Dawn Of The Dead Zombie Face Shirt

Dawn of the Dead is one of the most classic zombie films to have been created (take your pick on the original or the remake, I’m not getting into that discussion.) So when a new shirt comes out for DoTD (at least one we haven’t seen before) I’m quite happy to be able to show it off to you!

Available from Tee Shirts Rock.

Visit Dawn Of The Dead’s Monroeville Mall Online

Cinemassacre was visiting the Night of the Living Dead cemetery and decided hell, why not stop at the mall in Monroeville, PA at the same time. For those of you completely in the dark it’s the mall that the original Dawn of the Dead was filmed in. It’s nothing super special just a fun little jaunt down memory lane and one I felt would make an enjoyable weekend post for the lot of you!

REVIEW: ZOMBIE (aka ZOMBIE 2)

It’s funny, as a zombie fan I have never laid my eyes on Lucio Fulci’s Zombie until just recently at a zombie film festival held in Chicago. For those familiar with the film, its actual title is Zombie 2 because it was the sequel to Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, which was renamed Zombie for the theatrical foreign release. However, since the film was also released in the States they renamed it Zombie. Plain and simple, it’s complicated. The film is about a reporter and the daughter of a murdered scientist who come to an island to try to solve the murder, specifically due to a zombie encounter in New York. On the island they discover that there is more than just strange experiments going on but that the dead may be coming back to life because of voodoo.

I want to start off by stating that the acting and the dubbing were terrible but this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Of course, when the voices are completely off synch it is distracting and it took me out of some of the moments but I warmed up to it. It felt more like a corny, Grindhouse type film and it added to the overall tackiness. The acting was also not good because it was either overdone, really overdone, or too bland but I can handle bad acting. In fact, with these Grindhouse films, I want bad over-the-top acting because it makes the movie going experience better.

Specifically what I love about the film was the way it was shot an executed. I think one of the best sequences in the whole film was when the zombie Conquistadores rose from the ground and started to attack the town. Not only was it reminiscent of Night of the Living Dead but also it was easy to tell that Carpenter would use a similar montage when filming Vampires, so I would argue that there is a sort of Western theme playing throughout the film. The score was very hypnotizing and low-key and there was a constant state of worry and fear because you could hear the drums banging deep in the jungle. In other words, the score played a HUGE part in the movie… more so than most horror movies.

Lets talk about the gore. From what I know, Fulci is probably best known for creating some of the best and grotesque scenes of mutilation and this film is no exception. It took the gore to a new level and you could see how the zombies bit the skin of the neck and pull back, tearing it off the body. Blood pumps out of the open wounds as zombies much away at the arms and legs of their victim. It was all so brutal and painful to watch, but as a zombie fan I was very pleased by this. If you are looking for a gory movie, look no further… you have found it.

Zombie is just one of those movies that’s meant to entertain and it does it’s job. From the time the ‘abandoned’ shit arrives to New York, to the ridiculous amount of nudity, to the zombie fighting the shark, all the way up to epic showdown in the church, it had me completely enthralled. Even more so, it takes place on a tropical island so you are taking two of my most favorite things in the whole world and throwing them into one movie, so obviously I would end up loving this film.

MTV Is Set To Make A Dawn of the Dead Series

(Thank you BJC of Day of the Woman for the wonderful header picture and help with the intro line because quite honestly I don’t watch this show and needed her help to properly make fun of it for anyone who does. )

“This city destroys people. Heidi and I have been friends forever, and after this…I don’t know if we can ever be friends anymore. I’m LC and I live in a world where you keep your friends close, and your undead rotting enemies closer. This is my life, in Dawn of the Dead.”

Onto the actual news: Apparently MTV is in talks to acquire the rights of George A. Romero’s “Dawn of the Dead” and turn it into a TV Series. Am I the only person that remembers that MTV stands for MUSIC Television? You know a station that plays MUSIC. How are you possibly going to make and air a television series based around a ROMERO movie and keep it on MTV?

I don’t care how far they are willing to go on the station can you picture zombies tearing apart and eating humans being properly shown on there?

Please tell me BD that you are just screwing around with your readers with this news. I beg of you.

[via: Bloody Disgusting.]

It wasn’t until 1968 when George A. Romero created the idea and look of the modern Hollywood Zombie in his film Night of the Living Dead. By using the same looks at the zombies of previous films and the science of a viral plague (first seen in H.G. Well’s “Thing to Come”), he created zombies that would act like typical undead beings but he made them more brutal, more violent and more threatening. Here, you see the zombies brutally attack anybody they see as living and you see them eat and barbarically cannibalize other people. They are still slow and very dumb, but they pose a great threat, which is something that is truly frightening about them. Much like piranha, one or two alone isn’t bad but when they start swarming it’s usually the end. Here, there is some reason behind their existence and it’s related to a falling satellite that was emitting radiation. The grotesque and bloody actions of these zombies would set a new standard for how zombies would be depicted in film including the continuation of the controversial ‘slow-moving zombie.’

