Skippy's Movie Reviews, #12: Dawn of the Dead
What would life in America be like if the epidemic of "Night of the Living Dead" reached epic proportions? If this question keeps you awake at night, this is the movie for you. This one begins with a nifty scene in which SWAT teams storm a tenement building. As if that wasn't bad enough, the building contains a number of walking, flesh-eating zombies. Good gore effects here, and it's not long before two of the cops take to the skies, along with a helicopter pilot and his pregnant girlfriend.
Running out of gas, the foursome land atop a mall. Quickly realizing the usefulness and easy defensibility of this place (not to mention all the freebies!) they take over the place and clean it up. Zombies, begone! Unfortunately, our heroes get overconfident, lazy, and generally don't take the steps that we, the reviewers, would have taken. In other words, they're stupid. As a result, the nifty setup doesn't last forever, especially when a biker gang shows up to do some impromptu shopping. In the "for what it's worth" department, these bikers prove to be equally as stupid as the four protagonists, and most of them meet the same gruesome ends.
So. We've got all the basics of a good horror movie here: blood-splattered shootings, zombie dining fests, a screwdriver to the head, violent bikers...our heroes lack something, but not much.
We give this one a B.