DAWN OF THE DEAD 1978
“Dawn Of The Dead” is one of the movies that has been talked about all my life, and rightfully deserves all of the praise it gets. I was made aware of the film early in life, thanks to my father, and his interest in zombie movies. We didn’t watch the original movie, but I remember him showing my siblings and I the remake from 2004, and some of the comics based off of the original. I grew up before we had all of the streaming services available today in 2026, so if you wanted to watch the movie, you had to find a physical copy. Ironically, after the 2004 remake, but before our streaming services of today, I remember it being pretty hard to find rentals, or anything on the original version of the movie.
After I turned 13 years old, I got into Metallica, and remember looking at pictures of Cliff Burton, who was always recalled as a “blast from the past”. People would talk about how Cliff still dressed like he was in the 70’s, and had this hippie look to him. I remember seeing these pictures of Cliff wearing a “Dawn of The Dead” shirt, which made me want to see the original movie even more. After high school, I started to get my own money, and somewhere around 18 or 19 years old, I saw “Dawn of The Dad” for the first time, after buying it off Amazon. I have a physical copy of the theatrical release. This version is 2 hours, but I feel like the length is appropriate. For everything that ends up happening in the film, any shorter length would only result in certain plot points not being properly explained. Even still, there are longer cuts of the film, 2 and a half hours, which give even more info than the 2 hour release.
I can’t act like this is a “perfect” film. Truly, a perfect film does not exist; but “Dawn of The Dead” is as close as you can get, in the horror genre especially.
There are negative aspects to the movie, one the main contentions being that the only female lead, Fran, is poorly written, and a weak character. In the theatrical release, she appears more weak, and less questioning than in the extended cuts. There’s not much her character can do though, as she’s pregnant, and logically, it wouldn’t make sense to put a pregnant woman in peril with zombies. Once the group gets to the mall, Fran feels forgotten about, especially in the theatrical cut. The story seems to focus more on the men. It would have been interesting to see some scenes with dialogue about how frightening it would be to bring a baby into the world, when it was overrun with zombies. It was never commented on, how she was pregnant during a time of absolute death.
I never saw anyone comment about Fran’s pregnancy, in the years that I’ve watched this film. Maybe my perception is too brutal on this subject, but, wouldn’t it be selfish to go through with the pregnancy during a zombie outbreak? One thing I always think about, is how the baby wouldn’t have any medical care, or prenatal appointments. I mean, it could bring a whole new world if fear and hunger to bring a child into the world, when the group didn’t have much of an evacuation plan from the zombies to begin with. What was also strange, was how Fran kept smoking cigarettes despite knowing she was 3 or 4 months pregnant. It was 1978, so it’s not like the effects of smoking while pregnant were unknown. But then, maybe her smoking showed how much she really wanted the baby. Once again, this point is never really talked about. The pregnancy is more like an afterthought, and Stephen often acts like he’s not about to become a father; like as if he doesn’t need to be more careful.
It’s interesting though, Peter offers to give her an abortion, if she so wants it, claiming that he knew how. I think this is a very interesting piece of dialogue that really showed the times that the movie was set in. Abortion had barely been legalized 5 years prior, in 1973, so people like the character Peter definitely still carried that knowledge, but the time the movie came out. Of course, Fran denies an abortion. But it makes you wonder what would have happened if she got one. Would she have been alright? Or would she have risked her life, almost dying? I wonder if this was subtle plot point here. Fran can risk dying to the zombies, if anything were to happen, or she could risk dying if the abortion went wrong. Despite Fran’s character not getting as much development as the men did, the idea of her being pregnant during such a horrific time drives my contention on how well the movie at least brings up subtle yet interesting points, intentional or not.
