ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - April 20th
"DAWN OF THE DEAD" premiered in New York
Following an ever-growing epidemic of zombies that have risen from the dead, two Philadelphia S.W.A.T. team members, a traffic reporter, and his television executive girlfriend seek refuge in a secluded shopping mall, in George A. Romero's cult zombie-apocalypse film, Dawn of the Dead!
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The United States is devastated by a mysterious phenomenon which reanimates recently deceased human beings as flesh-eating zombies. Despite the best efforts by the U.S. government and local authorities to control the situation, millions of people are killed and reanimate, and while some rural communities and the military have been effective in fighting the zombie hordes in open country, but urban centers are helpless and largely overrun. Meanwhile confusion reigns at the WGON television studio in Philadelphia by the phenomenon's third week, where staff members Stephen Andrews (David Emge) and Francine Parker (Gaylen Ross) are planning to steal the station's traffic helicopter to escape the city. Meanwhile across town, police SWAT officer Roger DiMarco (Scott Reiniger) and his team raid a housing project where the residents are defying the martial law of delivering their dead to National Guardsmen. During the raid, Roger meets Peter Washington (Ken Foree), part of another SWAT team, and informs him of his friend's, Stephen's, plan to use the WGON helicopter to escape. That night, Roger and Peter rendezvous with Francine and Stephen and leave Philadelphia in the helicopter, and eventually comes across a shopping mall, which they decide to make their sanctuary. However, after several months of enjoying a hedonistic lifestyle with all the goods in every store available to them, all emergency broadcast transmissions suddenly cease; suggesting that the government has collapsed and a large portion of the population has been killed and reanimated. As the zombie horde outside the mall continue to grow, as well as the arrival of a brutal biker gang, the group makes plans to leave their habitat for a uncertain future.
[the group watches a mass of zombies surrounding the mall from the roof]
Francine Parker: They're still here.
Stephen: They're after us. They know we're still in here.
Peter: They're after the place. They don't know why; they just remember. Remember that they want to be in here.
Francine Parker: What the hell are they?
Peter: They're us, that's all, when there's no more room in hell.
Stephen: What?
Peter: Something my granddad used to tell us. You know Macumba? Vodou. My granddad was a priest in Trinidad. He used to tell us, "When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the Earth."
Top: Francis (Gaylen Ross) plans with pilot Stephen "Flyboy" Andrews (David Emge) to use a helicopter to escape the zombie pandemic in the city;
Above: They are joined by SWAT officers Peter (Ken Foree) and Roger (Scott Reiniger).
The history of Dawn of the Dead began in 1974, when George A. Romero was invited by friend to visit the Monroeville Mall. After showing Romero hidden parts of the mall, during which Romero noted the bliss of the consumers, his friend jokingly suggested that someone would be able to survive in the mall should an emergency ever occur - thus inspiring the plot of Dawn of the Dead. Despite the huge success of Night of the Living Dead, Romero and his producer, Richard P. Rubinstein, were unable to procure any domestic investors for the new project. By chance, word of the sequel reached Italian horror director Dario Argento, who was a fan of Night of the Living Dead and an early critical proponent of the film, and was eager to help the horror classic receive a sequel. Argento agreed to secure financing in exchange for international distribution rights, and flew Romero to Rome to write the screenplay.
First to be cast was actress Gaylen Ross in the role of Francine Parker. Ross would have very strong feelings towards how her character would react, even going as far as to refuse to scream during filming (Ross felt that Fran was a strong female character, and if she screamed, the strength would be lost) She told this to Romero once when he told her to scream, but never asked her again. Romero was initially hesitant to cast Scott H. Reiniger as Roger, despite the fact that he loved Reiniger's audition, as he had already cast Ken Foree as Peter and was worried about the height disparity between the two actors. Reinger told Romero bluntly that after the first 15 minutes, no one in the audience would be paying attention to that detail, and, a short while later, Romero found Reiniger and told him he got the part. Actor David Emge was then added to the cast as the lead character, pilot Stephen "Flyboy" Andrews, completing the ensemble.
