Dawn of the Dead Trilogy - #2 Dawn of the Living Dead

The background:

Quote :

The Story...

In the first of George Romero's trilogy, Night of the Living Dead, the recently dead were rising in search of living human victims. In Dawn of the Dead George takes the story of the living dead one logical step further...

"every dead body that is not exterminated becomes one of them, it gets up and kills, the people it kills get up and kill. They kill for one reason, they eat their victims..."

As the number of the living dead increases a disbelieving society slowly collapses. Martial Law is declared and citizens may no longer occupy private residence and instead are sent to rescue centers, many of which are already becoming overridden by the living dead.

Four of the few surviving humans escape the city in a helicopter. Running low on fuel they land on the roof of a shopping mall in search of refuge. Tempted by the supplies they venture into the shops they can see below. Although the living dead are at large they are few in numbers and the four manage to clear the mall and baracade themselves in from the ever increasing number of living dead outside...

I watched the first of the Trilogy in "Film Class" in college. It was a low budget film that became a cult classic in the horror film group...

I was not greatly impressed but when "Dawn of the Living Dead" came out 1977 a group of us went to see it at "Fairlane Town Center Mall" in Dearborn at the late night, last showing of the day..... Trouble!!!!!

Considering it takes place in a mall, we saw the film and when leaving Fairlane it was closed and empty (just like in the film), boy what an after movie impact that had on us 17-18 year olds!!!!

I loved the film, and the way we saw it made it all the better!!!

I give it an 85/100 for its catagory.

I found the following online, about the filming of the movie, and it was shot about 60 miles from where I live now. I just have to watch it again and then visit the mall where it was fimed at!

From http://www.homepageofthedead.com/

Quote :

In 1974 George Romero was taken on a tour of a shopping mall in Monroeville, a few miles from down town Pittsburgh, by a friend who was one of its owners and an investor in Romero's films.

"Actually, when they first showed us around, they took us to where they had sealed-off rooms upstairs packed with civil defense stuff, which they had put there in the event of some disaster - and that's what gave me the idead. I mean, my God, here's this cathedral to consumerism, and it's also a bomb shelter just incase society crumbles." - George Romero

Three years later, on a budget of $1.5 million, this became the location for the majority of the filming of Dawn of the Dead.

"Filming in the mall was hell. We couldn't get in there until all the shops were closed and cleaned up which meant 10 or 11 at night. Then there was a tavern, a restaurant and a sort of disco that was open till 2am in the morning so we couldn't shoot sound till after then." - George Romero

"For some reason a society of senior citizens would show up at the mall at 6 o'clock in the morning for exercises. They would just walk around the mall. There was one corner where about 35 senior citizens met face to face with about 300 hideous zombies. There were no fatalities luckily." - Tom Savini

"Blades wasn't in the script. But we saw everybody dressing up in costumes and stuff, so when it came time for the bikers to come in, Taso and I said, 'Hey ! We can do that !' So we dressed ourselves up with bandoliers and swords. I had all kinds of props with me. I became Blades and I had this rubber sledgehammer, so Taso grabbed it, and he became Sledge." - Tom Savini

Various Facts and Figures

* The film was shot in approxiamately four months. The mall sequences could only be shot after regular business hours, between 10:00pm and 8:00am, and exterior shooting was limited to one-half day per week.
* The fake head used in the famous head explosion scene at the beginning of the film (where Wooley shoots a tennant with a shot gun), is actually a cast of Gaylen Ross' head. This cast was taken for use in the original (alternate) ending of Dawn where she puts her head into the rotor blades of the helicopter. The fake head was actually shot with a real shot gun to obtain the effect.
* The screw driver zombie was played by John Harrison who later actually composed the score/soundtrack for Day of the Dead.
* The famous recorded voice in the Maul ("attention shoppers") was actually done by Christine Forrest (George Romero's wife).
* The first zombie to receive a pie in the face from the biker gang is Roy Frumkes who produced "Document of the Dead" (See the article in Bits and Pieces).
* George Romero dressed as a Santa Claus biker for the initial biker raid. He can still be seen for a brief moment after the bikers throw pies where he runs past in the background.

the original is not to bad at all

I saw Chaun of the Dead, the parody to this movie, and it wasnt near good, I will have to watch the original movie I guess.