George Romero's Dawn of the Dead (1978) was released exactly ten years after his first zombie masterpiece, Night of the Living Dead. In many ways, it's an upgrade of the first movie. It's in color, there's a lot more violence, the locations are grander, and the music is now a combination of stock music and music recorded by Italian progressive rock band Goblin, who were brought in by the movie's producer, Italian horror director Dario Argento. When I first saw Dawn of the Dead around 2000 or so, I didn't even realize that it was a sequel to anything, but I knew from the first moments of the movie inside of the television studio that I was watching a movie that was going to be nothing like anything I'd ever seen before. The music alone told me that. And it only got even better from there.Starring Ken Foree (From Beyond), Scott Reiniger (Knightriders), Gaylen Ross (Madman), and David Emge (Basket Case 2), with Tom Savini (From Dusk Till Dawn, who also did the special effects in this), John Amplas (Martin), and Taso Stavrakis (Knightriders) in small roles, it's the ultimate zombie movie. With its greyish blue zombies, pink blood, and shopping mall setting, Dawn of the Dead has quite possibly left behind an even bigger footprint in the history of zombie movies than its predecessor, again showing just what can be accomplished on a low budget and again proving that back then, George Romero knew exactly how to make his zombie movies stand out from the rest of the zombie movies that were cropping up during that time.
Stock up on your lighter fluid and Spam and get ready for another... Reviews with Ballz!
While Night of the Living Dead is the beginning of world's zombie problem, Dawn of the Dead begins a few weeks in. People are still in the cities, TV stations are still on air, and the police are still trying to battle crime, but right away, you can tell that there's an overall feeling of hopelessness. People are shown to be easily agitated and acting illogical. As I said before, the movie starts in a television studio, where Fran (Gaylen Ross) works and it's quite hectic, between the interview they're trying to air with a doctor to provide information to the public and people walking out on their jobs after having enough of the chaos in the studio. Eventually, her boyfriend, Stephen (David Emge), shows up to tell her his plan to escape with her. With them, they bring their cop friend, Roger (Scott Reiniger), and his new friend, Peter (Ken Foree).
Escaping from the city together isn't the end of their troubles though and exhausted from everything that's occurred, they eventually discover a shopping mall. Deeming a part of it to be safe enough, they decide to rest up there. After all, any place that's away from the living dead is a good place, right? Of course, there are strings attached to this little hiding spot they find, such as the fact that the rest of the mall is full of zombies and from how things have played out up to this point, it doesn't look like anyone will be coming to help them out anytime soon. I think the fact that it's just the four of them alone for most of the movie adds to the overall hopelessness of the situation.
With a budget a little higher than Night of the Living Dead, this time at $650,000, George Romero really does go all-out with Dawn of the Dead. In a way, it's hard to even compare it to the first movie, because while it sort of works as a companion piece as far as the style of the two movies go, with the low budget, great use of library music, and again setting the bar for zombie movies, it's also very much its own beast. You can really tell that Romero put as much heart into this as Night of the Living Dead, if not more considering the fact that he ended up with a script filled with specific details that caused it to be way more pages than the movie's length was actually intended to be.
Now, I mentioned in my Night of the Living Dead review how useless Barbra was and how George Romero almost did the same exact thing with this movie. Well, here, the problem is with Fran. She's almost just as fucking useless as Barbra! Again, I get that she might be in shock. But what she's gone through compared to what Barbra went through seems like nothing. When Stephen is trying to fight off a zombie and tells her to run, but she neither runs nor tries to help is just one of many instances when I feel like they would have been better off leaving her ass behind at the television studio. I do say Romero almost did the same thing for a reason though, because unlike Barbra, Fran does prove to be useful a few times in the movie.Though I never owned this movie on VHS, I rented it on VHS plenty and I've watched my DVDs plenty too. Including the Ultimate Edition, which comes with three cuts of the movie (theatrical/director, European, and extended cuts), I own five different DVDs of it. I also have an edit that combines footage from all three official cuts into one, extremely long movie. I personally prefer the theatrical cut though. It's easily the most well-polished cut. Well, why the hell are you still reading this shit? Even if you've seen it, go watch Dawn of the Dead now!
