Customer Reviews
Craptacular - By: Langdon Ulder, 21 Jul 2008 
I bought this film under the impression that it was great film, how wrong I was. The acting is wooden, the people seem like they are enjoying being stuckin a mall full of dead caniballs. The zombies make-up is appalling, they look crap, & the film is over 2 hours long, making it unbearable to watch. Avoid this trash at all costs & watch the remake as it is 100 times better.
I don't see why it gets soo much love, perhaps you had to be there. - By: genejoke, 29 Apr 2008 
Don't get me wrong it's an alright film, but after being told for years how great it was I expected more. The zombies are not great but then for the time & budget it isn't a shock so I don't hold that against it. The thing is it didn't grip me, nothing made watching it compelling, not the tension nor cast nothing. Perhaps it is because I saw it much laterin life, I saw it firstin 2002, maybe the subtleties are lost on me, I personally prefer the remake. I don't want to say the people that love it are wrong but maybe they are caught upin nostalgia.
Good Film - By: Dr. S. I. Gabb, 25 Sep 2007 
From Free Life, Issue 36, April 2000
ISSN: 0260 5112
Dawn of the Dead
Directed by George A. Romero,
USA, 1979, 140 minutes
(This review is not to be taken as an altogether serious expression of my views! It is part of an elaborate joke.)
This film was recently shown on BBC2in its "Forbidden Season". Though describedin The Radio Times as "the Citizen Kane of horror" & promisedin its entirety, several minutes from it appear to have been forbidden by the controllers. The cinema version, which I sawin June 1980, I remember as much nastier - more blood, more cannibal scenes, & even some zombie children at the airstrip. Never mind this, however. The film has been trimmed of a few superficial horrors. But the effect has only been to bring its political message into sharper focus.
And its message is one that might have been written by Jared Taylor, the Editor of American Renaissance, & have inspired the murder of Stephen Lawrence. For Dawn of the Dead is best seen as a white separatist parable,in which the zombies represent the blacks & hispanics & the heroes represent the white race.
Of course, there are objections to this exegesis. In the first place, the critics all agree that the film is a satire on American capitalism. Indeed, Mr Romero himself says so. In his ten minute introduction to the BBC2 showing, he mumbled very earnestly about "materialism" & Ronald Reagan. In the second place, the zombies are played indiscriminately by black & white actors, & the leading character is black. But there is no need to spend much time on either of these points. It stands to reason that Mr Romero should try to conceal his film's true meaning from the PC dictatorship that rules America. He covered his true meaning backin 1979 by using a black actor for the lead; & he keeps it covered today by echoing the critics - people,in any case, who can be relied on to miss the point of everything they watch. For myself, I cannot conceive how any reasonable person could sit through Dawn of the Dead & not come away struck by its advocacy of racial segregation where not supremacy.
It opensin the middle of a huge crisis. America is being overrun by zombies. It seems that a plague has killed about half the population, & these have risen from the dead to prey on the living - sometimes to eat them, sometimes just to infect them with plague so that theyin turn die & become zombies. Since these zombies have no intellectual capacity, but are driven by a few basic instincts, it should have been possible to destroy them at the beginning, or at least to contain them. It is plain, however, that the authorities have taken no firm action until it is too late. The opening scenes are shotin a television studio, where a chaotic debate isin progress. This is intercut with news bulletins about how the President has just sent another package of tough measures to Congress, & how communications with Detroit have just been lost. Armed police are roaming the streets, shooting at zombies - who need head shots, by the way, before they lie down. But even now, when the danger has become obvious, the fight for survival is being sabotaged. Too many people believe that the zombies are human beings, & refuse to kill them or give them up to be killedin the common interest. In one scene, a woman embraces a zombie, insisting that it is her husband: it bites a lump out of her neck. Even worse, there are people so twistedin their outlook that they side with the zombies against humanity. About a minute after the biting scene, a priest exults over the growing numbers & strength of the zombies & laughs at the armed policemen who are risking their lives to save his.
