Cast and Crew: Claudio Argento (Producer); Goblin (Music); Tom Savini (Special Effects)
What It’s About: Society is falling apart under the weight of the flesh-eaters unleashed in Night of the Living Dead. The manager of a TV station (Gaylen Ross), the station’s traffic copter pilot (David Emgee, and two SWAT team members (Ken Foree and Scott H. Reiniger) flee Pittsburgh in the copter, not sure where they want to go except away from the city that has descended into chaos. The group takes refuge in an enormous shopping mall, which they secure (at great cost) from the dead. How long can they hold the mall (and their sanity) in a world overrun by the hungry dead and desperate living?
Why Watch it Today?: Bible thumping broadcaster Harold Camping has predicted that the world will end today. The Dawn of the Dead remains one of the bleakest looks at the end of the world ever made, and yet, it does contain a tiny note of hope, so here’s to Camping being wrong yet again.
Where to Get It: Libraries, Netflix (Rental); Amazon
Note: Dawn of the Dead is available in many cuts; personally, I’d start with the Theatrical Cut over the European Cut and either over the overly long, plodding, so-called “Director’s Cut” that was really Romero’s rough cut from Cannes.
The League of Dead Films 
whatever fanzine at the time of it’s 1978 release thought of an alternate ending…of the black guy on the roof wanting to die, be left behind, but at last moment, reaches out for the helicopter, to fly to safety.
the fanzine thought the 1960s romero would have had the character just miss catching the helicopter, to stay trapped on the roof.
…the making of this pittsburg movie was front page coverage on THE VILLAGE VOICE, all about “regional film making”
[…] of the phases was the zombie film, brought about largely by the enormous success of 1978’s Dawn of the Dead (known as Zombi in Europe) and many variations were tried to cash-in on that film. In this case, […]