Dawn Of The Dead

I find it pretty surprising this movie came out a full decade after Night Of The Living Dead.

That movie probably was the most succesful independent picture ever at that moment in time, but George really got screwed over with his profits from the movie so maybe he took the time to better his knowledge of the film industry and better himself as a director before returning to make a sequel. I think that's the biggest question of all these Dead movies, is each subsequent movie following the events of the last or is it just a standalone film? And to me personally, I think this is a follow up to Night with the zombie epidemic spreading, nobody knows what in the hell is going on, groups of hunters and soldiers are patrolling the woods, I totally can see this as a continuation. We meet up with some new characters, a TV newsperson, a helicopter pilot, and two SWAT officers who meet up and decide the best place to hide out is a shopping mall. I find it incredibly interesting how much malls have changed in the ensuing 40 odd years, it really was the place to get everything and not just clothes, entertainment, and beauty products. They had food shops, hardware stores, arcades, banks, it truly was the one stop place if you had the scratch, so it's rather an ingenious place to hole up. The pacing of the film I feel was perfect, I'm not sure which cut of the movie I got, it clocked in past 2 hours and had a lot of the soundtrack by Goblin which is a great soundtrack by the way, so was it the theatrical cut or like a director's cut? Well I looked into it. The history of this movie is completely f***ed, there's so many different versions since it premeired depending on where you lived due to censorship, but yes the version I watched was the theatrical cut which apparently Romero preferred the most so I'm happy about that. But anyway, the film takes it's time showing these people survive in the mall, it takes about half an hour for them to get there which helps set up how the public is dealing with the situation and the pandemonium experienced by news crews, and when there's less than 30 minutes before the end is where the climax starts. It's pretty great, with a motorcycle army led by Tom Savini crashing their sanctuary and going wild, there's so much that happens it's difficult to recount everything that occured but instantly memorable at the same time. Good ol' Ken Foree is back and center stage and I flat out stated early in the movie, if he lives I'm gonna love it, and this film got me jumpy to see if he made it. In fact I really liked all our main characters, each having good personality and inner workings with the other characters that made them really click. Christ, they never even argue and start going at each other's throats, isn't that nice? Cooperation, it's grrrreat! I heard Tom Savini wasn't very pleased with how the zombies looked cause they had a slight blue tint to their skin tone, but honestly I never had a problem with it because the blood spurts and gore was divinely disgusting with once again the intestines being the real gross out moment for me, I mean I kinda felt queasy watching that, but I like the way they look once again being very minimal and I find the blue tint logical, if you lose oxygen you start turning blue so it makes sense why they look sort of ashy grey mixed with a smidge of pthalo blue. But before I start telling you what we wash our brushes with, let's continue. I really really liked it, maybe even more than the first. I still loved the cinematography, I really loved the soundtrack, acting was great, effects were great, the story was interesting and had it's suspenseful moments, I can't wait to see Day Of The Day which many now consider to be the best of them all so sign me up. 4 stars, 8.5/10! Hell you think this is how store employees feel on black friday? I'd take a machete to their brains too guys...