“Dawn of the Dead” and The Hidden Meaning

Released: 1979

Director: George A. Romero

Writer: George A. Romero

Starring:  David Emge, Ken Foree, Scott H. Reiniger, Gaylen Ross

“This was an important place in their lives.”

I first saw Dawn of the Dead upon its theatrical release.  It was 1979 and I was 15 years old.  I’d see it another dozen times, in theaters, over the next few years.  Not only is it one of my most cherished F'dup Flix, it is one of my favorite films in any genre.

It is also the movie that taught me about theme.

If you read my post on Night of the Living Dead, you’ll realize that I saw Dawn before I ever saw the end of Night.  Such was the difficulty in re-watching a film, pre-home video.

Being underage, the path to seeing the unrated sequel was not a straight line either.

I first became aware of Dawn thanks to a newspaper ad.  In my memory, it was a full-page ad in the Sunday New York Times, with that big ol’ zombie head rising like the sun.

However, a little research at the library has proven that can’t be true.   Of course, it isn’t an NYT sort of film.  In fact, NYT film critic Janet Maslin walked out after 15 minutes, yet still filed a review!

Back in those days, I was enamored with the NYT.  It became my go-to read, once my older sister started bringing it home on Sundays, along with the New York Daily News (traditionally, we were a Daily News house).  More to the point, the NYT's Arts & Entertainment section was my go-to read.   All those in-depth articles about current films.  All those full-page ads for upcoming releases…

Maybe I saw the full-page ad in the Daily News.  Or perhaps, the small sidebar just appeared larger to me at the time because the tidings it conveyed were so monumental.

As the ad itself heralded: “First there was NIGHT of the LIVING DEAD.  Now George A. Romero’s DAWN OF THE DEAD.”

Imagine my surprise.  The film that scared the crap out of my mom had a sequel?  And it was going to play at a theater near me?!   Life was good!

 Now, I just had to convince someone to take me.

I’d seen a couple of R-rated films by then and I hadn’t puked or turned into a psychopath.  Obviously, I was one of those “mature audience” types that could handle adult themes and situations.

Immediately, I went to work on my mother and sister, the parent and guardian in my life, to convince them that they should see this film…and take me with them.

However, as I went back to that full-page ad (go with me on this, will ya?), I slowly became aware of something very strange.  Something that could be a fatal roadblock to all of my scheming.

Every other movie ad I’d ever seen had an MPAA rating at the bottom, but this one had only a box of plain text.  

"No explicit sex”…blah, blah, blah…“scenes of violence”…blah, blah, blah…”No one under 17 will be admitted.”

WHAT?! 

That was the same restriction as a XXX film!  And this didn’t have any sex in it!  How could they do this to me?  I’ll murderlize, ‘em, to quote Bugs Bunny.

With typical kid logic, I decided to fight the prohibition with the most powerful weapon in my arsenal.  I would pretend that I didn’t know.

Eventually, I convinced my mother to take a friend and me one Friday night.  My mother liked all sorts of movies – so it was entirely possible that she would like this – and she had no moral issue with horror films.  However, she had not been to a theater since Jaws, four years earlier.  So, this was a mighty big concession on her part.

Luckily, the force of my willed ignorance worked like a charm, once we got to the theater.

Local theater owners seemed confused how to handle an unrated film.  Although they strictly adhered to the guidelines for every other film, they treated this one as if it was Rated R: No one under 17 admitted without a parent.  As a result, my mom was able to buy us tickets, no questions asked.

The hard work done, I ditched mom.

Yep, my friend and I moved way down to the front of the theater and left my mom, in the back, to sit through this gore-fest all by herself.

As the bloodshed and body count ticked upward during the film, I felt a twinge of guilt.  But at the end of the day, she was a good sport, and it became one of her favorite things to throw back in my face whenever she wanted me to do something:  “Remember how I took you to that gross movie and you made me sit...  All.  By.  MY.  SELF?”

Whenever I think about Dawn, the first word that comes to mind is gleeful.  The movie is flat out fun!  It’s scary, exciting, funny, gory, intense.  It has zombies and soldiers and bikers.  It even takes place at a shopping mall, which was my favorite place at the time (maybe now, as well), aside from a movie theater.

Simply put, Romero nails it in this film.  His ambitions were huge and he achieves all that and a box of Sno-Caps.  Yes, the micro-budget shows in everything from the secondary performances to the quickie blue make-up on the background zombies.  But I didn’t – and don’t – care about any of that. 

