandemic – or a feasible escape route from its life-changing grip. “I won’t wear a mask because it infringes on my personal freedom to kill my own Nan”. “I’m not going to take the vaccine because Charles on Facebook says it’s already made some bloke’s cock explode and I want to do my own research”. But common ground was found via the need to buy all the pasta and toilet rolls from an eerily barren Asda, while (whenever permitted) joining an endless queue in the rain to buy a sweatshop-generated T-shirt from Primark for no apparent reason other than, like the zombies in Romero’s world, it’s what we used to do…

All three of Romero’s beloved original zombie trilogy are containment movies with something to say about America across the three different decades in which they first appeared – about the function of the living dead in a rapidly changing world, about our own human frailties during a national / worldwide catastrophe. Bookended by a pair of claustrophobic, intense and almost overwhelmingly pessimistic films from the late 1960s and the mid-1980s, Dawn found some light at the end of the tunnel of post-Nixon America – but all of its most depressing themes, like those of the clammy, hopeless Night and the dialogue-heavy, sweat-inducing Day, have, if anything become even more relevant in the world of Trump, Covid and Jeff fuckin’ Bezos. 

All three have been imitated endlessly, either via direct remakes, embarrassing in-name-only sequels or by critically celebrated filmmakers pretending that they definitely, absolutely, haven’t just made a “zombie movie” …or even, perish the thought, a Horror Movie. The jovial Romero was a wonderfully self-effacing and unpretentious figure – his attitude to the growing adulation received by his work reflected in his oft-quoted comment confirming that, just because he was disembowelling someone, it didn’t mean we had to look for some kind of “message” beneath the viscera. Following in the wake of movies that, at the time, were more fashionable to worship (notably La Grande Bouffe), Dawn is undeniably one of cinema’s great satires – lampooning a materialistic society that will return to aimlessly shuffling around a soulless, jarringly lit shopping mall even when they are decomposing. We all know that, in the event of a zombie apocalypse, those pandemic Primark queuers will be right back in that rainy queue, fighting over snoods and hotpants even while post-mortem gunge drops out of their rotting arseholes. 

But…Romero was equally interested in custard pie fights and what we can justifiably describe as “just generally cool shit”. 

And Dawn is that rare sequel (for any genre) that actually bothers to expand upon notions introduced by its predecessor while offering an entirely different stand-alone cinematic experience. Most sequels of the last 10 years are, essentially, the equivalent of Amazon telling you that, because you purchased that stylish 15-inch Captain Kirk Butt-Blaster Strap-On, you may also enjoy the stylish 15-inch Jeremy Paxman Anal Annihilation Strap-On. Both of which are, obviously, much more enjoyable to shove up your own rectum than a Blu-ray of Annabelle Comes Home.

It has a pulse-racing opening stretch establishing welcome continuity to its monochrome forerunner via a tense TV news room scenario: a nation in a state of emergency on the “Dawn” of the “Night” before. It’s often overlooked that Romero, also a fine editor, was a terrific action director, and the first half-hour of Dawn has a genuine sense of tension, excitement and deft exposition-on-the-move that the wobbly / blurry camerawork and jittery whiplash-inducing cutting of 28 Days Later could never hope to match. Graphic zombie bites of the kind that weren’t an option for the 1968 production combine with mayhem in the ghettos and the reminder that the threat from those “in charge” is as grave as that posed by the shambling dead. There’s a witty cut from someone muttering “Those rednecks are probably enjoying the whole thing!” to a gaggle of beer-swilling yokels adopting zombie killing as a new sport, to connect this fracturing world directly to the last we saw of it in Night.

But…Romero knew to make it a whole lot of fun, too.

The world is totally shagged (which we knew in 1968, anyway) but the introduction of garish colour and a miscellany of memorable zombies means we feel fine. Zombie nuns! Undead school kids! Hare Krishna of the Dead! Rising special make-up effects legend Tom Savini experienced the horrors of Vietnam (which underscored Night) as a combat photographer, but his many cinematic endeavours from Dawn onward heralded the glorious, Fangoria-led age of the “Could we just rewind that…?” show-stopping gore set piece.

Beating Scanners by a couple of years and premiering in Italy in September 1978, a few months after John Cassavetes’ entire body blew apart from half a dozen different camera angles in The Fury, the exploding head in Dawn is perhaps the defining moment in the evolution of VHS-era horror. Savini would provide similarly spectacular detonating craniums in Maniac and The Prowler (both bonafide, and boner-bringing “Fucketh me!” moments) but this one seemed to announce the arrival of a new kind of “horror star”. Vincent Price, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing had been replaced by what Brian Yuzna once called “invasion of the rubber guys” – adoring Dick Smith-worshipping monster kids like Rick Baker and the trio that would later form KNB. Horror’s new rock stars were men with beards travelling from set to set with a grab bag of latex, hollowed-out machetes and much more realistic stage blood than the red paint stuff we got in the 1970s. Even if the rest of Dawn turned out to be as bad as Zombie Lake, we’d always have that blown brainpan. Or that big foreheaded chap who has his noggin sliced like a hardboiled egg.

These days you can watch the movie in three different cuts (the Argento is leaner but a tad less “fun”), in 4k, on Blu-ray, uncensored, with commentaries, etc. There’s probably a good chance that one day, some enterprising distributor will release a 4-D version in which you get regularly sprayed with real pieces of brain while an actor dressed as a zombie provides you with oral relief and a Ken Foree hologram stands on the side-lines looking cool. In any version, it’s an enduring masterpiece that juggles a constantly oscillating tone as the undead are ignored, mocked, rendered sympathetic, create horrifying mayhem or are confirmed as far less terrifying than the scientists contemplating the benefit of nuking major cities: “We’ve got to remain logical”. Scenes of the flesh-eating hordes stumbling into consumer products, riding escalators and stamping over now-useless dollar bills are understandably iconic and Romero knows just when to hijack the free-wheeling midsection with the arrival of Savini’s biker gang for an astutely judged blast of full-on action. 

Crucially perhaps for its status as an endlessly rewatchable picture, it’s not a downer: the nihilism of the first film replaced with cautious optimism – another reflection of American horror shifting from the total hopelessness of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) to the popcorn-friendly survivalist thrills of slasher cinema and upcoming splatstick joys like Re-Animator (1985) that, like Romero, knew when to be silly or serious. Ken Foree contemplates suicide, hinting at the ending that might have been but decides to fight on. The things that stay in your brain are not the utter despair of seeing Duane Jones doing everything “right” only to be pointlessly murdered – but those splashy gore highlights or the variety of zombies or that particular Goblin track permanently occupying the half of your brain that isn’t still taken up by The Cheeky Girls.

It’s a benchmark for zombie cinema and cinema itself. Few films have veered so successfully between laughter and tragedy, from childish indulgences and dressing up to watching your friends suffer a fate worse than death. Romero’s work seems even more significant now that, more than ever before, we are slaves to one “mall” or another, yearning for an enemy as simple as a Romero zombie. And, most of all, we’d love to just kick back with a good old custard pie fight.