If you climbed to the top of Gangkhar Puensum in Bhutan,and shouted to the heavens,"Who is the American King of the Living Dead?",not only would you be a motherfucking pioneer,as no one's ever climbed to the peak as of this writing,but chances are,you'd hear an echo return,"George Andrew!"The glory of the modern age lies in the fact that you really wouldn't have to go to such extremes to find that out,you can simply ask anybody who digs horror movies,and they'll gladly tell you.Also,it's hardly debatable as to which of the Cuban/Lithuanian(not Italian,but eh,close enough) Pennsylvania native's rottingly reanimated repertoir is his gut munching greatest of all.I can still remember dragging my poor old man off to the American Theater back in '78 to bear witness to Romero's latest entrail-pulling,groaning grey faced shamble-o-thon,which left him in a permanent state of pants-shitting fear any time zombies come up(or rise,if you will).Georgie boy had just scored big with critics the year before with his excellent vampiric venture,"Martin",and had been working on his follow up to "Night of the Living Dead"(1968) since 1974,and after nailing down Dario Argento to finance the project,he traveled to Rome where he wrote the script.After visiting the Monroeville Mall years earlier with a friend who joked that a person could survive there in an emergency,he had found the centerpiece of his latest chapter in his ongoing zombie saga.Every time I travel to the western end of the state,I try to make a stop at the mall,time permitting,and shuffle around a bit outside,though I've never actually been inside the damned place!One of these days,dammit,one of these days.
Tonight's entry rates as yet another in a goodly stretch of heavy hitters,at or near the top of anybody who's anybody's top horror films,and films in general,in many cases.Makeup maestro Tom Savini creates classic on-screen carnage that maintains its effectiveness to this day,does some nifty stuntwork,and even memorably appears as one of the pillaging party of Pagans in the film.Make no mistakes,droogs,this is Savini at his very best.Armed with a trademark script full of satirical barbs towards the consumer mentality and society itself,Savini's horrendous handiwork,a killer soundtrack featuring Goblin(Romero uses three of their pieces in his cut,Argento uses their work much more extensively in his),and strong performances from Gaylen Ross,David Emge,Ken Foree,and Scott Reiniger in the leads,Dawn assaults the viewer with action,comedy,drama,and terror from the opening sequence and doesn't let up until DeWolfe Library's Gonk plays out over the end credits.
The SWAT teams strain to restrain Willie,whose ghetto disdain causes it to rain brains.
There's considerably less room in Hell,as the world is in the midst of a pandemic which causes the unburied dead to reanimate and eat the flesh of the living.In the midst of a chaotic television broadcast at WGON in Philadelphia,Stephen(Emge) suggests to his girlfriend Francine(Ross),a station news tech,that they escape in his traffic helicopter to safer periphery in the Canadian woods somewhere.Meanwhile Stephen's friend Roger(Reiniger),a SWAT member,has his hands full in an apartment complex full of immigrants who've ignored the state of martial law,refusing to turn over the bodies of their recently dead to authorities,instead storing them in the basement,where they've reanimated.During a meltdown from a member of Roger's unit,where he guns down immigrants and zombies in a xenophobic rampage before being taken down himself,Roger meets up with Peter(Foree),a SWAT member from another unit,and invites him along on the planned chopper escape with his friends.A one legged Latin priest points them to the basement,where they find a cache of living corpses,and the two soldiers clear them out with a flurry of well-placed bullets to the head.The four rendezvous at the pier,and after a momentary square off with some policemen(one of which,Joe Pilato,would return in the third chapter,1985's "Day of the Dead" as Capt. Rhodes,a different character entirely!)with similar escape plans,take off for friendlier climes.As they fly over rural Pennsylvania,they witness the National Guard and local rednecks treating the zombie hunt like weekend sport over beer.During a pitstop at an abandoned airfield for gas,they are attacked by zombies,and while Stephen panics and with his awful marksmanship,nearly kills Peter,who has his hands full with two zombie children,Roger,a dead shot,dispatches the undead threat,and the group again takes flight.