As a horror film, as an action film, as an allegory, this film over-delivers.

Remember that none of the common wisdom of “zombie = consumer” existed as yet.  This is the film that launched that discussion.  So, my friend and I did not walk out of the theater discussing the finer points of the film-as-metaphor.

And yet, certain parts of the film made me realize that some unstated thing was going on here.

Yes, the screwdriver through the ear was awesome.  Also, I loved the gag of the blood pressure machine reading zero, after the zombies tear the biker away from the machine…and his arm.  But there were other shots and scenes that hinted at something deeper.

As I played the film over in my mind, I came to pin all of these lingering questions on a single shot.

It’s not one of the classic gore set pieces.  It’s not a payoff to a joke.  In fact, the shot likely means nothing to anyone else.  But Romero chose to show it in a big, juicy close-up and I could not figure out why.

In the years since, I’ve read interviews with Romero where he states that he’d rather get 100 good shots, instead of a single perfect one, when shooting a scene.  It gives him choices in the editing room.

In my heart, I am certain that this shot – and therefore all of the things that I learned about storytelling because of it – is in this film due to that conviction.  Thank you, George Romero!

The shot is toward the end of the film.  The bikers invade, the good guys defend, the zombies win.  The mall is theirs, once more.  As Francine and Peter argue about whether or not to leave, we see that Stephen has turned.

Yet, with all that going on, Romero cuts away to an interesting sequence. 

The zombies bump about merchandise in the mall.  Inside a department store, one zombie knocks some beauty supplies to the floor.  A second zombie steps on them.  In an insert that fills the frame, the once precious product squeezes out across the photo of the beautiful model on the display, wasted.

Hmmm.

All hell is breaking loose and Romero zeros in for a moment which has no bearing on the life & death struggle of our heroes?

The shot hit me on some subconscious level.  I knew right away that it was trying to tell me something, but I could not verbalize what.

I mentioned the shot to my friends.  No one who saw the film remembered it, and more to the point, no one understood why I cared.   Once again, I went back to the library and dove into all of the reviews that I could find of the film.

Here, I’m going to give credit to Roger Ebert, solely to show how wrong I was about his love of genre films in my post on Night.  Check out his glowing review of Dawn.

Notice the line in the first paragraph: a “satiric view of American consumer society.”  And there it is: us = consumer; zombie = consumer; ergo, us = zombie.

Was Ebert the first critic to call out this idea now considered zombie gospel?  Maybe.  It certainly wasn’t Janet Maslin (though she did make a dismissive reference to this theme in her review).

Was he the one who spelled out the theme FOR ME?  Honestly, I doubt it.  I can’t imagine how I would have gotten access to the Chicago Sun-Times, during an era when only national publications were indexed and catalogued.

Although I can’t remember which critic and which article made the light bulb go off for me (and for that I am deeply sorry), I feel comfortable crediting Ebert with a big assist in getting the conversation started.

Once I was given that simple tool – a satire of consumerism – I was like a zombie set loose in a mall, myself.  I began to bump into all kinds of thematic associations.  Each time I watched it, I stumbled away with something new.

The argument in the TV station about whether it was more important to post an accurate list of rescue stations or keep the graphics up so viewers will keep watching =  The news/entertainment divide.

 

Peter and Stephen burying Roger in the only bit of dirt available inside the mall: a planter = The folly of Vietnam.

Stephen and Francine’s chilly, post-proposal bedroom scene = The battle of the sexes, and the crumbling of the traditional male patriarchy.

The bikers’s rally cry to attack the mall after our heroes ignore them: “We don't like people who don't share. You just fucked up REAL bad!”  = The riots which rocked the inner cities, earlier in the decade.

In point of fact, this film is not only about consumerism.  It is about the sorry state of our great nation at the end of the 1970s.

And exploding heads, and marauding bikers, and infectious zombie bites.

A few years before Dawn, a film entitled Network came out.  It is a film filled with big ideas.  It won Oscars.  It was talked about by everyone.  It was rated R.

I did not beg my mother to take me to see Network.  I waited patiently until it popped up on broadcast television, years later.  It’s a great flick. I really respect it.  Somewhere around here I have the UK Blu-ray…still in the shrink-wrap.