First to be cast was actress Gaylen Ross in the role of Francine Parker. Ross would have very strong feelings towards how her character would react, even going as far as to refuse to scream during filming (Ross felt that Fran was a strong female character, and if she screamed, the strength would be lost) She told this to Romero once when he told her to scream, but never asked her again. Romero was initially hesitant to cast Scott H. Reiniger as Roger, despite the fact that he loved Reiniger's audition, as he had already cast Ken Foree as Peter and was worried about the height disparity between the two actors. Reinger told Romero bluntly that after the first 15 minutes, no one in the audience would be paying attention to that detail, and, a short while later, Romero found Reiniger and told him he got the part. Actor David Emge was then added to the cast as the lead character, pilot Stephen "Flyboy" Andrews, completing the ensemble.
TRIVIA: In order to save on production costs, director/editor George A. Romero had all the 35mm film stock developed into 16mm, and used that as his work reel. After choosing the scenes and takes he wanted, he had those alone developed into 35mm prints for the master reels.
Top and Above: The survivors make an abandoned shopping mall their new home, all the while a growing number of zombies appear outside.
Principal photography for Dawn of the Living Dead (its working title at the time) began on November 13, 1977 at Monroeville Mall in Monroeville, Pennsylvania. Filming would typlically begin nightly once the mall closed, starting at 11 PM and ending at 7 AM, when typically the mall's automated music began playing over the loudspeakers which nobody in the production team knew how to turn off! As December arrived, the production decided against having the crew remove and replace the Christmas decorations — a task that had proved to be too time consuming - and decided to shut down during the last three weeks. During that time, the crew shifted to locations in and around Pittsburg. For the scenes set in the mall's "gun store" (which was a never an actual store at the Monroeville Mall), Romero filmed at Firearms Unlimited, a shop that existed in the East Liberty district of Pittsburgh, later editing the footage in to make it look like it was a shop in the mall. The living quarters where the four heroes shacked up in wasn't located in the mall either; it was a set built at Romero's then production company, The Latent Image, located in Pittsburgh (which also housed the elevator shaft set where Foree's charcater Peter meets his grisly demise). The airfield scenes were filmed at the Harold W. Brown Memorial Airfield in Monroeville, an airport located about two miles from the mall, that is still in use to this day.
For the make-up effects for Dawn of the Dead, Romero turned to Tom Savini, who had been offered the chance to provide special effects and make-up for Romero's first zombie film (before being drafted into the Vietnam War), and made his debut as an effects artist on Dawn of the Dead. Savini had a crew of eight to assist in applying gray makeup to two to three hundred extras each weekend during the shoot; most of which were famously paid $20 in cash, a box lunch, and a Dawn of the Dead T-shirt for appearing in the film. Savini choose the gray color for the zombies' skin, since the original Night of the Living Dead was in B&W and the zombie skin-tone was not depicted (Savini later said it was a mistake, because many of them ended up looking quite blue on film). Much of the fake blood used in the blood packets was a mixture of food coloring, peanut butter and cane sugar syrup, which Savini ultimately disliked as the final result looked fluorescent. However, Romero felt it was perfect for the film's comic book style. Many of the featured zombies (which took nearly three hours to apply all the make-up) became part of the fanfare, with nicknames based upon their look or activity — such as Machete Zombie, Sweater Zombie,and Nurse Zombie. Sweater zombie, played by Clayton Hill, was described by a crew member as "one of the most convincing zombies of the bunch" citing his skill at maintaining his stiff pose and rolling his eyes back into his head, including heading down the wrong way in an escalator while in character.
For the make-up effects for Dawn of the Dead, Romero turned to Tom Savini, who had been offered the chance to provide special effects and make-up for Romero's first zombie film (before being drafted into the Vietnam War), and made his debut as an effects artist on Dawn of the Dead. Savini had a crew of eight to assist in applying gray makeup to two to three hundred extras each weekend during the shoot; most of which were famously paid $20 in cash, a box lunch, and a Dawn of the Dead T-shirt for appearing in the film. Savini choose the gray color for the zombies' skin, since the original Night of the Living Dead was in B&W and the zombie skin-tone was not depicted (Savini later said it was a mistake, because many of them ended up looking quite blue on film). Much of the fake blood used in the blood packets was a mixture of food coloring, peanut butter and cane sugar syrup, which Savini ultimately disliked as the final result looked fluorescent. However, Romero felt it was perfect for the film's comic book style. Many of the featured zombies (which took nearly three hours to apply all the make-up) became part of the fanfare, with nicknames based upon their look or activity — such as Machete Zombie, Sweater Zombie,and Nurse Zombie. Sweater zombie, played by Clayton Hill, was described by a crew member as "one of the most convincing zombies of the bunch" citing his skill at maintaining his stiff pose and rolling his eyes back into his head, including heading down the wrong way in an escalator while in character.
