Appeal of "Dawn of the Dead"? (1 Viewer)

[BrianShort]

I never knew my OP would stir up such discussion! I just received the Dawn remake from Netflix, though it'll probably be tomorrow or this weekend before I get to watch it. I also have Shaun of the Dead on the way. After reading this thread through, I think I may rent the original again and see if I enjoy it more... like I said in my OP though, I think the main thing that bothered me was that the zombies just didn't feel like the overwhelming threat the film was trying to make them. I also wasn't expecting it to be as campy as it was, but I guess that's my fault.

edit: One more thing. I noticed on the DVD Netflix sent me that it said U.S. Theatrical version. Should I hunt down a different version to check out?

 

[Michael Elliott]

The "U.S. theatrical cut" is Romero's prefered version.

The "Director's cut" is actually the Cannes version, which contains several more minutes worth of footage. This is called the director's cut but it is not actually because Romero was in a rush to get the film to Cannes.

The "Euro" version, aka "Dario Argento's cut" runs just under 2 hours and has most of the social stuff missing. A lot of the dialogue is cut out but all the gore/violence is there and it also features a new music score from Goblin. This one here is more of an action film.


There's also a 1982 "Drive-In" cut but sadly I haven't seen this one and not too many got to either. The producers threw this version out there as a double feature with CREEPSHOW and needless to say, the MPAA cut the hell out of the film. From what I've heard, this version runs under 100-minutes and is pretty much missing every last second of gore. This is probably awful but I'd like to see it.

There's also a fan made "German" cut, which features the Cannes version of the film with Argento's music score and a few other changes. This one here is for die-hards only though.

 

[Joe Karlosi]

I did.

 

[Kevin M]

Don't worry Brian, it happens sometimes.....now you should start a thread about DTS vs.Dolby Digital...that'll be a calm thread.

 

[BrianShort]

I just watched the 2004 remake, and loved it. In terms of a "believable" zombie movie, I thought this one had a much more realistic sense of danger and hopelessness. I could believe these zombies might actually infest the entire world/us.

And DTS is way better!

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

Sorry but with all due respect that's pure horseshit.

I'm a horror fan, I have a very generous attention span and I prefer running zombies because they're quite simply MUCH more threatening than Romero's lumbering one's, to me there is little to fear from slow zombies unless they're encountered in large numbers and they manage to box you in. If your out on the street with running zombies lurking around you had better haul ass lest they chase you down like a dog and rip you to shreds.

I'm a big fan of Romero's series (except for 'Land of the Dead', I actually find that films message of "rights for zombies" to be quite offensive lol and I **HATE** the 'Big Daddy' character and everything he represents, and don't even get me started on that whole "they're only looking for someplace to go, like us" crap, freakin' zombie sympathizer should have been shot for treason as soon as he said that lol). Anyhoo, as great as the original 'Dawn' is I loved what Zack Snyder did with his vision and prefer it over the original now, it was fast, dark and terrifying to me, in fact I lovingly refer to his version as the Die Hard of zombie films.

And for the record I also think that Tom Savini's remake of 'Night' buries Romero's as well, it's better in just about every respect, lighting, acting, directing, music, atmosphere, effects and suspense. Yes, i'm all too aware of the "it looks like a documentary which is what makes it scary" argument but i've never cared about that, that's just a polite way of saying that the film looks cheap which it does, and to those who like that quality more power to you but it's never held any appeal for me.

Brian, these films, 'Dawn' included of course, are scary because they depict a vision of the end of the world that is purely terrifying and seemingly sent from hell itself. The thought of a dead human being getting up and walking, hungry for human flesh is probably the only thing that still has the ability to scare me, it's a nightmarish vision of the end of mankind, like the world is beginning to rot and God has turned his back on us.

That's what i've always gotten from these films and that's why I love them.

 

[Joe Karlosi]

Well said.

 

[Kevin M]

:rolleyes
There you go Hammer, that was from my #22 post...all clear now? You see (and thank you for actually reading all my posts before accusing me of "horseshit" BTW) that post was in direct response to Karlosi NOT paying attention to the Winky and actual final words in that post nor, apparently, my follow up explanation post as to exactly what I meant by "slightly".
Now that you understand what I meant with the statement you can call that nonsense if you wish, but please take the original post for what it was...a partial joke.

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

I read your follow-up posts but I still didn't get the sense that you were truly kidding about your first one. But alright, i'll take your later statement to heart, it's no big deal.

 

[Andy Sheets]

Did you miss that Romero sympathizes with the zombies in all of his films? Romero is a cynical sumbitch. He hates people

 

[Kevin M]

It's cool John...but "horseshit"? Kinda insulting brother, I mean we're talking about living dead movies for god's sake.



Let me elaborate just a little bit on what I mean towards the producer's mindset....take the remake of Amityville Horror, IMO the only reason they changed the character of "Jody" from a demonic pig to a standard re-hashed "creepy little dead girl" was to bank on the popularity of that standard horror film cliche popularized by several successful thrillers in the last 6 years or so, not the least of which would of course be The Ring, IMO it smacks of a "me too!" attitude rather than any true artistic reasoning.