And that might be the most enduring lesson that I’ve learned from Dawn.   Even a lowly genre film can tackle lofty themes.  The audience begging to see it might not be expecting any such thing, but maybe, just maybe, they’ll walk out with more than they expect.

Janet Maslin, not withstanding.

Footnotes:

1. The pictures on this page are screengrabs from the Anchor Bay Ultimate Edition DVD, now out of print, but still highly recommended.  The photos are heavily compressed and do not represent the actual PQ of this release.  You can buy used copies of this 3 disc set here.

"Night of the Living Dead" and The Joy of Research

Released: 1968

Director: George A. Romero

Writers: John A. Russo and George A. Romero

Starring: Duane Jones, Judith O’Dea, Karl Hardman, Marilyn Eastman, Keith Wayne, Judith Ridley, Kyra Schon

“Yeah, they’re dead. They’re all messed up.”

When I came up with the idea for this blog, I thought that Dawn of the Dead would be the first film I discussed.  It’s not only a great F’dup Flick, it’s also one of my favorite films.  But as I gathered my thoughts, I came to the realization that, like the movies themselves, Night must come first.

I first saw Night of the Living Dead on TV, as part of the WABC 11:30 Saturday Night Movie some time in the early 1970s.  I was probably about 10 or 11 years old.

I’d long ago won the battle for a later bedtime on Saturday nights, so that I could stay up and watch monster movies (Godzilla, being my first victory).  This was likely a concession on the part of my mother so that the rest of my family wouldn’t be forced to watch these kinds of films with me. 

I knew nothing about Night before the broadcast, but it did have “dead” in the title.  So, with the rest of the family off to bed, I tuned in and hoped for the best.

 

The first thing I remember about this broadcast was that the station made a special point of reminding viewers at commercial breaks that the events being depicted were fictional.

How odd.  I’d never heard a disclaimer like that before (and only rarely since).   So, already I had the feeling that there was something unique about this film.  Later, I figured out that the station must have taken this precaution due to the faux radio and TV reports incorporated throughout the film.  After all, we didn’t want another “The War of the Worlds” broadcast now, did we?

The second thing I remember is that I fell asleep!

No, I wasn’t bored.  The flick starts off great with Johnny and Barbara’s ambush in the graveyard.  And Ben’s monologue, about his escape from the zombies at the dinner, is so vividly told that I was convinced, for years afterwards, that I’d actually seen the zombies racing after that burning fuel truck.

It was just late and I was a kid.

Before I fell asleep, my mother came over and asked what I was watching.  I filled her in and she sat down to watch it with me.  And then I nodded off…

The next morning, I asked my mother how the film ended.  This was not an unusual occurrence.  Normally, she recounted the events, in a slightly dismissive tone, as if these films were so predictable that she could have written them.  On this morning, however, her mood turned serious.  “What was that film?  It scared the crap out of me!”

A film so terrifying that it scared my mom?!  And I missed it?!!

Immediately, an obsession was born.   I MUST see the rest of this film!

In those days of pre-home video, seeing a film more than once meant waiting for it to air again on broadcast TV.  Dutifully, I checked TV Guide’s weekly movies list every issue, but I never saw it listed again.  

My God, why hast thou forsaken me?

Unable to actually watch the film, I decided to read everything I could about it.  This consisted mainly of a capsule review in my beloved copy of Steven H. Scheuer's “Movies on TV” book and maybe a brief footnote in whatever books on current cinema I could find in the library.  In other words, not much.

As I was introduced to new research tools in school, I immediately tested how useful they were by looking-up Night of the Living Dead. 

The Periodical Contents Index (do these guides even exist any more?) led me to an essay by Roger Ebert in "Reader’s Digest". 

For years afterward, I disliked Ebert, based on that single article, as I had misunderstood his self-described “review of the audience reaction” to be a condemnation of a film that was just TOO scary.

So, both “Reader’s Digest” and my mother were declaring this film the scariest movie ever made…and I MISSED IT!

My research into Night eventually led me to “Film Comment” magazine, and, in particular, the concept of the “Return of the Repressed” in an article by critic Robin Wood. (Vol. 14, No. 4 - July/August 1978). 

Oh, how I wish I could link to this groundbreaking article!  Alas, the piece is nowhere to be found online (but I’ll keep looking).

Not to overstate its importance, or anything, but that article struck me like Col. Kurtz’s “diamond bullet straight through my forehead.” 