TRIVIA: The two zombie children who attack Peter in the airport chart house are played by Donna Savini and Mike Savini, the real-life niece and nephew of Tom Savini. These are the only zombies in all of George A. Romero's "Dead" films that spontaneously run and never do the trademark "Zombie shuffle".
Top and Above: Events spiral out of control when a marauding gang of bikers, led by Blades (Tom Savini) break into the mall - with predictable bloody results!
The climactic biker rampage through the mall was shot over two nights back at the Monroeville Mall, with several members of the marauding band of bikers being played by members of the local chapter of the Pagans Motorcycle Club - along with their own elaborate motorcycles. With such a shoestring budget, the filmmakers couldn't afford professional stunt people outside of drivers, so Savini and assistant and friend Taso N. Stavrakis volunteered for the task. They were responsible for almost every stunt seen in the film, though not all went perfectly as planned. When filming a dive over the rail of the mall, Savini almost missed his pile of cardboard boxes, with his legs and back landing on the ground and had to work from a golf cart for the next several days. The shot where Stavrakis swung down from a banner was also poorly planned and he wound up continuing on and slamming into the ceiling!
According to the original screenplay, Peter and Francine were to kill themselves in the end; with Peter shooting himself and Fran by sticking her head into the path of the rotating main helicopter blades. The ending credits would then run over a shot of the helicopter blades turning until the engine winds down, implying that the two would not have gotten far if they had chosen to escape. However, during production it was decided to change the ending of the film to have Peter and the pregnant Fran escape. Dawn of the Dead would then be re-cut and re-edited again for it's international prints, due mostly to Argento's rights to edit the film for international foreign language release. The version Argento created included changes such as more music from Goblin than the three cuts completed by Romero, removal of some expository scenes, and a faster cutting pace. In Italy it was released under the full title Zombi: L’alba dei Morti Viventi, followed in March 1979 in France as Zombie: Le Crépuscule des Morts Vivants, in Spain as Zombi: El Regreso de los Muertos Vivientes, in the Netherlands as Zombie: In De Greep van de Zombies, in Germany by Constantin Film as Zombie, and in Denmark as Zombie: Rædslernes Morgen.
According to the original screenplay, Peter and Francine were to kill themselves in the end; with Peter shooting himself and Fran by sticking her head into the path of the rotating main helicopter blades. The ending credits would then run over a shot of the helicopter blades turning until the engine winds down, implying that the two would not have gotten far if they had chosen to escape. However, during production it was decided to change the ending of the film to have Peter and the pregnant Fran escape. Dawn of the Dead would then be re-cut and re-edited again for it's international prints, due mostly to Argento's rights to edit the film for international foreign language release. The version Argento created included changes such as more music from Goblin than the three cuts completed by Romero, removal of some expository scenes, and a faster cutting pace. In Italy it was released under the full title Zombi: L’alba dei Morti Viventi, followed in March 1979 in France as Zombie: Le Crépuscule des Morts Vivants, in Spain as Zombi: El Regreso de los Muertos Vivientes, in the Netherlands as Zombie: In De Greep van de Zombies, in Germany by Constantin Film as Zombie, and in Denmark as Zombie: Rædslernes Morgen.
