Compare & Dissect - Dawn of the Dead (1978 & 2004)

 

Great Lucifer's beard, I had an idea! Yes, it hurt.

 

I have been considering doing this sort of thing for a while but had no place to really do it, so now that I do have a place, well, no excuses. With the World being saturated with classic films being remade for a quick buck I figured it would be cool to compare original and remade flicks and dissect them in a variety of ways to see why they differ, why one is better than the other and...yeah, that stuff.

 

So, the first object of my incision and blob of gore under my microscope is:

 

 

DAWN OF THE DEAD.

 

The original Dawn of the Dead was released in 1978 and the remake came 26 years later in 2004.

 

Here they are in the opposite order of release, just to fuck with yo' head.

I chose to begin this possible ongoing series of review-type-columns with this film because the original Dawn of the Dead ('78) is one of my favourite overall films of all time, and very possibly my favourite horror flick. It is the best zombie movie ever made, simply put. The remake, which is on my television as I type, is regarded by many as a remake that didn't insult the original but rather honoured it. It didn't get slated like many remakes do anyway.

 

So, let's begin the comparisons and dissections of these two very similar yet entirely different films.

 

When I first saw the original Dawn of the Dead I was about 12 or 13 years old and the film was already about seventeen years old. A late comer, you might say, to a film that alot of people had already seen, enjoyed and put back in the cupboard. I was obsessed with it though, I would take the cracked and dirty VHS tape to school with me and show it to friends and say "this is the best film you'll ever see". They'd watch it and return it to me with a look of confusion, often asking me, "what's the fuss all about?" Needless to say, I don't talk to those people anymore.

 

The fuss, well, the fuss is about the sheer fact that Dawn of the Dead, the second film in the "Romero Dead Series", boiled down to it's purest form, is fucking cool. A creeping fleshbag zombie walking towards a couple of unsuspecting humans and then getting decapitated by the blades of a helicopter before collapsing to it's rotten knees with brownish-red blood pouring down its face? Fucking cool.

 

Helicopter Zombie regrets his decision to stand on box.

Something I immediately think of when I begin to compare the two films is that the original, to me at least, has so many iconic moments that I remember without needing to freshen my memory with a rewatch. The remake though just doesn't have those iconic scenes of zombie killing, except maybe the rooftop shooting of the hordes.

 

The characters in the original movie are a mixed bag but they try to help each other and tolerate one another for the good of survival. In the remake there are alot more characters and some of them are purely idiotic heels that make you want to aim the gun at them instead of the brain munchers.

 

Zombie - "Maybe you would prefer to use that bullet on those dickwads who still have a heartbeat?"



For me, the fact that so many of the remakes' characters are unlikeable is a reason it falls behind early on. Sure, there are some cool scenes with the zombies, the gore is less bright-red and more realistic than in the original and Ving Rhames is pretty damn badass.

 

"You' damn right I am"

 





 

Now, if you can take your eyes away from that picture for a moment, the remake isn't one of the many remakes that I dont like. I like it, I guess. I mean, I thought I would hate it because it's an updated version of one of my favourite flicks, but I dont hate it, I just dont think it's anything special. I've watched it three or four times so it is rewatchable but not in the same league as Romero's horror masterwork. Also, zombies shouldn't really run. I get that it makes it scarier in the sense that you're being chased by dead people who want to eat you alive, but in biological honesty it just isn't plausable. Yeah, I'm looking for realism in zombie films, sue me.

 

I do like the updated shopping scene in the remake where the characters go on a spree around the mall and play with golf clubs, try on shoes and do the horizontal mambo, or as is actually the case, the dog-type-hump. Still, the characters are assholes and none of them look for anything to help each other. Maybe it's a metaphor for our selfish times and how everyone is out for themselves without care for their fellow man. If so, good call.

 

Another parallel in the films is that there is a character who's pregnant, except we don't see any babies born in the original which is a good thing and gives hope to the future once the film rolls it's credits. The remake decided to take a different direction and I think they made a mistake in doing so. Zombie baby? Really? Okay, if you say so. Zombie babies never work, and take this from someone who's seen plenty of zombie flicks with babies eating faces in them.

 

"I'm gonna be a daddy, I can't wait, it will make this whole apocalypse thing so much easier to deal with"

"BRAAAAIIINNNSS!"

"DAFUQ? Kill it, kill it!"

 



 

The remake is the worse film, I've made that clear as far as my personal opinion goes, but its by no means a bad film. You care about some of the characters and the gore is regular and well done. If a remake were to happen this is a good one to happen. Different to the original to the point where it could be a totally different movie if it wasn't in a mall. The original is a beautifully paced and concieved movie with moments of pure terror and some funny parts too. Not to mention the doomful moments when the characters feel hopeless.

