Dawn of the Dead (Review)
Tuesday, 13th October 2009, 16:47

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Picking up shortly after where Night of the Living Dead left off, Dawn of the Dead starts in a TV studio where they are still frantically arguing over the origins of the outbreak and trying to broadcast information about safe places, trying to move people away from the overrun metropolitan areas. Meanwhile, SWAT teams are clearing apartment blocks by ordering the living to leave and shooting the dead.
 
Two of these soldiers, Peter and Stephen, hitch a ride with TV technician Francine and her helicopter pilot boyfriend, Roger, desperate to get away from the madness and find somewhere safe to stay. After a hairy refuelling stop, they come across an abandoned shopping mall and break in and try to make themselves comfortable. After assessing the place, they find that they can hold up and, by manipulating the undead into going where they want, have virtually free reign of the place.
 

Whereas Night was a low budget exercise in monochrome tension drawing on Vietnam and the politicisation of youth, Dawn took aim at the worst excesses of commercialism in a capitalist society. With ten years in between the two films, George A. Romero had honed his craft and teamed up with Tom Savini, a war photographer so the tone and pace in Dawn is very different to Night, with quick cuts and Savini’s special effects make-up. There is an air of lunacy here with Hare Krishna and nurse ghouls which intersperses the tension and gore when Peter and Steven begin clearing the mall.
 
With the doors barricaded and the mall ghoul-free, the four begin living out their consumerist dreams but slowly realise that their safe haven has become a prison of their own making. Before they can dwell on this for too long, a biker gang breaks in, allowing an influx of ghouls to follow. This is where Savini comes into his own, having already established a level of gore in the tenement building clearout with an exploding head and bloody neck bite. The gun battle that ensues features gut-munching, decapitations and other inventive and gory ways of despatching both the living and the undead.
 

Made for a modest budget and released without a certificate, Dawn of the Dead was commercially and critically successful with Fangoria naming it the best horror of the year and Roger Ebert (a man not easily pleased) describing it as ‘One of the best horror films ever made’. Romero assembled a 139 minute cut for Cannes, which he subsequently trimmed to 126 minutes for the American theatrical release. Handling the European side of things was Romero’s friend and horror-meister Dario Argento, who re-edited the film into a more action-oriented piece with a quicker pace and different music.
 
It is an apocalyptic masterpiece and the most celebrated of Romero’s Dead trilogy, picking up new fans every year and spawning a very respectable remake in 2003 and, in Shaun of the Dead, a loving homage. I like all three of the original Dead trilogy for different reasons, but my favourite is Dawn, a film that I’ve bought at least twice on DVD, including the magnificent R1 Ultimate Edition, so had high hopes for this Blu-ray release. They were certainly met and Arrow Films have done a sterling job with this release – now for Day of the Dead to get the Hi-Def treatment!
 

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