Though the authorities keep insisting that people should remainin the cities while taking precautions, it is obvious that no built-up area is safe: the zombies are everywhere. No doors can keep them out. They are dragging people from their cars. The heroes - two television people, male & female, & two policemen - realise that the cities are no longer the havens of civility that they were built to be, but have become more dangerous than any wilderness. They take a traffic helicopter from the studio roof & fly out into the country. They have limited fuel & no idea where they are going. They just flyin hope of finding a place where they can again livein safety among their own kind. Looking down, they see the roads choked with military & other official vehicles streaming out of the city. As ever, the rulers of America are happy to recommend one course of action while doing something quite different for themselves.
Further into the country, we find the redknecks at work. They have no delusions about the humanity of the zombies, & are slaughtering them without mercy - but, sadly, without much efficiency. They have the right instincts, but lack the sort of leadership that would ultimately save them. We see the redknecks drinking beer & playing rock music as they load & reload. But the zombies are stumbling towards themin an unending stream. Sooner or later, the bullets will run out, or the night sentries be overpowered, & another outpost of humanity will have fallen to the outsiders.
Moving on, our heroes come to vast shopping mall powered by a nuclear generator. After looking without success for helicopter fuel, they realise that they have found their promised land. It is a place filled with every good & desirable thing. There is food & clothing & shelter & electricity, & weapons & ammunition, allin endless abundance. Like most other promised lands, however, it is already occupied. Unable to appreciate or enjoy what they have taken, zombies wander roundin a parody of human activity. But despite their superior numbers, they are no match for human ingenuity. The zombies have a limited capacity to use tools: the humans have the entire contents of a gun shop. Those zombies stillin the car park outside are excluded. The reinforced glass doors are locked, & lorries are parked justin front of them to prevent any build up of brute pressure against the glass that might force an opening. Those inside the mall are exterminatedin a carefully planned offensive. Their bodies are neatly stackedin some of the cavernous freezer rooms. The bloodstains are washed away. By the time the humans have done their work, the mall has become once more a safe & pleasant resort.
The middle scenes of the film are taken up with the idyllin the mall. The television woman grows big with child. The men make full use of the resources available. They mark out as their living quarters a suite of upper offices that have access to the helicopter parked on the roof, & furnish them with commendable taste from the shops below. They then build a false wall between the corridor that leads up to their living quarters from the mall. Asin the great extermination just passed, we see them using the minds that are their real weapon against the numerous but lower beings who would otherwise destroy them. Indeed, we see their humanity displayed even more prominently thanin the extermination. That was an act of immediate need. This is a preparation made wisely but without any immediate danger. They are settlers who have cleared their land & secured it against aggression, & who by virtue of their work have earned a fully moral right to the enjoyment of its fruits.
The zombies have not gone away. The world outside the mall is teeming with them. They have overrun one less secure human settlement after another. The television broadcasts become yet more chaotic, more filled with pointless argument - & less technically accomplished. The manned studio of the opening scenes has dwindled to a hand-held camerain a bunker. The broadcasts become increasingly infrequent, & then stop. The airwaves fall silent. Though they have not the means of breaking into the mall, the zombies remain outside, squeezing themselves past the lorries, pressing their faces against the glass doors, howling with brute lust for the warm human flesh they see inside but cannot reach.
I was not at first sure about the Hell's Angels who eventually break into the mall. They do not represent the lefties - they are too well-organised. They do not represent the Jews - they are not bright enough, & they affect no compassion for the excluded zombies. But then I realised: they are the Soviets. They lack the comforts of civilisation, but they have the sort of command structure that is very effective for surviving without natural defences, surrounded by zombies - those numerous but lower beings. They smash their way into that mall simply to plunder it. They make no effort to keep the zombies out who follow them in, nor to use their presence for any constructive purpose. Of course, the Hell's Angels are driven out: they lack the organisation & firepower for victory. In the retreat from the mall - & Mr Romero here may be predicting events that have yet fully to happen - many of them fall victim to the zombies, & we see their bodies devoured.
