The epidemic continues - all human life is at threat from an enemy which is getting closer by the day. Realizing the extent of the danger which faces practically everyone in the Philadelphia area (and the world), four 'survivors' are on the run. No longer can they stay and eradicate a problem that cannot be dealt with. These four survivors must lay low, find a place which can hold them up without any real problems, for a while a least. Stephen, Francine, Peter, and Roger - These people are the survivors, and the place they hold up in is the Monroeville shopping mall. With zombies all over the mall, the choice is simple for them, they are going to have a go at it, have a look around, pick up what they need and get the hell out, or stay and clear the mall of the zombie menace.

Dawn of the Dead, why do I love thee? Unlike Shakespeare, I have trouble figuring out the answer to this one. Any rational person would recoil at the thought of the gritty, gory, depressing premise and storyline of George Romero's classic actually causing someone to feel pleasure. Someone who enjoys a movie like this, rational folks think, must be the kind of person who would climb a belltower with a rifle. That's true. I would climb a belltower with a rifle, because everyone knows zombies can't climb, and I'd be safe up there.

I saw Dawn of the Dead on cable at some point early in my life. It had to have been HBO, because it wasn't edited. TBS isn't exactly known for showing the fountains of blood and ripped-off limbs during their movie showings that Romero is famous for. To me, something about it immediately struck me as magical. Maybe it was the whole idea of trying to survive--having an overriding purpose, a goal, that you could focus on, one that put the mundane concerns of our consumer-ruled day-to-day lives to shame. Maybe it was the underlying theme that pointed out the hypocrises of that same consumer culture that drew me in. Or maybe it was the zombies. Often, I find, the simplest explanation is the most relevant. All I know with dead certainty (haha--I am the punmaster) is that this film has IT. The same IT that makes any phenomena the singular experience it is. The actors and actress, all unknowns, helped create an atmosphere of the anyman, the thought that it could be YOU in that situation someday.

The film opens in the midst of the zombie invasion. Law enforcement is being overrun, both by the undead and unruly citizens. Martial law has been declared. Confusion, chaos, and violence reign in the cities and countryside alike. Fran and Stephen, employees at a television broadcast studio, have decided that they're going to make a run for it. They're joined by police officers Roger and Peter, and escape the city in the studio's helicopter. As they struggle to cope with watching civilization crumbling around them, they come across a mall. "Looks a shopping center. One of those big, indoor malls," they say. This was obviously before malls could be found in every single population center in the continental USA, naturally. Anyway, they hole up inside. It's the Monroeville Mall, Monroeville, PA, if anyone is interested, and it's a very nice place to shop to this day. I bought a pair of khakis there, once upon a time. I think the location was an integral part of the movie's magic--this is a place no one associates with horror. They associate with day-to-day life, and instead of shopping, we're treated to horrific zombies bent on the consumption of our heroes' flesh. Culture shock, if you will. Then there's the looting aspect.

Once the group clears out the mall, they help themselves to whatever they want in a kind of vain attempt to return to normalcy. They deck out their hiding spot in the mall with the latest in electronic record players and rabbit-ear televisions, even stacks of cold cash from the bank, and find that they're miserable. Whether they choose to acknowledge it or not, they're trying to hide from reality. Beyond the basic theme of survival horror, this movie has very real morals and lessons lurking just below the surface. Fran seems to be the one who realizes this first, arguing with Stephen over continuing to monitor the television for broadcasts when there have been none for weeks. While they've been hiding inside, outside civilization has finished crumbling.

During a helicopter-flying lesson, the group is spotted by a platoon of heavily-armed biker/raiders, the leader of which is played by Tom Savini himself, gore expert and special effects aficionado. The raiders stage a, well, raid on the mall. They break in rather heavy-handedly, and begin to loot the place of anything remotely valuable while Peter and Stephen try vainly to fight them off. Behind both living groups, the undead filter in the broken-down entryways and wreack a havoc unique to zombies (it involves tearing people apart and chewing on intestines. I'll say no more.) In the end, our heroes are forced to flee, sans half their group. They're low on fuel, with little to no ammunition or supplies, and no idea where to go next. The movie ends on a down note, but it leaves us with a vague sense of hope. Maybe--just maybe--they survived their harried flight. But we'll never know for sure.

