Dawn of the Dead (Original)

George Romero's  Dawn of the Dead is another one of those movies that, if you want to style yourself a zombie movie buff, you'll need to watch, and probably want to own.

Though not quite as influential as Night of the Living Dead, as it brought little new to Romero's zombie formula other than MORE ZOMBIES!!! and COLOUR!!!, Dawn of the Dead is actually quite critically regarded as an excellent satire and one of the better horror movies to come out of the 80's.

The film follows four people who, in the midst of a massive zombie outbreak and general worldwide apocalypse, flee to a helicopter and decide to camp out in a shopping mall.

They manage to chase the zombies out and eek out a more or less normal existence, surrounded by the trappings of a modern world that has long since ceased to function. But will their base desire for material possessions prove their downfall? Will the most dangerous thing, apart from the flesh-hungry undead disco dancers, prove to be other human beings?

All kidding aside, Romero's zombie films, the good ones anyway, have always been able to transcend the genre because they're films about something, that just happen to have zombies in them. Far too many films simply use a 'hey! we've got zombies!' outlook and then spend 60 minutes making heads explode. Not that I'm complaining, there is a time and place for everything, but Dawn of the Dead deserves it's high reputation, and rewards multiple viewings.

This is the DVD that I have currently; it's awesome if you're into this movie, Romero, or behind-the-scenes footage and film-making. It has multiple cuts of the film, multiple commentaries with the actual filmmakers and cast full of interesting tidbits and memories, and a sweet documentary about the making of the film, among other things.

Dawn of the Dead
Directed by George Romero
Written By George Romero
Starring David Emge, Ken Foree, Scott H. Reiniger, Gayleen Ross
Effects by Tom Savini

Zombi 2 - The Moby Dick of Zombie Movies.

This is one of those films that everyone loves- well, everyone that's so much more into horror movies then everyone else, anyway.

Truth is, this is a terrible movie. How exactly a film where a ZOMBIE FIGHTS A SHARK (!!!) can be boring, is beyond me, but somehow here it was achieved.

There are a few seconds of decent- brilliant, actually- gore, including an eye gouging scene that is probably the worst of its kind ever to grace the silver screen. Fulci was always good at that. He wasn't so good at anything else, though, like writing dialogue, or pacing a film, or doing any sort of decent dubbing, or compiling a soundtrack that doesn't make even Goblins worst work sound silly. At least, not at this point in his career.

Yep, the solid majority of the groans to be had in this movie are going to come from you. Did we really just watch like 30 minutes of the most totally unsympathetic and awkward characters in the history of low-budget Italian cinema talk aimlessly on a boat?  Was this movie really shot in English, dubbed in Italian, and then re-dubbed in English? Is the climax really going to be a bunch of people shuffling around in a barn that gets lit on fire? Is this really only called Zombi 2...because it is a unofficial sequel to Dawn of the Dead, hoping to ride the others coat-tails by deceiving a clueless public??

The answer to all those questions, is a thundering yes, rolling in like a storm on the Scottish Highlands. I've never actually seen a storm in Scotland- actually, I've never even been to Scotland. But the metaphor remains.

So why get this movie? If you want to impress the hell out of horror nerds, name dropping this film can go a long way. This is one of those films that separates the zombie fanboys from the zombie...fanMEN. 

It's like the Moby Dick of Zombie movies- really wearying to get through, much better summarized then in actuality, full of useless fluff and pointless information, ruining any sort of brief cool setups it has with poor execution- but somehow, it still gets massive credit.

Zombi I (Zombie 2)
Directed By Lucio Fulci
Written By Elisa Briganti
Starring Ugo Bologna, Al Cliver, Stefania D'Amerio