“This Was An Important Place in Their Lives” : ‘Dawn Of The Dead’ 45 Years Later

If asked what my top five movies were, I’d first say “That’s an impossible question, dammit!” But eventually I’d relent and give it a real go to make that list. A top five would definitely have Silence of the Lambs and Apocalypse Now. It would also have George Romero’s Dawn Of The Dead. Depending on the day, it might just be my all-time favorite movie.

I first started getting into horror films in the age of VCRs. We bought our first one in November of 1984. It was a Toshiba Betamax, and when we bought it my 10-year old self felt like we’d officially entered the future. It was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving that year, and the first two rentals were Creepshow and Strange Brew. Strange Brew was great, but Creepshow was what officially primed my brain for horror. It was scary, funny, gross, disturbing, and smart. I loved every story, but “The Crate” was the one that messed with me the most. It was bitingly funny, dark as night, and gruesome. It was the first time watching something that gave me that feeling in the pit of my stomach, as if I’d swallowed some bit of food that didn’t agree with me. Kinda icky and kinda woozy.

It was wonderful.

From there on all I wanted to do was go into the back room at Video World and rent something scary from the horror section. Romero remained in my mind, and I kept seeing the cover of a movie called Dawn of the Dead. The cover showed a guy transforming from human to something else, and in the summer of 1985 I finally got a chance to see what this movie was all about.

I’d been at my aunt’s house for a week, hanging out with my cousins and trying not to get spanked(my aunt was a big proponent of spanking.) I’d had fun over there, but by the day it was time to go home I was truly homesick. I missed my mom and dad, I missed my older brother, our miniature schnauzer Klaus, my toys, my bed, and I missed just the comforts of home. When we got home my mom had gone to Video World and rented that strange movie with the transforming man on the cover, Romero’s Dawn of the Dead. We watched it that night and that movie blew my 11-year old mind.

From the opening in the television studio and the ensuing chaos as people were yelling at each other and wondering what to do, to the raid on the housing project and the discovery of the undead in the basement, to the helicopter escape and the discovery of the mall; there was something ancient, prescient, and telling about it. A horror movie that put a mirror up to society and forced it to look at its ugly self. Even in death capitalism and consumerism drove our rotting brains, bringing our undead selves to the mall for one last Orange Julius, hot pretzel, and for some clearance items at Foxmoor. Maybe even a nice meal at The Brown Derby.

And of course human flesh ripped from the bone.

It’s hard to even describe how far Dawn of the Dead went to rewire my brain. While probably not appropriate for an 11-year old to watch, it didn’t traumatize me. In fact, it gave me a sense of nostalgia. Malls were still a big part of my life then, going with my mom to the Concord Mall or the Glenbrook Mall for school clothes shopping, lunch at The Apple Orchard or a slice of pizza at Enzo’s. Seeing these four veritable strangers making their home at the Monroeville Mall, shopping with a wheelbarrow running from store to store to stock up on food, clothes, ammunition, and furniture all the while dodging undead shoppers looking to rip their flesh from their bodies, well it had a Huck Finn quality to it. It was the ultimate fantasy for a kid of 11; living in the innards of a mall and surviving on the wares sold throughout the mammoth building, occasionally making zombie kill runs to clean the place out. Muzak playing over the loudspeakers while the water fountains run and the mall lights light your way to survival.

I loved how these four people came together; the TV station producer and her news copter pilot boyfriend, as well as the two riot police officers. They were all hesitant of each other, yet they came together for all the same purpose which was survival. All the speculation between them as to what was going on, and why. Hesitation slowly turned into camaraderie as they found the mall and used it as a place to hide and regroup. When they were in danger you really felt for them and you didn’t want to see them die. You wanted to see them all survive.

The Monroeville Mall itself was as much a character as the actors. It put me in mind of the Glenbrook Mall in Fort Wayne, as well as the Southlake Mall in Merriville. In 1978 indoor malls were still a relatively new thing, but there was something about seeing those storefronts that connected me to those characters even more. I recognized some of those stores. It was as if they were stranded in my mall. Hell, I could be there. It just made the film that much more relatable to me.

I know a lot of people can’t really get into Romero’s original Dawn these days because of the zombie makeup. The “blue” zombies, and the sometimes off-putting shade of the blood. But that doesn’t bother me. It wasn’t an aesthetic choice, more so Tom Savini still figuring his skill set out. I can appreciate it even more when you see what Savini went on to do just a few years later in films like The Burning, The Prowler, Friday The 13th : The Final Chapter, and of course Romero’s Day of the Dead. And despite the robin egg blue color of the zombie skin, there were still some pretty gruesome kills at the end with the biker gang.

And speaking of the biker gang, we learn that the humans are the real monsters in the end. Of course the zombies are dangerous, but who we have to fear are ourselves. Romero got more into that theory in Day of the Dead with the underground military base and soldiers going rogue. Romero showed us that even at the end of Night of the Living Dead.

Way back about 21 years ago I found this ultimate DVD edition of Dawn of the Dead on Ebay(remember that?) It had three different versions of Dawn, as well as a DVD filled with documentaries about the movie. Of course I had to buy it. The three versions of the film were the theatrical cut, the director’s cut, and the European cut which was edited by Dario Argento.

For my money, Romero’s director’s cut is the best. I love how he takes his time in the first part of the film at the TV studio. You can feel the anxiety these people are feeling; trying to figure out what is happening and why. There’s a palpable panic just under the surface and in their faces. I remember watching Dawn during my kids’ spring break in 2020. Watching that scene at the very beginning of the Covid-19 outbreak made our situation with the pandemic all the more prescient and relatable. Also, far more frightening. We weren’t going through a zombie outbreak, but it was an outbreak for sure. And one we still didn’t understand at all. I can remember coming home after going to the grocery store and wiping all the boxes down with anti-bacterial wipes and thinking “Jesus, is this how the rest of our lives are going to be?”

Dawn of the Dead turned 45 years old this past September. In my mind it’s just as prescient and timely as it was then. Maybe even more, at least the human aspect of it. A minority of people coming together during a national or global crisis. Helping each other in a horrific, nightmare world where the dead come back and want to devour you to the bone. Or worse yet not all the way to the bone so you can come back just like them. But even more horrific are the fellow humans still living, thinking, and breathing that want to devour you as well. But where the zombies are doing it out of basic survival instinct, the humans are far more malicious in their intent. We’ve seen it in the last decade get far worse than what it already was; humans have always had an innate evil in them. We’ve just always tried to tap it down for the sake of our own humanity. Well, we’re letting it run wild and free now. No zombie can compete with that kind of malignancy. Romero explored that with his ‘Dead’ films. His views came out of the Civil Rights movement of the early 60s, as well as the Vietnam War. He saw the division and hate that racism and that “police action” gave birth to, and his zombie films were a mirror up to that evil.

Dawn of the Dead was the cinematic cataclysmic event in my life that gave birth to my lifelong obsession with horror. And not just horror, but horror with a heaping dose of humanity as well. I can enjoy horror films for the sake of the horror; jump scares, gore, stupid teens doing stupid things in the woods, etc… But George Romero wired my brain to appreciate horror that shows us something more. What humanity can turn into if we’re not careful.

Dawn of the Dead – to me – is like coming home after a week of being gone. It’s my favorite spot on the couch, frozen pizza in the oven, and a videotape in the VCR. There’s no other place I’d rather be.

“Some kind of instinct. Memory of what they used to do. This was an important place in their lives.”