Another negative contention that I saw in reviews from the 70’s, was that the original zombie outbreak was never explained. This is true for the theatrical release. The scenes that at least speculate, are not included in what was originally seen in theaters. Granted, I never thought about the origin of the outbreak when watching the movie, as I viewed the film from an everyday person’s perspective. Though many scenes were cut from the film for time and ratings reasons, the theatrical releases makes it feel like the origin isn’t talked about, because the main characters wouldn’t know the origin anyway. It doesn’t seem too crazy, in 2026, that a pandemic would happen, and the common civilian wouldn’t be told the correct information, let alone the origin of it. But, hindsight is 20/20, isn’t it?
I’ve watched the Theatrical Release, The Complete Cut and other extended versions, and I’ve seen the movie in 2015 at Housecore Horror in San Antonio, Texas. In 2015, the band Goblin, who did much of the soundtrack to the film, or technically, one version of the soundtrack, played music along with the movie at the Aztec Theater. I don’t know technically, what version of the movie played that year, though it seems to have been more of an extended cut, as I remember seeing many of those padded background scenes, which aren’t included in the Theatrical release.
It’s funny, in a way, I remember sitting in the dark with the other members of the audience, listening to Goblin play perfectly along with the movie. Personally, I prefer Goblin’s tracks over the majority of the movie because of this. I really feel like Goblin made the music to the movie real. I’ll never forget, having a serious headache though, near the end of the movie, and having to leave early. Some of the staff at the festival asked me if I was really gonna leave, before the movie ended, and I told them I had to. I really needed a tylenol. Little did I know, that was an early sign of my arthritis.
What’s also funny, is that a friend of mine has always wanted to see Goblin live, but has never got the chance to. Shortly after meeting him, I asked if he ever did, and he said no. Ironically, him and his band had played at Housecore Horror the year before. If only his band played in 2015, would this friend have been able to see Goblin live. I recommend doing so, by the way. They put on a good show.
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The movie starts out in complete chaos as the news station WGON-TV is rowdy with workers running all over, as a broadcast about an outbreak is going on. In some versions, the audio is a little too loud, making the dialogue hard to hear. But we piece together that the dead are coming back to life, eating the living, and multiplying rapidly due to this. The first character we see is Fran, who is seemingly trying not to lose her shit. I’ve watched the movie multiple times, and it wasn’t until rewatching in January of 2026, that I realized how George Romero is sneaking in the opening shots of the movie, sitting in front of Fran.
The TV station was trying to broadcast information out to the people, but Fran points out that the info is outdated, and would send people to their deaths, because it would point them to locations that are closed. She tries to have these taken down, but another producer argues to leave it up for ratings, basically. Already, you see how greedy people can be, during a time of crisis, one of life and death.
There are two men arguing live on TV, one trying to tell the truth about the zombies, and trying to warn the people. What’s interesting to me, is how he says that people were to no longer reside in their private residences, and evacuate to centers deep in the city, as the National Guard bursts into peoples’ homes to exterminate the dead.
I’ve always questioned the idea why people would leave their homes in a zombie invasion, to potentially die on the road. There’s no guaruntee that there would be room for all the people at the shelters, and so called “Safe Havens”. There’s no promise that a shelter would have enough food or supplies to properly take care of thousands of people all at once. To me, it always seems like a bigger risk to brave a zombie infection on the road, than toughing it out at your own domicile. Granted, this is also how we get the zombie movies and TV shows we do have. Granted, “Resident Evil” on the PS1 takes place in a house, just, a really big one. Of course, being in the city, is also completely different from living in the suburbs or the country.
Fran is then taken to the side by her boyfriend Stephen, who tells her to meet him on the roof at 9pm, because they’re taking a helicopter, and leaving the city. In the theatrical release, it’s not really explained what Stephen’s role is. In extended cuts, he’s revealed to be the traffic weather guy. Thinking about it, aren’t they stealing the helicopter? Anyway, Fran tries to protest that she has to stay and work, but one of her coworkers overhears and tells her to go. By midnight, the emergency broadcasts would be taking over.