 

I felt at times like I was watching a rock music video with the remake, something intended to draw in a new crowd no doubt. I prefer my horror to have slower pace and an atmosphere of doom that doesn't see gore so regularly. Other people like the opposite of that.

 

The original film seems more complete to me in direction, performances, make-up and special effects and score. It's a total package and a classic in cinema history. The remake, while not insulting or terrible, just won't go down in movie history as anything other than a poorer remake of a great movie.

 

My dissection and comparisons are complete, I prefer the original, an opinion I know many will share, but there are some people who have told me that the remake is much better. What do you think?

 

Thanks for reading. Until next time.

 

"Bye-bye readers. Bye-bye"

 

 

Growing Pains and Eating Brains: The Evolution of the Zombie

It is quite startling how much they have changed in the last seventy years.

When the undead first made an appearance on the silver screen in 1932 with the release of
“White Zombie” the World was quite unsure of how to react to the creature that trembled and walked in a trance like state. It terrified audiences across the world with its original and, though it may seem passé now, frightening way of presenting a monster that hadn’t been seen before.

The World was further introduced to the zombie many years later in a very different way when a director named George A Romero gave his own take on the walking dead. A monster that bit like a vampire but found brains and chunks of flesh more appetizing than just plain old blood was born.

The creature known simply as “zombie” became a recognised name in the land of movie monsters. No longer were children merely dressing as Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster or a mummy on Halloween night, but now there were kids reaching their arms out in front of them and asking kindly for brains to eat.

Night of the Living Dead, Romero’s first zombie picture, changed the face of horror cinema and scared people silly back in 1968. The zombies of previous films weren’t as shocking, ugly or demented as the zombies that tore into human skin in what is now called a classic in movie history. Night of The Living Dead told the story of a group of individuals finding protection from the hordes of the undead in a desolate house. They attempted to work together to fight the threat and survive the army of the undead clawing to get into the house and make them into a scrumptious dinner. It is this film that many credit as the trigger that sent the zombie phenomenon off into orbit.

All was quiet on the zombie front for years following Night of the Living Dead. George Romero broke the silence with a very loud noise in 1978 with the release of Dawn of the Dead. Dawn of the Dead was a milestone in the horror genre and fans ate it up. Its vivid colourful display of blood and guts mixed with a unique soundtrack, and the rotting zombies that caused such fright in Romero’s debut movie, made it a success and possibly the greatest zombie film of all time in the eyes of many fans and critics.

The creatures had changed from their debut in the 1930’s. They no longer just hobbled around doing their masters bidding. The ate people, they moaned and screeched for the taste of human flesh. The zombie had evolved.

By the time the 1980’s came around the World had been bombarded with scary movies. Slasher flicks like Halloween and Friday the 13^th, paranormal movies like The Exorcist and The Shining and a whole host of other terrifying cinematics had hit the shelves and screens of nations everywhere. Zombies, the once feared creature that haunted audiences everywhere had become cheeseball and silly, almost like the cute character that did little other than cause a couple of smirks.

Return of the Living Dead (1985) took the formula that George Romero brought to the table of slow moving predators looking to feed on innocent civilians and twisted it into a farcical gore fest. A comedy horror if you will. Fans were divided as some saw the film as a blatant rip-off and mockery of their beloved genre. Other fans enjoyed its over the top gore and silliness. Regardless of the reaction, it changed the face of how people looked at the zombie character and it would be a long time before people took the living dead quite so seriously again.

The zombie dropped of the radar during the 1980’s and there were very few movies featuring any walking, groaning dead people. Vampires, monsters, serial killers and ghosts were still as popular as ever but the zombie was used only when a comedy film wanted to salute what in many opinions was the easiest monster to mock. Sure, Romero's follow-up to Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, was a hit with fans of the serious zombie hordes and though it didn't do too well at the box office, it remains a classic in the brain-munching corner of horror cinema.

Sequels to the Return of the Living Dead hit the screens to cult fanfare and other zombie releases flew under the public eye. It just didn’t seem popular to be a zombie in the 80’s and early 90’s. There were things people wanted to see, things people liked to test themselves against to see if it scared them. No-one was scared of zombies anymore, possibly the downfall of the genre in that era.

In the 1990’s the zombie was tossed around in comedy movies and horror films that were designed for gore purposes rather than terror. Night of the Living Dead was remade to a mixed reaction in 1990 and Return of the Living Dead came out with it’s third entry in the franchise and possibly most serious too in 1993. The zombie appeared to still be walking and groaning, just in the background. There was little of anything to applaud in the nineties. The zombie was an almost forgotten monster.

