ATLRetro

Splatter Cinema presents DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978); Dir. George A. Romero; Starring Ken Foree, Gaylen Ross, David Emge, Scott Reninger and Tom Savini; Tuesday, Oct. 8 @ 9:30 p.m. (photo and merch table open @ 9 p.m.); Plaza Theatre; Trailer here.

By Aleck Bennett
Contributing Writer

It’s here! The season of Samhain is upon us, when the veil between the living and the dead is at its thinnest. And in acknowledgement of that, Splatter Cinema rips the veil asunder and brings the living dead directly into the Plaza Theatre with a screening of George Romero’s epic masterpiece of massacre, DAWN OF THE DEAD!

“When there’s no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the earth.”

There are zombie movies, and there are Zombie Movies. And George Romero is the architect—directly or indirectly—of almost every one of them made after 1968.

1968 saw the director change the very definition of the word zombie (though it’s not uttered a single time) with his classic NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. Before his ghouls stalked the screen, the cinematic zombie was tied closely to the mythology of Haitian voodoo: reanimated corpses brought back through ritual and acting as tools under the control of a powerful magician. But Romero’s stark vision cast off those supernatural chains. His zombies were still reanimated corpses, true, but his were under no man’s thrall or control. They shuffled across the landscape with a single goal: to feast on the flesh of the living. And unlike traditional zombies, they multiplied in number; every person wounded (but not consumed) by the walking dead became one of them. And any corpse whose body was not destroyed was resurrected and became part of their number.

And whether intentional or not, NIGHT introduced an aspect of social criticism to the subgenre. Star Duane Jones became the first African-American horror hero, and his mere presence added a layer of subtext to the film. And with its graphic violence coming on the heels of the “Summer of Love,” NIGHT seemed to speak to both the horrors witnessed regularly on the nightly news as the Vietnam War continued unabated, and to the spread of mindless violence present in American society.

In the interim, countless number of filmmakers followed in Romero’s footsteps with varying degrees of success. And while some did attempt to tie the supernatural back into the equation (Lucio Fulci’s ZOMBI 2 and Bob Clark’s CHILDREN SHOULDN’T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS being notably among them), even those tended to stick with Romero’s zero-sum “the living vs. the dead” equation.

A decade later, DAWN OF THE DEAD upped the ante on NIGHT considerably.

DAWN takes place shortly after the events of NIGHT (though time-adjusted to the late 1970s), and picks up as the living dead seem to be gaining the upper hand. SWAT teams are being utilized to clean up dead-infested urban areas, but after a mere three weeks, society is beginning to spiral into chaos. A handful of survivors (two TV staffers and two SWAT team members) try to make an escape from Philadelphia into safer territory using the TV station’s helicopter. Spotting a shopping mall, and deciding that it would be easy to secure such a location, the team decide to take their chances and land.

DAWN not only goes NIGHT one better on the social front by giving us strong African American and female lead characters in Ken Foree’s Peter Washington and Gaylen Ross’ Francine Parker (NIGHT’s Barbara, in comparison, spends the entire movie in a state of shock and vacillating between hysterics and detachment), but it also contains multiple levels of satire. While the film explicitly depicts our heroes attempting to placate or avoid their concerns by indulging in rampant materialism, it also shows that this is no real escape; that the threats ignored by mindless diversion still gather steam and can—and will—intrude when you least expect it. Romero also stacks the film with multiple scenes of zombies aimlessly walking the mall, the implicit message being that this mindless consumerism is truly mindless—a rote activity that has become almost reflexive in human nature. And with the introduction of Tom Savini’s invading gang of bikers into the equation, he shows that the living can be just as mindless and dangerous as the dead.

But lest you think that this is a film purely made up of rhetoric, let me stress that this is all subtext. The text of the movie is all pure apocalyptic zombie horror. Romero, a master of composition and editing, ratchets up the feeling of dread from the beginning, plunging us into a world where order is fracturing and the constant threat of horrific death is right around every corner. Tom Savini’s groundbreaking effects top anything seen in gore film history to that date, and critics such as CINEFANTASTIQUE’s Steven Biodrowski agree, claiming that the film turned gore and horror into “a form of art.”

The film even launched the entire Italian zombie film craze. Unable to find any investors willing to back the film in the US, Romero secured the film’s funding with the help of Dario Argento, who invited Romero to Rome to work on the screenplay. The two collaborated on the film’s script (though the extent of Argento’s involvement is debated), Argento brought the band Goblin aboard to score the film, and Argento retained international non-English rights to the film’s distribution. He released it in a tightened-up version (cut from 126 to 119 minutes and featuring more of Goblin’s score) overseas as ZOMBI. The impact was immediate, with Lucio Fulci’s ZOMBI 2 being a quickly-devised unofficial follow-up and a host of other productions following in its wake.

Domestically, the film has deservedly received almost unanimous praise, named by many as one of the greatest horror films ever made. Some, like EMPIRE magazine and the NEW YORK TIMES, go a step farther, proclaiming it one of the best films of all time, full stop.

…And here it is in Atlanta for a one-night screening. Do you need any more reason to go? Well, let’s add in the chance to have your picture made in a recreation of one of the film’s ghoulish tableaux. If that’s not enough for you, then, well…you might just be dead yourself.

Aleck Bennett is a writer, blogger, pug warden, pop culture enthusiast, raconteur and bon vivant from the greater Atlanta area. Visit his blog at doctorsardonicus.wordpress.com