The movie then cuts to another part of the city, where some type of hostage situation or standoff is happening. In the complete cut, you see Roger, the third main character, hiding below a brick half wall, and saying a few things. These are then repeated by the negotiator over the megaphone, who says something about a guy named “Martinez”. It becomes clear that the building is populated by the Black and Puerto Rican population, and a racist cop named either Wooley or Willie, starts being racist. He uses the N-word, and talks about blasting them out of the building. What’s interesting, is how the racist cop shows signs of racist envy, claiming that he doesn’t understand why the people have a better housing situation than him. A common folly of racists, angry with the people of a different color, because of some perceived superiority complex, and not mad at how rigged the system is as a whole, for everyone. This is once again, one of the subtle nudges of social commentary in Romero’s film, that was also seen in the movie “Night of The Living Dead”. I always liked how Romero’s films would touch on the topic of race, something that I don’t think he originally intended; but thanks to Duane Jones, the original actor for Ben in the 1968 movie, Romero would subtly point out the hypocritical logic in many racists’ minds. The driving theme with the 3 “Dead” films is, “How can you be racists, when the dead are walking the streets?!” The dead aren’t racist! They’ll eat anyone!
Going back to the movie, when Wooley makes his racist comments, Roger looks flabbergasted, especially as he looks at a new hire, some sort of first day, Leon Kennedy type. Roger tells the kid he’ll do fine, and then Martinez, we presume, busts out of the building with his cohorts, shooting. The makeup is pretty bad here, nearly brown face. The new hire Roger was talking to is shot in the head, killed instantly. You see Roger’s horror, as this young promising life has everything taken from him, never even getting a chance.
The cops gas the building, and raid it, causing complete pandemonium. Racist cop Wooley loses his fucking mind, and uses the raid to start shooting and busting down doors, murdering innocents, all because they were minorities. This is where the practical effects really start to be seen, as one of the people Wooley murders is a figure made out of what looks like clay or something. Despite the context this is happening in, I found this figure to be very cheesy looking, and laughably bad. Apparently, this was supposed to be used as a prop for an alternate ending, where both Fran and Peter kill themselves, the prop being for Peter’s death; but with the change of the ending, and the two escaping, this prop was repurposed.
In the complete cut, we see Roger try to stop Wooley, and jump on him, but Wooley throws him off. One cop tells Wooley not to open the door to one room, but he does so anyway, and once he does, he’s show through the chest by another SWAT member standing behind him; the 4th main character, Peter. Peter subtly signals to the others that they didn’t see anything, which seems to be understood. This scene is very powerful, as cliche as the word might seem here. I think many would find Wooley’s death to be justified, and all the more satisfactory, that no-one would even report it. Most of all, how ironic that Willie was done in by the type of man that he hated so much.
Roger is helped by another young SWAT member, and as Wooley’s body is being removed, it’s revealed why he was initially told not to “open that door” to the apartment; corpses and dismembered body parts are all around it. Here’s we see the true reason the SWAT team are sent to the apartment building, and likely, the real reason for the shootout with Martinez; the residents of the apartment building are hoarding their living dead in there, and potentially other rooms.
This is what was so quickly discussed at the beginning of the film with the news broadcast. The people were to evacuate their private residences to go to the shelters, while the National Guard would collect the dead. But it’s so clear by this SWAT raid, that things didn’t go smoothly. People weren’t doing as they were supposed to. Clearly, SWAT was forcing these people out, not helping them.
I wonder if Wooley and the others knew this, or if he was completely naive to the undead theme. I also wonder, if the racist context was supposed to be a way for the movie to trick prejudiced watchers. Would a racist viewing the film think that Wooley’s actions were justified? Many racists believe that minorities are criminals. I wonder if were supposed to think that the raid might have had something to do with drugs, only to be shocked with the zombie reveal. It’s the little parts like that, that make you think about how much time and nuance truly went into the writing of the film.