This is how I feel about sprinting Zombies being used in the Dawn remake, there was more "we can draw a bigger crowd in with them because people loved them in 28 Days Later" thought behind their use in the film as much as any thought that they are truly "scarier" (a debatable point to say the least).

To me using that reasoning to inject anything into your film is "Horseshit"...that's my opinion anyway.

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

Don't mind me when I say horseshit, that's just the way I talk, I say that to my friends when I think they're full of it.

Andy, I gathered that about Romero, but that notion seemed to be more pointed to me in 'Land', he was actually trying to get me to believe that zombies have a place in the world and that we humans should give it up and admit defeat and just hand our world over to them.

Zombie's lost their rights when they kicked the bucket, that's my philosophy, they're an abomination to all that is good so burn em' all. I wouldn't have hesitated for an instant to blow Big Daddy and his "people" out of their shoes there at the end.

 

[Michael Elliott]

Which is why people flock to see piece of shit Hollywood junk while something like LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA or GRINDHOUSE die a quick death.

I'm going to expand on something Kevin said in regard to DAWN's remake and remakes in general. Anyone with half a brain knows what was going on in this country back in the late 60's and throughout the 70s. A lot of our horror films had tons of political messages or messages dealing with some hot topic. Many of our beloved horror films from this era tried to be more than just exploitation trash, which is something we got a lot of during the 1950s when horror movies were for teenagers. The 1930s horror films were made for adults; not kids. Things started to change a bit in the 1940s but by the time the 1950s got here, for the most part, horror and sci-fi were for teenagers.

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD brought the brains back to horror films and that's why it's such a landmark movie. THE EXORCIST, THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, THE HILLS HAVE EYES, LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, DAWN OF THE DEAD, THE OMEN, THE AMITYVILLE HORROR and various others tried to mix messages with the horror or tried to say something rather than just throw gore and trash out there (although I find LAST HOUSE to enter the trash zone, others love it).

With that in mind, the brains were sucked out of the horror genre (and pretty much every genre) during the 1980s due to mindless slashers and so on.

What do we have today? Remakes of the films I mentioned a paragraph up. How are they different? In most cases any political, social or whatever message has been taken out and replaced with action, cheap jump scares or mindless gore. I found the remakes of HILLS, DAWN, AMITYVILLE, TEXAS and THE OMEN to be decent films that I'd rate 2.5/4. However, these films are pretty mindless and really don't have anything to offer outside of their action scenes, gore and so on. The brains that the originals are praised for (or bashed here) are now missing from these remakes and you really can't blame studios because American crowds have shown they really don't get too excited over great movies. They'd much more prefer something like WILD HOGS, which I believe passed the $160 million mark at the box office.

Of course, no one is right or wrong in what they like but I'm willing to bet 30 years from now Romero's zombie films will still be loved and remembered. I'll bet THE EXORCIST, THE OMEN, TEXAS CHAINSAW and others will still be loved and remembered. However, I'm willing to bet that the remakes will only be cult items among horror fans because the mainstream has already forgotten them since their brains are now waiting for the next remake to come along.

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

Well, when I say that it's a compliment not a slam against modern horror but nice way to turn things around anyway.

You'll get no argument from me that horror of the 60's, 70's and 80's (some classics came out of that decade make no mistake) but i'm not really certain it's because they all tried to make some sort of statement about anything they were just better, in the way they were written, acted, directed and shot and to be perfectly honest I never cared that the horror that I liked had a message in it or not, it's not something that I need in my horror, not saying it isn't there I just don't take it to heart at all.

This doesn't in any way detract from my enjoyment of horror but it also doesn't add anything to them for me, either, first and foremost I want to be entertained by horror and anything after that is a bonus. The 'Dead' films entertain me, heck the whole zombie genre entertains me, and so I love almost every zombie film that I see because that subject disturbs me, it's not Romero's or anyone else political message that frightens me, it's the subject of the walking dead taking over the world.

While I agree that older horror had a higher quality to it i'm not ready, not by a longshot, ready to dismiss every new horror film that comes out because I have this sweeping opinion that all new horror is junk, not saying that's what any of you are saying i'm just making an observation. Some of the new horror is quite good, it's rare for a great horror film to come along now like Halloween or The Exorcist but there is some good stuff in there, granted you must wade hip-deep through crap to get to them but occasioanlly you'll find some good stuff.

At the end of the day I love BOTH 'Dawn' films, loved the original since I was little and I am able to see the style that Snyder brought to it, his wasn't your typrical trash remake, he genuinely tried to make it fresh and hard edged and he succeeded IMO, it's has nothing, for me at least, to do with the rapid cutting, the loud audio track or whatever else one considers constitutes trash horror for the masses, I like that film for two simple reasons...it entertained me and it frightened me. The remake also fit better into my idea of what that phenominon would actually look and be like if it were to actually happen which only adds to it's creepiness for me.