2002 saw the release of 28 Days Later, a film about infected hordes feeding on the masses. It was raw, gritty and scary and just what the zombie needed. Then the film was promoted as “NOT a zombie movie, an infection movie” and the zombie hung his head, feeling rejected by the fact that even film-makers wanted to avoid any connection to it's non-scary connotations.

In 2004 a film took the zombie, put it into a comedy film with comedy actors and a comedy script and re-invigorated the zombie movie for the 00’s. Shaun Of The Dead saluted George Romero’s zombie releases and brought a respectful tone to the zombie comedy. The zombie was walking faster again. Standing taller. Moaning louder.

One year later, the master of the zombie flick returned with Land of the Dead. The fourth part of the “Dead” series by George Romero. The zombie had truly evolved. They still moved more or less the same and dug into flesh like a pizza buffet but it appeared the zombies were beginning to think. The social points that Romero made in Land of the Dead stood out, pointing to the humans as the true monsters. Land of the Dead had a mixed reaction from fans but it finally showed that the zombie, though dead and rotting, was also alive and kicking.

The 00’s has seen hundreds of films featuring our favourite undead insurgents. We’ve seen zombie clowns, zombies in bikinis, zombie bikers. We’ve seen zombies as pets and we’ve seen the terror put back into the zombie genre again. In 2010 a comic book series called “The Walking Dead” was adapted into a television series and took the zombie back into the mainstream. It is now about three seasons on and going strong. Critically acclaimed, the zombie has returned from the dead and become a pop culture icon once more. Movies, television shows, books and video games are overflowing with the rotten flesh and putrid blood of the zombie.

It is likely, in fact it is inevitable, that the zombie will evolve and change as the years pass but it is also likely that the slow march and scowling, rotten faces of the zombies made famous by George Romero will lead the charge. This year already sees blockbuster films surrounding the walking flesh-bags we've grown to love with World War Z coming soon and Warm Bodies already been in theatres.

While I have missed out mentioning certain classic films that I perhaps could have brought up during this little article, I will say that I am aware that there are zombie movies that stood tall to fans during even the times I mentioned when the monster wasn't so menacing. Fulci did some great work in the genre and we saw some great independant films featuring our flesh tearing compadres. But overall I wanted to take a quick look at the evolution and the continuing popularity of a creature that has been around for quite some time yet through the imagination and creativity of writers and filmmakers they still, if promoted and moulded properly, can be terrifying as fuck.

Zombie flicks to eat up - The Romero Zombie Series, Plague Of The Zombies, Return Of The Living Dead, White Zombie, Pontypool, Shaun of the Dead, Zombie Flesh Eaters, Fido, [REC] 1 & 2, Wasting Away, Zombieland, Zombie Lake, Dead Snow, The Horde, The Walking Dead (TV Show), Cemetary Man, Planet Terror, I Walked With A Zombie, The Living Dead At The Manchester Morgue, Dead Alive.

Zombie flicks to spit out - Return Of The Living Dead: Necropolis, Day Of The Dead Remake, Route 666, Severed: Forest Of The Dead, Gangs Of The Dead, Flight Of The Living Dead, House Of The Dead, Zombie Nation.

Thanks for reading. Stay bloody well.

　

　

　

　

My life as a horror fan!

I thought a good place to begin would be a personal bit of writing about what the horror scene means to me and my thoughts on it. Stuff like that.

I have been a horror movie fan since I was a kid. I remember being scared out of my wits when I accidently walked into the room when my Dad was watching "The Fly" remake and being horrified by the walking insect on the television. I think I was about four or five at that time and I remember it clearly. My introduction to horror was complete.

Time passed and I found myself watching VHS tapes that had been taped off television and were flickery and bad quality. A thirteen year old sitting downstairs on a Friday night in the dark watching a fucked up copy of Dawn of the Dead. I think that was when I fell in love with the genre and found a movie that has remained one of my very favourite films since.

As I got well into my teens and high school was over I had seen my share of horror movies. It was around that time that my heart leaned in a different direction and I got deep into metal music, especially black metal. I went to gigs and bought underground EP's of the most obscure and raw recordings I could get my hands on. Black eyeliner, leather, satanic symbols and black hair dye was where the rest of my money went. It was a memorable and fun time and it became incredibly easy to mingle my two interests. Horror and metal music have always gone hand in hand. Punk rock and horror do too, so it was a natural combination. I remember listening to Emperor and then watching Last House on the Left and thinking, "wow, that really works"

I opened my mind as my teenage years gave way to my twenties, finding all sorts of music that I loved and movies that I felt I had alot in common with. Listening to soul and blues and other types of hard rock and metal while watching films not specifically horrific became something I truly enjoyed.