My Rating: 5/5
#Review #ReviewsWithBallz #Sequel #Zombie
In wanting to do something special on Trash Epics for October, I've decided to write a four-part series of reviews, which will cover the first four movies of George Romero's Dead series: Night of the Living Dead (1968), Dawn of the Dead (1978), Day of the Dead (1985), and Land of the Dead (2005). I'm skipping Diary of the Dead (2007) and Survival of the Dead (2009), both because they kind of reboot the series and because no one cares much about them anyway. And I'm not going to beat around the bush here: I love this series. It's easily my favorite horror series and these reviews will most certainly reflect that.
Night of the Living Dead starts off with brother and sister, Johnny (Russell Streiner) and Barbra (Judith O'Dea), headed down an isolated road to a cemetery to visit their father's grave. Ominous music plays in the background, taken from a stock music library like all other music in the movie, and it's a simple but very effective scene, perfectly setting up the terror that's about to unfold. As Johnny parks the car in the cemetery, the announcer on the radio comes on, talking about how they're back after some technical difficulties. Nothing to be alarmed about, Johnny shrugs it off and joins Barbra in finding their father's grave.
They aren't in the cemetery for long at all before Johnny decides to start fucking around by teasing Barbra and trying to scare her. This is when he says one of the famous lines of horror cinema history: "They're coming to get you, Barbra!" The perfect line to start George Romero's multi-movie zombie nightmare. Eventually, we move on to a nearby farmhouse, where we meet Ben (Duane Jones), Harry Cooper (Karl Hardman), and several others. While the other actors all do a fine job with their roles, it's Jones and Hardman who really steal the show. Every scene they're in together is just great.
Night of the Living Dead isn't my favorite of the Dead series, but as I said before, I love it. Everything in it just works really well. The plot, the settings, the music, the actors, the minimal effects. It's impressive what can be done with just $114,000. Sure, that kind of budget wouldn't get you far now, but I feel like low budget then and low budget now have two very different meanings or they at least have two very different mindsets behind them. The movie isn't very gory, especially when compared to the later movies in the Dead series. You aren't thinking about that when you're watching this however because of how great everything else is, though since Tom Savini was originally supposed to do the effects in this as he did for the next two movies, it does make you wonder what he might have been able to do with the budget they had to work with.
My only real complaint about this movie is the character of Barbra. It wasn't the actress who was the problem, but the character herself and how she was written. I get that she's in shock over everything, but it gets old fast. It's like when there's an annoying, useless kid in a serious movie. Realistic? Maybe. Fun to watch though? Not at all. At least Tom Savini's 1990 remake of Night of the Living Dead improves upon her character, giving her some actual purpose instead of having her just sit around talking crazy. And what really pisses me off is that Romero damn near pulls this same exact shit again in Dawn of the Dead! But more on that issue in that review.
In honor of autumn, I figured it would be fitting to do some seasonal content. For most of us, seasonal content means horror movies. I spent the past few weeks trying to come up with a list of the best Halloween films... but I couldn't. I'm terrible at making lists, which is why I took another approach...
When most horror fans think of cannibal movies, they probably think of the ones that came out of Italy during the 1970's and 1980's, particularly those by Ruggero Deodato. But Antonia Bird's Ravenous (1999) has nothing to do with Italy and their cannibal movies, besides the fact that it's also a cannibal movie. I wouldn't even call it inspired by those. It's nowhere near as gory, though it's still quite bloody.
John Boyd (Guy Pearce) is a soldier in the Mexican-American War and is promptly promoted from Second Lieutenant to Captain when he returns from war for kicking some major ass. However, it is quickly revealed that the ass kicking he delivered wasn't all that it was cracked up to be and as punishment, he's sent off to a snowy hellhole called Fort Spencer to get him far away from anyone else except for the few other soldiers stationed at the fort.
Once at the fort, Colonel Hart (Jeffrey Jones) gives Boyd a quick introduction to everyone else there and lets Boyd get settled in. It's not long however before a man named F.W. Colqhoun (Robert Carlyle) shows up out of the wilderness to tell them about how he and several others were traveling by wagon only to become lost. The soldiers at the fort decide to go look for other survivors and so most of them, including Boyd, set off into the wilderness themselves.
