Dawn of the Dead (1978) is George A. Romero’s sequel to Night of the Living Dead, about four people who ride out the collapse of a city inside a suburban shopping mall. Romero wrote and directed it. The film premiered in Italy on September 1, 1978, under the title Zombi, and opened in the United States the following spring. David Emge, Ken Foree, Scott H. Reiniger, and Gaylen Ross star. Tom Savini handled the effects. It is the Dead film that made the series about consumer culture as much as about corpses.
At a glance
| Release date | September 1, 1978 (Italy); April 20, 1979 (United States) |
| Director | George A. Romero |
| Writer | George A. Romero |
| Starring | David Emge, Ken Foree, Scott H. Reiniger, Gaylen Ross |
| Runtime | 127 minutes (common US theatrical cut); other cuts run 119 and about 139 |
| Rating | Unrated in the United States on first release; later X in some markets, and R on subsequent versions |
| Genre | Zombie horror |
| Budget | About $1.5 million |
| Box office | Often cited near $55 million worldwide; independent distribution makes the total hard to audit |
Plot summary
A Philadelphia television station is still broadcasting advice that no longer matches the streets. Fran is a producer. Stephen, her boyfriend, flies traffic reports. They leave with Roger, a SWAT officer, and Peter, Roger’s colleague, after a raid on a housing project goes bad. The helicopter heads west. Below them, rural militias and the dead are already sharing the fields. They set down on the roof of a mall outside Pittsburgh because it has what a collapse does not: food, guns, and doors that lock.
Clearing the mall takes the film’s middle hour. The dead are there because the mall was the place they wanted to be when they were alive. Peter says as much. Once the shutters are down, the four of them have a department store to themselves. Fran is pregnant. Stephen treats the stores like a reward. Roger is bitten and does not tell anyone until he has to. The comfort is the threat. A biker gang eventually notices that somebody is living behind the gates.
Spoiler section: the ending
The bikers break in, trash the stores, and let the dead back through the doors. Stephen is bitten and later leads the corpses to the hiding place. Peter stays behind with the option to shoot himself and chooses the helicopter instead. Fran has already started it. The two of them lift off with little fuel and no particular destination. A bleaker ending, with both of them dead, was written and not used.
Production and behind the scenes
Romero could not get a studio to finance a sequel to a public-domain hit. He and producer Richard Rubinstein raised the money independently, with Italian backing from Dario Argento’s circle. The budget landed around $1.5 million. The location was the Monroeville Mall, east of Pittsburgh, which let them shoot after closing time. The production had the stores from roughly midnight to dawn, then had to put every display back. Foree, Emge, Reiniger, and Ross were not stars. Romero cast them because they looked like people who might plausibly fly a helicopter out of a city.
Savini, a Vietnam veteran who had not yet become the name on every 1980s horror credit, ran the effects. Bites, disembowelings, and the biker raid were done with appliances and stage blood in a working mall, which limited how large a mess they could leave. Argento took a cut of the film for Europe, shortened it, and scored it with Goblin. The American version uses a mix of library music and some of that Goblin material, and runs longer. Both cuts circulate. The US theatrical version is the one most people mean by the title.
The film played festivals in 1978, opened in Italy that September as Zombi, and reached American theaters on April 20, 1979, through the United Film Distribution Company. It was released without an MPAA rating after an X was likely. Word of mouth and a decade of midnight bookings turned it into a large independent success. A 2004 remake, directed by Zack Snyder, keeps the mall and changes almost everything else.
Cast
- David Emge as Stephen Andrews
- Ken Foree as Peter Washington
- Scott H. Reiniger as Roger DeMarco
- Gaylen Ross as Francine Parker
- Tom Savini as the biker Blades
- David Early as Mr. Berman, the mall’s manager on the loudspeaker
Trivia
- Monroeville Mall leaned into the film for years. A museum display of props sat in the mall itself.
- Foree’s line about the dead remembering the mall is the thesis. Romero said he wrote the film after watching crowds at a new shopping center.
- Argento’s European cut drops about eight minutes and uses Goblin wall to wall. Romero’s cut keeps the quieter library cues.
- Savini plays a biker and also supplied the effects the biker raid destroys.
- The unused bleak ending, both leads dead, has circulated in stills and in Romero’s comments. The release print lets two of them leave.
- A 2004 remake opened the same mall idea to a faster zombie. Romero’s dead still shuffle.
Related links
- George A. Romero
- Night of the Living Dead (1968)
- Day of the Dead