 

[Kevin M]

Cool Michael.......I'm not sure what that had to do with anything I said but...

Bare in mind that, with a few caveats, I actually liked the Dawn remake....the Amityville remake? ...pure crap, aside from the basic setup it could have been called anything at all with as much as it had in common with the book or the original film, horror by the numbers as far as I was concerned.

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

Now The Amityville Horror remake was pure unadulterated garbage.

 

[Robert Anthony]

Well, the comparison you're making is a little specious if you're going to use Hammer's example, since "Die Hard" isn't exactly "hollywood junk."

Also, "Last House on the Left" has nothing on it's mind but shock cinema, really. Craven, post success, has tried to say it's a treatise on the Nuclear Family or whatever, but that's patent bullshit--he just wanted to make a really intense goresploitation film. You have people making an intellectual case for I Spit On Your Grave, too, it doesn't mean that case has any merit. Actually, of your list of "Brainy" horror movies of the seventies, you've got Dawn, Exorcist, and Omen that I can see having something more on its mind than their modern-day brethren. I fail to see the "smarts" inherent in "Amityville Horror," Which was an awfully acted and directed piece of barely-better-than-TV-movie dreck, or in Chainsaw, which was remarkable at the time solely because it was at the time unprecedentedly BATSHIT INSANE and CHEAP, and not because there were any BRAINS involved. The production almost drove Gunnar Hansen crazy and Tobe Hooper can't be called the smartest director with the most solid sense of subtext ever, either.

And again, the "Brains" in these movies are pretty simple, and are often given more credit than they really deserve simply because the act of daring to put brains in your horror movie is enough for a lot of people. People will give a movie a horror movie a pass for even faintly jabbing at a subtext. Me personally, trying isn't enough. They've gotta actually pull it off. If they can't, I'd rather they don't. The idea that a horror movie has to have a message is a nice one, but it's not at all times necessary, as the horror movies you listed ARE landmark, I won't disagree, for one reason or another, even though about half of them are pretty much brainless.

Paul: The issues hammered to death in the 2 1/2 hour running time of Romero's Dawn:

1: The obvious - Consumerism is bad
2: 2nd most obvious - Apathy is bad.
3: Selfishness is bad.

The whole movie recycles these three themes over and over and over and over and over and over again, often to the detriment of the characters, and you can almost SEE the actors getting tired of having to do these things their characters would likely NOT DO just so George can, every fifteen minutes like clockwork, provide an example that one of the three above axioms is head-chompingly true.

I do love the movie, bought it the day it came out, and was even watching it last night. I love a lot of things about it, the frenetic atmosphere of the beginning, the slowly settling sense of hopelessness, but George is about as subtle as an anvil from 8 stories up. He got better on Day of the Dead, but got WAY WORSE in Land of the Dead, where the symbolism of the actions almost took permanent preference over the story's needs.

I like Snyder's because he amplifies that settling sense of hopelessness, and varies the frenetic confusion throughout, dynamically. The running zombies help there. I'm also skeptical about the cynicism that Gunn and Snyder inserted fast zombies into their script because studio heads were like "Uh, give us 28 days later type shit, thanks" because I believe Gunn was writing his script before 28 Days later opened, and I'm remembering off the top of my head (which means it could be totally off) that Gunn was disappointed upon watching that film because he thought he'd pretty much cornered the market on running zombies.

Fast zombies add an element of fear just as much as slow ones do, only in differing ways. But the truck rescue outside Andy's gun shop is, I'll say, MORE SUSPENSEFUL than the corresponding truck rescue of Roger in the original, and those fast zombies sprinting pell mell around the corner, trampling themselves to get to the mall survivors, adds a lot to that.

That said, yes, Snyder's movie is more thematically thin than Romero's and as a result, doesn't feel quite as filling. But I appreciate that instead of reaching for a depth that Gunn and Snyder probably couldn't provide that time out, first time out, they focused on honing what they could really NAIL.

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

Just an added note, but I believe that Dan O'Bannon started the whole running zombies thing, I can't recall a movie before Return of the Living Dead having sprinting zombies in it.

 

[Kevin M]

I guess I'm a cynic then because I have a hard time buying Gunn's excuse...I offer no proof, just looking at what was a hit before and how cannibalistic Hollywood is and putting two & two together.

And I agree, O'bannon did start the running dead thing...28 days was just such a surprise hit after quite a drought of hit "zombie" movies that I can't help but raise an eyebrow at the coincidence of Dawn coming reasonable close on it's heals..but not so soon as to have the imitation idea be invalid, I mean two years is quite enough time for changes to be made.

I may indeed be a cynic but not without fairly good reason. At least I like to think so.

 

[Robert Anthony]

Hey, I've got a bit of idealistic naivety to me as well--we'll meet in the middle somewhere