The one constant, easily identifiable theme I noticed in this film is the conflict between the living. The heroes argue amongst themselves. The experts on television argue over what should be done. In the opening minutes, the police and civilians kill one another in a gunfight. In the ending minutes, the heroes and raiders kill each other in a gunfight. The dead, meanwhile, silently cooperate, working as a single unit, never arguing, never bickering amongst themselves. They're slow, they're stupid, they're decaying--and yet they manage to bring a 'superior' civilization to its knees. Or do they? Are they merely incidental to the plot? Are we being told that the dead have more sense than the living? Perhaps. I have never known a corpse to kill...I leave that to the living. I suppose only George Romero knows for sure.

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'Dead' Thoughts by the webmaster

One night a few years back I had a nightmare, it was about Dawn of the Dead and being in the shopping mall with all these zombies around, basically I was being chased - god it was scary. Thankfully, I woke up, no longer was I in the hell that was Dawn of the Dead to me, but something inside said I had to see the film again, so I could overcome these scary thoughts of zombies and being chased by them. Could it be that I, this 14-year-old lad was becoming more and more paranoid as these dreams kept on coming? Enough was enough, I woke up after another nightmare and said to my Dad we should go to Norwich at the weekend, so he could go to his bookshops and I could try and locate a copy of Dawn of the Dead. It had been about 4 years since I had seen the film, so indeed even if it was to banish the nightmares that had been haunting me, I was rekindling a passion for a film that although scared the living daylights out of me still stayed fresh in my memory after all those years. It is a film that through its shocking images of zombies eating the 'living' imprinted itself in my mind and wouldn't go away.

Anyway, I got the film ordered and managed to get a brand new copy of George Romero's directors cut version, which I had previously never seen before. As soon as it started playing my hands began to tremble with fear. Yes, I was indeed on the verge of shitting myself. I settled down though, watching the tape alone in the dark, just trembling slightly. By the time the film had finished, my fears were still there, but although the fears remained for a year or two afterwards I had very much got used to watching the film, so from then on I became more tolerant. I, today can watch Dawn of the Dead without being scared too much of the things that frightened me too much as a child. I now have a greater appreciation for film, thanks in turn to Dawn of the Dead. I also feel that thanks to Dawn of the Dead in some way I have become a better a person - It's strange to say how, but I feel that being quite young when I saw it changed me - for the better of course!

Unfinished Thoughts - Analysis -Why is this movie so great? It's hard to say, there are many things that make it better than the others, whether it be the location, setting, situation, characters or the fact that Romero had a hidden agenda, in focusing on the zombies who roam the shopping mall. What was he trying to say? Are we the consumers, zombies? The answers for some of us is yes, and with the boom of commercial buildings like shopping malls in the 70's people would flock, just to look, and 'perhaps' purchase something. As Stephen Andrews says when he's on the roof of the mall looking down at the zombies within, "This was an important place in their lives." Shopping malls are important to people, it's a social event for some of us, others movies like Kevin Smith's 'Mallrats' have made the shopping mall culture into a comedy, with base set characters who basically live in the shopping mall that resides nearby.
In Dawn of the Dead, zombies do have their memories instinct, meaning they will go to places they know, like the shopping mall and see the things they once needed to make themselves feel better. In some parts of the film zombies can be seen trying to type on typewriters, play with mannequins, and play with hockey sticks, attempting to hit pucks. In reflection to the real-life zombies of Haiti, where dead people have been said to resurrected as zombies, but brain damaged is there a connection between them and the zombies seen in Dawn. These real-life zombies that supposedly exist in Haiti become slaves to their new masters, the initial process of learning is still there, but their memory is slightly damaged. So in most cases they will be able to remember there primary instincts, such as walking, and talking. Again the zombies in Dawn have these instincts, they walk, and groan, which utilizes the voice-box that enables us them talk. I'm wondering now what used to make these creatures of the Dead films so scary to me a few years back.

- ATK

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