Dr. Millard Rausch, Scientist: The normal question, the first question is always, are these cannibals? No, they are not cannibals. Cannibalism in the true sense of the word implies an intrapecies activity. These creatures cannot be considered human. They prey on humans. They do not prey on each other - that's the difference. They attack and they feed only on warm human flesh. Intelligence? Seemingly little or no reasoning power, but basic skills remain and more remembered behaviors from normal life. There are reports of these creatures using tools. But even these actions are the most primitive - the use of external articles as bludgeons and so forth. I might point out to you that even animals will adopt the basic use of tools in this manner. These creatures are nothing but pure, motorized instinct. We must not be lulled by the concept that these are our family members or our friends. They are not. They will not respond to such emotions.
[the gathered crowd starts arguing]
Top: Writer/director George A. Romero;
Above: Actor Ken Foree filming inside the Monroeville Mall in Monroeville, Pennsylvania.
Dawn of the Dead performed well thanks both to commercial advertising and word-of-mouth with ad campaigns and posters declaring the film "the most intensely shocking motion picture experience for all times". Dawn grossed an impressive $900,000 in it's opening weekend at the box office, and eventually grossed $5 million in the US, with an additional $40-50 million in the international markets, making it the most profitable film in the Dead series.
Dawn of the Dead — unlike many other "gory" horror staples of its time — has also received acclaim from film reviews since its initial release, with many critics regarding the movie as as one of the best films of 1978. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave it four out of four stars and proclaimed it "one of the best horror films ever made." While conceding Dawn of the Dead to be "gruesome, sickening, disgusting, violent, brutal and appalling," Ebert said that "nobody ever said art had to be in good taste." Steve Biodrowski of Cinefantastique praised the film, calling it a "broader" version of Night of the Living Dead, and gave particular credit to the acting and themes explored: "the acting performances are uniformly strong; and the script develops its themes more explicitly, with obvious satirical jabs at modern consumer society, as epitomized by the indoor shopping mall where a small band of human survivors take shelter from the zombie plague sweeping the country." He went on to say that Dawn of the Dead was a "savage (if tongue-in-cheek) attack on the foibles of modern society", showcasing explicit gore and horror and turning them into "a form of art".
It would be another seven years before Romero returned to the Living Dead series, when he released Day of the Dead in 1985, and a further twenty-years before returning again with Land of the Dead in 2005 (released one year after director Zack Snyder's remake of Dawn of the Dead premiered in 2004). Since then, Romero has directed two more movies in the series - Diary of the Dead (2007) and Survival of the Dead (2009) - and is currently developing another entry, Origins, with his son G. Cameron Romero writing and directing. The latest installment is set to be a prequel story set at the height of the Cold War and explains the original origin of the zombie outbreak, and was the subject of a successful crowdfunding campaign in late 2015. However, since then, there has been no further mention of when Origins will go into production.
Dawn of the Dead — unlike many other "gory" horror staples of its time — has also received acclaim from film reviews since its initial release, with many critics regarding the movie as as one of the best films of 1978. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave it four out of four stars and proclaimed it "one of the best horror films ever made." While conceding Dawn of the Dead to be "gruesome, sickening, disgusting, violent, brutal and appalling," Ebert said that "nobody ever said art had to be in good taste." Steve Biodrowski of Cinefantastique praised the film, calling it a "broader" version of Night of the Living Dead, and gave particular credit to the acting and themes explored: "the acting performances are uniformly strong; and the script develops its themes more explicitly, with obvious satirical jabs at modern consumer society, as epitomized by the indoor shopping mall where a small band of human survivors take shelter from the zombie plague sweeping the country." He went on to say that Dawn of the Dead was a "savage (if tongue-in-cheek) attack on the foibles of modern society", showcasing explicit gore and horror and turning them into "a form of art".
It would be another seven years before Romero returned to the Living Dead series, when he released Day of the Dead in 1985, and a further twenty-years before returning again with Land of the Dead in 2005 (released one year after director Zack Snyder's remake of Dawn of the Dead premiered in 2004). Since then, Romero has directed two more movies in the series - Diary of the Dead (2007) and Survival of the Dead (2009) - and is currently developing another entry, Origins, with his son G. Cameron Romero writing and directing. The latest installment is set to be a prequel story set at the height of the Cold War and explains the original origin of the zombie outbreak, and was the subject of a successful crowdfunding campaign in late 2015. However, since then, there has been no further mention of when Origins will go into production.
ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE: 92%
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