THIEVES AND BAD GUYS: Thoughts on George A. Romero’s ‘Dawn of the Dead’

Speak of zombies and for most people the scenario conjured to mind is one with a world in ruins, scattered band of survivors battling mindless hordes of the undead intent on consuming all flesh. The filmmaker most responsible for that apocalyptic vision is George A Romero and his movie ‘Dawn of The Dead.’ Other filmmakers, Jorge Grau with ‘Let Sleeping Corpses’ Lie (aka ‘The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue’) and Lucio Fulci with Zombi 2 (originally titled Zombi, but renamed with the release of Dawn of the Dead in it Italy as Zombi.) hinted at a coming disaster as part of the finale of their zombie movies, but it was Romero and ‘Dawn of the Dead’ that first gave us a world lost to a tide of the dead. While the zombie genre encompasses everything from the horrifying to the silly, it is this movie, released unrated in the Unites States because of explicit violence, that is the towering work of art with much more to say that, shoot them in the head. Be warned, hereafter there be spoilers. Continue reading →