The helicopter pilot traffic reporter Stephen (David Emge) and his pregnant lover Francine (Gaylen Ross) decide to steal the radio aircraft and fly to Canada, looking for a safer life without the epidemic of zombies. Their friend Roger (Scott H. Reiniger) and Peter (Ken Foree), two Philadelphia SWAT team members, go with them. Due to the short autonomy of the small helicopter for such a long flight, they seek refugee in an abandoned mall. They clean the place, sealing the entrances and killing the zombies in its interior, and live a quite reasonable life for months, when another external menace threatens the group of survivors. The original 'Dawn of the Dead' is an insuperable classic. Yesterday I watched it again, maybe for the fourth or fifth time, to compare with the recently released remake, and although being a 1978 movie, the special effects are spectacular and the story is amazingly original. The second part of George Romero's trilogy is an excellent horror movie, highly recommended to any fan of this genre. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): 'Zombie – Despertar dos Mortos' ('Zombie – Awakening of the Dead')

The dead are rising and panic is spreading. Martial law is declared. SWAT does battle to clear an apartment building. Stephen Andrews and Francine Parker from a Philadelphia TV station take the traffic helicopter with SWAT members Roger DiMarco and Peter Washington. They find sanctuary in a shopping mall. They struggle to clear the mall of zombies. Francine is pregnant. When Roger turns, Peter shoots him. As they clean up and become comfortable, they start indulging in the mall amenities. Then a gang of bikers find the remaining trio.

This starts off as a lowly B-movie horror with lots of outrageous action and amateurish acting. Romero never really figured out how to make a big budget movie. Then he does something interesting. He turns this movie into a semi-comedy about the superficial consumerism that the mall represents. As simple B-movie zombie action, this is really only at most a 6 but Romero is doing a little more than that.

George A. Romero's follow-up to his cult classic NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD arrived some ten years later and featured a greatly expanded budget. While DAWN OF THE DEAD is a direct continuation of where the previous one left off (it's a few weeks later, the zombie virus is spreading rapidly, the rescue stations are closing down), the style of the two films couldn't be more different. While NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD was a basically a low-budget movie, filmed on just one set, DAWN OF THE DEAD in comparison feels like an epic; a huge setting, tons of zombies and plenty of special effects. We can only be grateful that Romero finally got the budget to do his zombie movies justice.

This time around the film doesn't really concentrate on the conflict between the band of survivors (everybody gets along). Romero injects many of his own political views on feminism, society, etc., and also puts the film on multiple levels. In the first instance it's an action/horror movie, in the second it's a scathing satire on consumerism. Thankfully all this subtext don't detract from the main story, and once again the film succeeds in giving us characters to care about. While some might complain that the film might be a little long, cutting would have resulted in us perhaps losing some sympathy with the characters, losing their little ticks and habits, their expressions, their mentalities.

To a mainstream viewer, the cast is completely obscure and unknown. However, Romero picks his actors well and everybody fits their role like a glove. Scott H. Reiniger plays probably the most one-dimensional character of the bunch, a SWAT man who gradually loses his grip with reality and suffers the consequences. David Emge is realistic as an atypical action man with a conscience, who starts off as a novice and learns how to fend for himself throughout the course of the film. Gaylen Ross is the realist of the group, always in touch with the situation, excluded because of her gender, seeing that the mall they occupy isn't a play area but a prison. However it's Ken Foree who excels as the action man who's also intelligent, quick thinking and kind. The only other notable cast members are Tom Savini, SFX master, cameoing as a biker, and a small role for Joe Pilato, who went on to play Captain Rhodes in the next dead film, DAY OF THE DEAD.

The special effects are emphasised as the real star of this film, and much is made of the high gore content. Not five minutes go by without zombies getting shot in the head and blood splattering, although all the real cannibalistic gore is saved until the finale and immediately follows some light relief, Romero cruelly playing with our feelings. Arms are torn off, sockets spraying gore, flesh is ripped from legs and necks. It's all pretty horrible and gruesome, and in some ways depressing too. So many zombies and people get killed in this film that you'll need a strong stomach to watch the prolonged bloodshed. It's most horrible when characters we care about get bitten, and Romero works up a lot of suspense from putting them in danger; the truck driving scene being a prime example, plus the lift bit at the end.

The music is by Goblin, and is excellent; simplistic, yes, but catchy and downbeat. There are many comedic moments in the film to counter the horror (Romero obviously believed that comic relief should be included intentionally, so that rather than having viewers laugh at a film, they laugh with it instead), such as a zombie getting the top of his head sliced off by a helicopter rotor blade, or zombies falling off balconies and stumbling on escalators. However these silly bits never get in the way of the violence or true horror of the situation, and some bits are painful to watch, especially one scene where a sympathetic character is due to come back from the dead. The wait is unbearable. It is in these moments that we see the genius of Romero's film, as he explores all possibilities and facets of life in a world full of monsters. It's a huge film, it requires a concentrated effort to get through, but will reward on many levels depending on how you watch it.