I went to Chiller Theatre in New Jersey in 2004 and while I prefer to forget what was a pretty negative experience, it was fun in the respect that I got to meet some iconic horror people and pick up some horror movies that were only available on Region 1 US releases. I had a terrible time in all honesty, for a variety of reasons, and I think that experience killed much of the love I had for horror films at that time. I eventually found that horror didn't really do it for me anymore, finding solace in science fiction, fantasy and other flicks that dealt with humanity on a real level. I fell out of love with horror for the first time since I was a child.

When I got to my mid-twenties I started watching more horror flicks again. I went back and watched alot of the movies I had enjoyed in the years previous. Watching Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Basketcase, Poltergeist, Evil Dead, I Spit on Your Grave, The Omen, Carrie, Street Trash, Halloween and others I found that I was enjoying it again.

I'd stepped away from the things that had piled alot of negativity on my personal life and changed a whole lot as a person in the almost-ten years that passed since I became tired of horror and in turn was ready to delve into it again.

I watched some of the modern horror flicks that I had missed in my time away and I liked some of them while also thinking that many of them were really unoriginal and boring to me. I am a fan of the atmospheric style of horror, that creeping terror that builds towards a horrific booming finale. To this day "The Amityville Horror" from the seventies is the scariest movie I've ever seen. Nothing will ever overtake it. It freaks me the fuck out.

Anyway, here we are. I missed alot out in this little article because I don't wanna bore you. Basically I was a horror child and teen who got bored and then returned home. Today I love horror while at the same time I love other stuff just as much. I can sit and watch a Woody Allen movie followed by a Dario Argento one. It's much nicer. As for recent horror movies that I like, well, it's a hard question when dealing with a nerd like me who puts too much thought into a simple quiery.

In the time since mid 2000 there have been plenty of movies in horror that I've enjoyed. Splinter, Dead Birds, Everything that Guillermo Del Toro has done, Grindhouse, The Woman, Hatchet 1 & 2, Zombieland, Tucker & Dale, Wasting Away, Human Centipede 1 & 2. I could go on and on and on. I've missed alot out. I am not the biggest fan of remakes though, even though I did like the Texas Chainsaw remake in 2003, the Evil Dead remake in 2013 and both the Last house on the left and I spit on your grave remakes a few years ago.

As for movies I haven't liked, well, how long do you have? That's why this blog is here, to talk about the good, the bad and the not-worth-the-blood-on-your-knuckles. But I will say this. I hated The Collector, I loathed Death Tunnell and I fucking detested The Loved Ones.

So please bear with me while I find my footing and forgive me if during my time here as a horror blogger I get some shit wrong, it's inevitable and so I beg your indulgence. I write alot and am working on a novel I hope to see in print in the next couple of years so I know that I wont be able to blog as much as I want to, but please keep your eyes out for the horror and other movie blog.

Anyway, thanks for reading. I'm happy to be a horrorhead again and excited to see what the genre has to offer in the future. It seems a bit slow at the moment and it appears to be exiting a phase of found footage and haunted house films, but I am hopeful. There are some amazing directors and writers out there with ideas as original as anything ever has been, so lets hope that this blood splattered, house haunted, demon infested, gut spilling, shit splashing, boob juggling genre we love succeeds in it's future years.

I'm on board the crazy train and ready for a bumpy ride.

The last blog at the end of the street.

Okay fellow horrorphiles, so if you're here then you know who I am and you probably are aware that I write another blog on blogger.com named "The Big Movie Review Blog" where I review anything in terms of film.

Deep down in my dirt depraved little heart exists an old school horrorhound who adores the genre and it's history in film. I love movies of all types and so the big movie review blog will continue as normal, reviewing flicks from a variety of genres and years. This, though, will be my little nook to devote to the horror side of things.

So if you dig Fulci, Romero and Bava. If you like zombies, vampires, serial killers and monsters of all kinds. If you enjoy gore, terror, darkness and evil then please stop by this place once in a while and check out the reviews.

I have friends who do some awesome blogging in the horror field also, please check out the following blogs for something truly special.

Stigmatophilia's gore splattered corner of insanity!

Video Nasty A Week Vol.1

Video Nasty A Week Vol.2 - Beyond Nasty

And dont forget to keep up with my other movie blog that I mentioned earlier...

The Big Movie Review Blog!

Thanks for stopping by. Don't forget to wipe the blood off your feet on the way out.

SPLAT!