But despite their victory, our heroes have not won. The battle has allowed the zombies to retake possession of the mall. Still worse, one of them has been so badly wounded that he dies alonein a liftshaft & emerges himself a zombie. I am still not sure what this represents. Perhaps it means that we must be continually on guard against our own relapsing into lower ways. It might be so, considering that another of the heroes has already died & then been destroyed to prevent his becoming a danger to humanity. Then again, it might represent an intellectual conversion to the ways of the enemy. Jared Taylor et al. are continually lamenting the inability of white people to remain racially aware, & their tendency to protect & advance outsiders. Whatever the case, the new zombie smashes down the partition wall, & leads the others up into the human quarters.
In the penultimate sequences, the two survivors - the black policemen & the pregnant woman - get into their helicopter & escape just as the zombies have completed their retaking of the mall & are coming onto the roof. They have little fuel & still no idea of where to go. But as they fly off into the dawn, we know that somehow they will survive. They represent a new dawn for humanity - a dawn that will put an end to the reign of brute savagery & reclaim the world for civilisation.
But the mall is lost. In the final scene, the zombies are as close to celebrating as such mindless creatures can be - staggering up & down the escalators, & falling into the ornamental fountain. Very briefly, but significantly, we see cobwebs forming on the central display. The zombies can take, but they cannot maintain. They have the numbers to deny a future to others, but they have no future themselves.
There - does this or does this not make sense of the film? Is it not this subtext that gives the film its power over audiences that dare not openly express their fearsin public? Will Mr Romero send me $100 for having rumbled him? Or will he sue me for libel? We shall see.
The greatest zombie movie there will ever be - By: Lando Malak, 07 Jun 2007 First of all I would just like to say that the remake of this will never & even over a period of time ever, ever be anywhere near as good as this original.
Along with John Carpenter's The Thing, Dawn Of The Dead isn't the scariest film I have seen &in my opinion not as scary has Night Of The Living Dead but overall I prefer this & it isin my top ten films of all time. I know why this is one of my favourite films because I have watched it so many times that I have lost count & enjoy it equally if not more every time I see it. It all starts off with a feeling of panic & end of the world & this part of the film works because there is not much of a sense of humour, it takes itself very seriously until the scenes with the rednecks at least. From the moment the helicopter takes off with the four lead characters looking for somewhere safe to settle is where this film really begins to take off. The moment that the weird but brilliant music score by Goblin plays for the first timein the helicopter scene always reminds me of why I love this film for so many reasons. Then there is that timeless scene when they see the shopping mall for the first time (at a time when shopping malls weren't that common & I am not sure if they even existedin the UK) & one of the lead characters asks what it is & the other says something along the lines of, I think it is one of those shopping malls or something. I particularly like the helicopter scene because it is such a great view from the camera to be able to see zombies everywhere, from this point of view just makes it feel all the more believable, especiallyin a time of news reports using helicopters. I won't mention much more of this film, all I will say is that from the moment that they decide to take a look at the shopping mall, from here on & right till the end, this film is an absolute joy to watch with a great mixture of gory, tense, claustrophobic & funny scenes & of course plenty of zombies.
Lastly I'd just like to recommend this DVD version with the extras because of the making of documentary, which is very informative & just shows how hard everybody involved worked to make this film the classic that it now is.
AMAZING, MIND BLOWIN ZOMBIE MOVIE - By: Mrs. C. L. Mills, 31 Jul 2006 I wuold like to first say that the person that said 'bad movie', should be putin a mental home. This is THE zombie movie its got LAUGHS,GORE, STORY,ACTING AND IS a GREAT horror MOVIE. VERY ORIGIONAL. Who ever says otherwise should be keptin a metal cage & given SAW treatment.