For the first time I'd ever seen, a serious critic was treating these movies seriously, presenting the case that they reflected the turbulence of the era.  Wood later expanded upon these ideas in his books, but never again would he present the main points in such simple and straightforward language. If you are a fan of horror, you owe it to yourself to seek it out that article.

As I researched Night, I learned of Romero’s other flicks – Season of the Witch, There's Always Vanilla, The Crazies, and Martin – all of which sounded interesting and all of which were equally impossible to see. 

I also discovered other filmmakers in the horror genre, all creating a body of work that sounded darkly fascinating: David Cronenberg, Wes Craven, Bob Clark.  Of course, there was no way to see their films, either (though Bob Clark became a happy exception, to be covered in another post).  

A whole new world of cult and disreputable cinema existed out there...and no one in my hometown had even heard of it.

Finally, one summer day when I was about 17 or 18 years old, I heard a radio ad for a midnight show of Night: “Complete and unedited”. 

I could not believe my luck!

And so, come Saturday night, a group of friends and I headed to a theater a few towns over for my long anticipated, second chance screening of Night, together with a packed house and a six pack of beer.  

The screening went down pretty much exactly as Ebert described all those years before, sans the teary-eyed toddlers. 

The film starts out creepy but fun in the early going, then settles in for some slow-boil interpersonal conflict.  But nothing prepares you for the final 30 minutes, when the film drags you straight down to hell.

From the moment the group decides to make a break from the farmhouse, the film delivers on its premise in a way that most horror films never do. 

The young lovers die first, burned to a crisp.  As if that’s not shocking enough, the zombies then descend and eat their burnt flesh, in gory detail.  Whoa!

Ben retreats back to the house and kills Mr. Cooper, after the coward locks him out. Johnny returns, as one of the dead, and pulls his sister Barbara, screaming, into a pack of the zombies.  Turns out that HE was coming to get you, Barbara.

In the most chilling sequence in the film, the sickly little girl in the basement, turns ghoul and kills her mother with a garden spade, before eating her.  The lighting, the shot selection, the distorted audio, the sheer awfulness of a child becoming a thing that sees only food when she looks at her mother, is one of the most terrifying sequences in horror. 

Ah, but in the end, the sun rises and the forces of good sweep down to rid the area of zombies.  Ben comes out of hiding, revealing that he survived the ordeal. Order is restored.

Except that the instrument of said order is some ignorant good ol’ boy, who promptly mistakes Ben for a zombie and shoots him in the head!

The film closes with a series of newspaper-like photographs depicting Ben’s lifeless body as it is dragged by meat hooks – meat hooks! – to a bonfire, where he is unceremoniously burned along with the rest of the dead.  The End.

What.  The.  Fuck!

Everyone died.  Everyone.  The smart, the cowardly, the lovers, the parents.   And these weren’t noble deaths.  These people did not go gentle into that good night.  They raged, raged against the dying of the light.  Fighting, clawing, betraying one another, until no one was left standing.

It was the bleakest ending I’d ever seen.  And yet it rang true in some post-‘60s hangover sort of way.  This was some heavy shit.

In many ways, falling asleep during that film shaped my taste in movies forever. Unlike you lazy bit torrent junkies today, I couldn’t just download the film to my phone and finish it on lunch break the next day.   I had to wait.

And wait and wait and wait...  As I waited for Night to return, I kept the light burning by reading as much as I could about it.   

What I uncovered was an alternate reality, an underground cult of filmmakers, fans and critics who recognized that horror could be so much more than just cheap scares.  It could be ABOUT stuff.

I couldn't say exactly WHAT, right then and there, but I knew for certain that, whatever it was, everyone else wanted to ignore it.

In effect, these films weren’t just about the return of the repressed, they WERE the return of the repressed.  To seek them out was to go down the rabbit-hole along with them.  As the meta-trailer might scream: "Finding them was a test of will.  Seeing them, an act of defiance!"

It was all so life-imitates-art perfect.  I was hooked!

P.S.: for an in-depth examination of the many themes at play within Night of the Living Dead, I highly recommend this BFI Film Classics book by Ben Hervey 


Footnotes:

1. The pictures on this page are screengrabs from the Elite Entertainment Millennium Edition DVD, now out of print.  The photos are heavily compressed and do not represent the actual PQ of this release.  If you are an Amazon prime member you can watch this movie for free here.