Insert obligatory off color "black dudes n' neck bones" joke here.
During their flight,they notice a large multi level indoor mall surrounded by zombies,and after landing the chopper on the roof,decide to go inside to pick up supplies,when Peter suggests that they hold up there for a while.Peter and Roger hotwire abandoned tractor trailers and park them at the mall entrances to block zombies outside from entrance,but Roger's reckless abandon gets him bitten in the process.Once the entrances are secured,the four load up on guns and ammunition and do a sweeping killing spree of all the zombies inside,storing the dead bodies in a meat locker.Roger,now infected with the zombie virus,enjoys his last few days shopping,and playing video games at the arcade,barely coherent from the morphine injections his friends are administering him.He finally dies and reanimates,with Peter carrying out his last wish,stopping him with a bullet to the head.The three remaining survivors enjoy the spoils of their enormous hideout,building a full apartment on the executive level above the stores,but soon find themselves prisoners to the very safety they sought in the first place.While Stephen is teaching his now-pregnant girlfriend to fly the chopper,they are noticed by a professional army of bikers who have survived on the street.Peter tells "Fly Boy",if they lock up the stores and retreat to the upper level,the bikers will never know they were there.The bikers easily break into the mall bringing hundreds of zombies in with them, and begin to pillage the stores,spurring Fly Boy,who is blind with greed,to begin shooting at them.He is winged by one of the bikers,and while retreating to the elevator,is feasted upon by zombies.Peter snipes several of the bikers,and the zombies descend upon the wounded scumbags,and tear them asunder.Peter retreats to the apartment and waits for Stephen's zombie with Francine,knowing his memory will lead a slew of ghouls up to their digs with him.He tells Francine to leave in the chopper by herself,as he prefers to die where he is,disenchanted with it all.After dispatching Fly Boy,he points a gun to his own head,but before he commits suicide,he has a change of heart,shooting zombies and fighting his way up to the roof before the girl has fully taken off,and climbs aboard,barely escaping.With a nearly empty gas tank the two depart into the sky,leaving the mall to its undead denizens.
Reanimated Roger(Scott Reiniger)or Stooges frontman Iggy Pop on an opium binge?You decide.
Romero would follow his 50 million dollar megahit up with Knightriders(1981) and Creepshow(1982) before tackling the third(and what was to be the final)chapter of his zombie opus,Day of the Dead,in 1985.Five years later he would re-write and earn an executive producer credit on a remake of his "Night of the Living Dead",directed by Tom Savini.In 2005,he directed the fourth chapter,"Land of the Dead",and has since followed with the luke warm "Diary of the Dead",and most recently,"Survival of the Dead".Foree has enjoyed a long career in genre films and television,scoring roles in "The Wanderers","Knightriders","Death Spa","Leatherface:Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3",and more recently,in Rob Zombie's "The Devil's Rejects" and "Halloween" remake.Emge was most recently seen in 1990's "Basket Case 2" and 1992's "Hellmaster",although you can usually find him on the horror convention circuit.Reiniger would show up in a cameo(as did Foree)in Zack Snyder's 2004 (so-so)remake of "Dawn of the Dead".Ross's last genre work would come in 1983's "Madman", under the pseudonym "Alexis Dubin",though there's a store with her name in the Dawn remake.Savini,who was awarded a Saturn Award for Best Makeup Effects in tonight's entry,remains busy acting and directing,as always,allegedly announced to return to direct special effects in the upcoming sequel/remake Friday the 13th Part Two.Oughta be interesting,to say the very least.Tonight's entry remains one of the greatest horror movies of all-time,and is thusly awarded four wops,the highest possible scale rating."Could be nuculah!"
Fly Boy(David Emge)searches for his promotional giveaway bag of hard candy.
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