In the apartment filled with zombies, the young guy nearly gets bitten, as he’s shocked at the sight of what’s happening. Another zombie comes in, who Roger and another cop fight off, and then the young kid shoots himself after killing the zombie. This horrifies Roger, likely because he just saw another young man lose his life.
Roger escapes to the basement, and nearly throws up. He’s told that he’s not alone, and we see the man that shot Wooley. He asks, “You was in Wooley’s Unit, wasn’t you?”. Roger replies, “I didn’t see anything. I didn’t see how he died.”. The mutual understanding that, he wasn’t going to say anything, if any questions were ever asked. I guess the characters expected life to go back to normal eventually. I wonder if Peter was thinking what he’d have to do, in case he was taken to court for murder. Then again, Wooley murdered multiple people first.
The two sit and chat, smoking, when a one legged priest appears. I always think about what he says, whenever someone or my cats are blocking a doorway. I always think, “Let me pass” in that guy’s voice. “Let me pass, let me pass.”. What’s interesting, is how the priest tells them that the people of the apartment building were leaving their dead in the basement they were in, right now!
Peter and Roger make their way to his part of the basement in particular, and it’s understood that Peter wants, or feels like he has to shoot these zombies, to put them out of their misery. He looks horrified as he sees some of the dead eating body parts, and others, wrapped up in sheets, but moving. He unloads, and then has to replace his ammo, although it looks like he doesn’t really want to. Roger then comes over and finishes the job. A National Guardsman busts through a small chute, shocked at the bodies. He asks if they’re okay, and Peter reluctantly says yes. Roger asks why the people do this, and Peter tells him that they still believe in respect for the dead. And I agree.
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The movie goes back to Stephen and Fran, who go get fuel for the helicopter. They’re waiting on Roger, fueling up, when some ruffians try to scare them. One of the people is Joe Pilato, who would go on to have one of the lead roles in a later Romero film, playing Captain Rhodes in 1985’s “Day of The Dead”. Pilato and his fake cops see a patrol car showing up and decide to scram, obviously scared at being found for being fakes. This dialogue is not in the theatrical release, but it’s very funny seeing Pilato’s fake cop character trying to bargain not getting into a shootout with Roger. Roger brings Peter with him, and before they leave in the helicopter, one of the dopey fake policemen ask if they have any cigarettes. He also claims that they’re taking a boat down the river to “The Island”, though, they have no real destination, and are greatly unprepared. I assume they probably died instantly, with wherever they eventually headed. The funniest part, is that Roger and Fran immediately light up their own cigarettes as they leave in the helicopter.
In the complete cut, Peter asks if anybody is being left behind. Fran says, “an ex husband”, and Roger says “an ex wife”. Peter says some brothers, and Fran asks if they were real brothers or street brothers, and Peter says “both”. It makes me wonder if any of the people in the apartment building were people that Peter knew.
The helicopter flies over the countryside, where they see the military out in trucks, rednecks doing target practice on the roaming zombies, and a mix of the two drinking somewhere inbetween. They land for fuel, and Peter checks out a building, a potential motel. We see writings on the wall from people that passed through, telling loved ones where they went. This surely influenced the graffiti seen in the save rooms from the game, “Left For Dead”.
While getting the fuel, Stephen is attacked by a zombie, but Fran does nothing, as a zombie is coming toward her. This scene is silly, because it doesn’t really show how she’s stuck between a rock and a hard place, it just makes her look useless as a character. Stephen thankfully grabs a mallet he dropped, and bashes the zombie, but as he gets up, he bumps into the other zombie, nearly twirling in the air. I won’t lie, I sometimes got second hand embarassment from how useless Stephen would be at times, he wasn’t a very good protector.
While fueling up, a zombie with a big head makes its way towards Roger. Thankfully, the helicopter blades scalp the zombie, in what I am sure is one of the most memorable deaths in the entire movie. I don’t know if something like that was ever seen in a movie like this, before. The thing is, people actually die like that in real life.
