DAWN OF THE DEAD Review

There's no denying for a moment that Night of the Living Dead is a true horror classic.

But this film was a truly shocking (to audiences in 1978), in color, and has a more interesting socio-political subtext.

It's also better acted and has more intentional humor.

The gruesome and still shocking gore is mostly confined to the first and last half hours as a group of people try to keep alive and work out a plan to restart society while hordes of flesh eating zombies attack the cities and in sheer numbers overhwelm the 'normal' population.

So a group of people intent on creating a new society try to sort things out in a shopping mall where they foolishly believe they will be relatively safe for at least a little while.

 Comments on commercialism, greed and how far people will go to survive follow. The soundtrack features a fun but now dated Goblin score.

Originally the film was considered so shocking and gory it was denied conventional distribution and could not get a rating.  It played at Midnight on many screens until later it was more widely distributed (with a few censorship cuts).    

There's also a different European cut of the film supervised by Dario Argento that will be of interest to fans.  It's a slightly different film with a differnt musical score.

Avoid the recent remake that makes it into a dumb crass gory horror flick.

(Another Great Movie Sequel  #12 in the series)

DAWN OF THE DEAD 1978 Directed by George Romero