There's quite a few things going on in this movie that make me like it as much as I do, besides the cannibalism. For one, the fact that it's a period piece adds a certain edge to the movie I think. That's not always the case since some movies want to go that route and proceed to feature almost nothing from the selected period, making you wonder why the hell they just didn't set it in modern times, but with Ravenous, I think they did a good job with portraying that time in the 1800's. And that leads me to the music they use in the movie, which fits in very well. One track that they use a few times has almost an upbeat tone to it, but even with that, it just works for where it's used.
There's also the violence in the movie. It gets quite violent with lots of blood being thrown around, which pleases the fuck out of someone like me. Now, I don't think this is the bloodiest movie I've ever seen, but something kind of funny is that supposedly, they ran out of fake blood in the middle of filming. To me, that's something everyone involved with the movie should be proud of. So if you haven't seen this movie before, I say check it out ASAP.
When I was a kid, I remember seeing a few short parts of George McCowan's Frogs (1972) on TV. Of course, since I was a giant pussy about horror movies as a kid, I never sat down to watch it in full. But I recently noticed that it's on Netflix and decided to finally see this movie in its entirety, despite the somewhat low rating it seems to generally receive.
Right away, Frogs lets you know that it's intended to be an eco-horror movie as we watch Pickett Smith (Sam Elliot) make his way through a swamp in a canoe, taking pictures first of the various wildlife in the swamp and then of things like litter and sewer water that have made their way into the swamp. Now I'm not someone who goes out of their way to protect the environment (don't get me wrong, I'm not some fucking litterbug either), but this is a pretty grim opening.
Eventually, Pickett meets up with the Crockett family, who live in a mansion in the area and as you eventually find out, have gathered for a celebration. One of the first things they talk about to Pickett is how much they dislike the frogs in the area because they can't sleep at night from the noise. So Pickett decides to stick around, both to try finding a solution to their frog problem that doesn't result in wiping out the area's wildlife and to also enjoy the celebration that the Crocketts have planned.
It's not long however before the bodies start piling up, each death caused by the wildlife in one way or another. Frogs, snakes, alligators, and even birds take part in teaching the humans a lesson for fucking up the swampland and surrounding area. As I watched, I couldn't help thinking of Skinny Puppy's song, Nature's Revenge, though that's about weather, not animals. Because that's exactly what this movie was: nature's revenge. And that concept worked rather well in providing a pretty entertaining, cheesy, horror movie.
I really ended up liking this movie a lot by the end. The isolation of it all and the idea of something overthrowing humans are two things that have always appealed to me in horror movies. There's little blood, but that's not surprising considering when it was made. But what blood is there is used effectively. There was also a pretty nasty shot of a corpse that I thought was done rather well for a movie like this.
Here's an interesting little film. Why it's apart of the Troma catalogue is beyond me, as it would be a better fit on a Something Weird Video double feature with some William Grefe' snooze-fest. An interesting film nonetheless. Written by none other than Larry Cohen of all people. But something about this film annoys me. Several things, actually. First off, the main character, Janet. This disagreeable ice queen comes off like a snooty, self important little bitch. Fancying herself all deep and intellectual. The look on her face tells me she's constipated. And I sincerely hope that's the case.
Which is fine, cuz Scotty is a tool. Apparently intended as some sort of comedy relief for this piece of shit, but failing miserable at every attempt. Then, there's Marika. She's okay.
A unusual obscurity this movie is. The characters do a terrible job at acting like a group of friends who know eachother and stuff. And the last 1/3 of the movie feels very out of place, as if it's an entirely diffrent movie. Not really much of an ending, as it just kind of ends out of nowhere. As dumb and pointless as Scream Baby Scream is, I do find obscure little oddities like this quite interesting. Movies where the cast members would go on to do little to nothing else.Not alot of info on this one. No extras like interviews or commentary, as it can only be found on one of the Toxie's Triple Terror sets along with Fertilize The Blaspheming Bombshell and Stuff Stephanie In The Incinerator. Not surprisingly, Scream Baby Scream is by far the high point of that triple feature. But the point is, no extras sheding any light on how things went down with this movie. I'll bet Something Weird Video would have provided something for us Scream Baby Scream fans. All Troma gives us is a trailer they threw together, featuring sound effects from Redneck Zombies. Talk about out of place.