Peter is seen at the motel, and in another movie first, he has to shoot some child zombies. A common piece of lore here is that Ken Foree had no idea that there would be kids as zombies, so his reaction in the scene was apparently real. This was surely upsetting to many people, and you never see kids as zombies in movies after this. I’m sure there’s laws about this, because depictions of violence against children, but it does bring up the good point that in a zombie apocalypse, even children can be infected too. We see another zombie come in to try and munch on Peter, who, I wonder is the inspiration to the poster art. You never really see the exact zombie on the poster, at least, I don’t think.
Eventually, the crew make it to t he infamous mall, and set up “shop” there. Not long after, Peter and Roger decide to explore, while Stephen and Fran stay upstairs…until Stephen decides that he once again wants to prove himself as a man, and gets nearly killed in the utility room. The four all have a close encounter with the zombies, and after, in the complete cut, Stephen has the audacity to say they did a good job! This extra scene shows how naive Stephen is as a character, claiming that people “just didn’t do what they were supposed to”, and that’s why the outbreak got so bad. But it’s clear that Peter sees through this, and asks Stephen if he’d be ready to blow Fran’s head off if she became one of the zombies. He doesn’t say anything.
Interestingly, when it’s revealed that Fran is pregnant, the only one to suggest finding a doctor is Roger. Peter interestingly says that they can deal with it. Of course, he offers to give Fran an abortion, but they refuse. In the complete cut, Stephen goes back to the room he and Fran are staying in. Fran wanted to go to Canada, just taking what they needed, and leaving. Stephen points out that they’d have to land multiple times just for fuel, and would likely have trouble with the authorities. All good points. In the complete cut, we see some info the next day as Fran watches the news. With this extra scene, we’re informed that the outbreak is likely due to a virus. Fran has extra dialogue around here, saying that she wants to be included in group decisions, and doesn’t want to be left defenseless again. All good points. This seems to bother Flyboy, who seems offended by this.
Roger and Peter then take some trucks to block the entrances to the mall, though Roger nearly gets killed in the process. We hear one of Roger’s most infamous lines, “We got this! We got this by the ass!”. Roger’s hubris nearly gets him eaten, again. Thankfully, Fran shoots some of the zombies, but he gets bitten anyway. It make me laugh to see Ken Foree’s reaction, who just simply says, “Damn!”, Roger quickly begins to deteriorate, and Stephen picks up some of the slack as Peter’s right hand man.
In the weapon shop, Peter and Stephen stock up. Interestingly, this store was not an actual store in the mall used in the film. It was a separate location entirely.
The four go out into the mall and nearly die again, Roger’s infected leg being gored by another zombie. They get into a car, driving around the mall to lock all the doors. This is seen in extra scenes of the film.
With the extra scenes, we get more background to the characters. Granted, one off thing was how the characters would dump the dead zombies in a fridge cooler to what I assume was a restaurant. This is seen in the theatrical cut too, but with the extended scenes, we see that they dump the bodies next to perfectly find food! Isn’t that wasteful? They could have surely eaten the ribs and tomatoes in there, instead of letting it decay with the zombie flesh. What also doesn’t make sense, is how they expect the cooler to be a good enough storage! Wouldn’t the bodies still rot? It would just happen at a slower rate, but still cause stinkage!
After a shopping spree, the gang gathers in front a JC Penney’s, and Ken Foree says the famous line, “When there’s no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth.”. Something told to Peter by his grandfather, a potential voodoo priest from Trinidad. This line makes me wonder, if Peter thought this at the beginning of the film.
Roger deteriorates rapidly, and though somewhat delirious, he asks Peter to shoot him, so that he doesn’t become “one of them”. Not long after, Roger passes, and comes back, looking like a moldy mushroom. Peter ends Roger’s misery. They bury him in the mall ground fountain area, which struck me as odd. Would he even decompose there?