A decade after Night of the Living Dead, Romeo came back to what he was good at and made another classic zombie movie as a sort of sequel to Night of the Living Dead. This movie came out in 1978 and was titled Dawn of the Dead. In this film, zombies are still portrayed as mindless ‘creatures,’ only it’s debatable because there is some brain activity going on. When Fran asks, “Why do they come here?” Steve responds by saying “Some kind of instinct. Memory. What they used to do. This was an important place in their lives.” The aspect here is that the zombies, though deprived of any logic but primal instinct, still have the memory of going to the mall and that this memory and ritual will remain in their lives forever. I think Kim Paffenroth, who wrote Gospel of the Dead best explains it: “Again, the horror of the human beings lies not just in being torn to pieces and eaten alive by zombies, but in becoming one of them, a mindless mallgoer, ever again able to conceive of anything higher or more interesting to do than wander about with… lustful stares at windows and racks and displays useless, worthless, stuff” (pg 56). Here, the zombies are not just brainless people; they are a metaphor for the brainless people who go to the mall every other day. However, this will be a precursor to his next film.

After establishing that zombies are able to think back on a very, very, very low intellectual scales, Romero decides to take this one step further in his 1985 film Day of the Dead. Here we have established that the zombie apocalypse has consumed the entire world, where as Dawn of the Dead, it was still the beginning stages. Day of the Dead is my personal favorite zombie film because it doesn’t show the zombies as the antagonists so much as the people themselves. Here, the little group of survivors are full of the bad guys pitted against each other and the zombies are just something that they must overcome. BUT, here we have the first character zombie known as Bub, who was captured by Logan and is used to show that zombies have the capability of thinking and rationalizing. Here, Bub understands music, he understands simple shapes and letters and sentences and when Rhodes kills Logan, Bub understands the emotion of sadness, nakedness and rage. It’s the next evolutionary step in the zombie species. Day of the Dead show us that it is possible for intelligence to grow in the heads of zombies and when Bub salutes Rhodes as he is about to be pulled apart, it shows further that he is now completely developed as a character. Day of the Dead will then lead into the ultimate realization of the zombie apocalypse.

Us zombie fans waited 20 years for another brilliant zombie film to cap off the trilogy of Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead and in 2005 Romero gave us Land of the Dead. Here, the land truly belongs to the dead considering that the entire world has now been overthrown by zombies and living people have become the less dominant species. The zombies in this movie have slowly started to learn and they soon began getting their lifestyle skills back by trying to act like couples, or businessmen, or gazebo bands or even families. It was also during this movie that we get the characterization of yet another zombie character known as Big Daddy, who is like Bub 2.0 where he tries to act like a car station mechanic but regular people still see him as a dead person. He doesn’t understand this and here is where we encounter our major plot point: the zombies see us as the invading disease because they think they are normal, so Big Daddy decides to revolt against the living. He is vastly intelligent compared to most zombies and he understands that the ‘sky flowers’ are just distractions so people can raid the stores and kill ‘his people.’ He is a revolutionary, he teaches the zombies to use their weapons like meat cleavers, batons, guns and their appetite to revolt against the living and take back their land. We can see the progression of the sickness as the zombie’s faces get worse and worse and they still retain their mannerisms as seen in the 1940s and 1930s. The zombies have become more aware of things, they have become a living people with lifestyles and the living must realize that they are no longer welcome. In the final scene, when the zombies are storming Fiddler’s Green and Riley looks back at Big Daddy, they don’t do anything because both of them know that they are in essence, one of the same.

The reason why I left out Diary of the Dead and Survival of the Dead is because of two simple reasons: Diary of the Dead didn’t contribute anything to the zombie lore and Survival of the Dead hasn’t come out yet… theatrically.

Citation

Paffenroth, Kim. Gosepl of the Living Dead: George A. Romero’s Visions of Hell on Earth. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2006. 56. Print.

Dawn of the Dead Gunner’s Den Shirt

I don’t think I need to tell anyone here that not only am I a Romero fan, but I am a HUGE lover of the ever classic Dawn of the Dead. Anyone who knows much about zombie films knows that you need guns (this isn’t ‘always’ the case I suppose but the survivability rate drastically increases) and in the original Dawn of the Dead this means heading through the mall to Gunner’s Den.

In my opinion, perhaps the best of the ‘Dead’ series. To celebrate my love of this film and all things undead Dark Bunny Tees brings you the Dawn of the Dead: Gunner’s Den movie t shirt. Inspired by the Gun Shop in the Monroeville Mall, this spoof advert brings the family together with guns! Look closely and it seems the parents seem to have had a little accident. We can only imagine what those boys will be using those guns for in an hour or so – Morbid I know, but hey!

Available at Dark Bunny Tees.

Dawn of the Dead Playing cards features 52 different images that are all Official Poker size cards. Add some undead love to your weekend poker games with this creative set of cards

Buy your Darn Of The Dead Playing Cards today.

To purchase Click Here

Another version of George Romero’s classic: Dawn of the Dead in shirt format!

“This is an officially licensed Dawn of the Dead t-shirt in which these Dawn of the Dead shirts have been screen printed with a Dawn of the Dead image. These Dawn of the Dead tshirts are usually made from heavyweight preshrunk 6oz. cotton tee shirt blanks. ”

To purchase Click Here

Dawn Of The Dead (OST) Import

The unreleased music from our favorite classic Dawn of the Dead. Including the intro music to the movie as well as all of the other unique music played through the soundtrack. Topping off with “‘Cause I’m A Man” which was playing during the zombie hunt in the movie. A must have for fans of this classic film!

To purchase Click Here