In the next scene, Stephen and Fran are eating at a “restaurant”, and Steve proposes. Fran rejects him, saying that it “wouldn’t be real”. You can see how this hurts the character. I thought this was stupid, because it’s like Fran assumed that life would go back to normal, eventually. But when would that be? 5 years? What would make the marriage real, at a time when most of the population was dying to, and becoming zombies?!
Time passes, and Fran becomes more visibly pregnant. Extra scenes show the part of the mall they’re in being more lived in and decorated. Tensions seem to run between Fran and Stephen more, sometimes nearly seeming like they don’t even like each other. At dinner, Fran exclaims “What have we done to ourselves?!”, implying that what she said about the mall being a prison too, was right. I couldn’t help but roll my eyes at this. During a life or death situation, what is she looking for?
After this, we see Fran mastering the helicopter with Stephen, which pretty much begins the ending of the film. Tom Savini and his group of evil biker raiders decide that they want stuff from the mall, and run amok inside it. They throw pies in the zombies’ faces, steal jewelery from a zombie, and ride around in their motorcycles. In extended cuts of the film, the song that plays here is “Zarazatom” by Goblin, which I think fits perfectly with this sequence. Granted, I think that the song “Torte In Faccia” would have been good for seeing the pies in the zombies’ faces.
Despite being vastly outnumbered, Stephen feels territorial about the mall, and wants to fight for it. Thankfully, he gets the idea to retreat, though Peter still has to escape after being shot at by the bikers. Unfortunately, Stephen gets shot when he retreats into the elevator shaft.
After this, Tom Savini’s character is shot by Peter, and he dies, and the other bikers try to escape. Here, we see the sombrero biker trying to get his blood pressure taken, for whatever reason, and then of course, he’s mauled by zombies. According to a news article from 1978, this character had a red band around his arm, with a certain party symbol on it. I don’t believe we see this insignia in any scene, thankfully. In the 1978 article, the author wrote that their thoughts were, “Some people will wear anything”. Granted, when the extras to the biker scene showed up to the film, they were told to wear whatever they wanted. The idea was to look like an authentic group of ragamuffins. Interestingly, some of the bikers in the movie were part of a real gang, called the Pagans.
Stephen is then supposed to meet up with Peter, but is mauled by zombies as his feet dangle in the lift. A complete goner, Stephen quickly converts into a zombie. This is interesting to me, because Roger took a few days to zombie, where Stephen did so in a few hours. Zombie Stephen and his cohort of undead friends take over the mall apartment, and Peter tells Fran to escape, but he’s not coming with her. Peter contemplates suicide, and the zombies start to climb to the roof, to the Fran even. Last minute, when Dawn hits, Peter decides to live, and go with Fran into the helicopter. They then fly away, to who knows where!
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Overall, I think this is an essential movie for every Horror fan to see. You cannot watch horror movies, without watching “Dawn of The Dead”. The influence this film had on culture is too great to ignore. You see how it inspired other zombie movies, zombie video games, and even zombie books. There was even a novelization of the film, though I haven’t seen it in person myself. There wouldn’t be games like “Left 4 Dead” or “Dead Rising” without this movie. I believe in some ways, this movie inspired parts of the Resident Evil series, especially RE2, and Leon Kennedy. Even though Leon was a cop, his outfit is similar to what Roger wears in the 1978 movie.
Yes, there are many points that don’t make sense, the characters suffer because of their own hubris at times, but I still think it’s a great movie. My favorite character was Peter. He was very realistic, and the only one of the four to think far ahead. Fran and Stephen were much too naive, and Roger ended up dying because he got a little too reckless. I feel like the other character’s owed Peter their lives. Without him, they would have surely died, because of their lack of foresight.
I highly recommend this movie. I give it a 5/5.
My video: https://youtu.be/5INmmyoC8pY
