History Film / DawnoftheDead

* ''Film/DawnOfTheDead1978'', Creator/GeorgeARomero second zombie film.

[[redirect:DawnOfTheDead]]

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[[quoteright:349:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/dawn-of-the-dead-movie-poster-c100774881.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:349:Shop 'till you drop. [[{{Pun}} Dead.]]]]

-> ''"Every dead body that is not exterminated becomes one of them. It gets up and kills! [[TheVirus The people it kills get up and kill!]]"''
-->-- '''Dr. Foster'''

'''''Dawn of the Dead''''' is the second movie in the ''Dead'' series of ZombieApocalypse films written and directed by George A. Romero. It was first released in 1978, ten years after the original film in the series, ''Film/NightOfTheLivingDead''.

Followed by ''Film/DayOfTheDead'', and [[Film/DawnOfTheDead2004 loosely remade]] in 2004.

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!!''Dawn of the Dead'' contains examples of the following tropes:

* ActionGirl: Francine gradually becomes one.
* AllBikersAreHellsAngels: A gang invades the mall in the original, letting in the zombies.
** Averted on a meta level, as most of the bikers were played by real life members of the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pagan%27s_Motorcycle_Club Pagans Motorcycle Club]].
* AssholeVictim: Wooley and later the bikers.
* AxCrazy: Wooley.
* BadDreams: When the film opens we see Francine suffering (and waking from) one of these. Unfortunately for her, reality is no less of a nightmare.
* {{Badass}}: Peter and Roger.
* BarrierBustingBlow
* BlackDudeDiesFirst: Averted.
* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler: Peter and Francine are the only ones who escape from the mall after it is infested again by zombies, while Roger and Stephen are dead and the helicopter's fuel is half gone.]]
%%* BolivianArmyEnding
* BoomHeadshot: Features an impressive shotgun-blast-to-the-head scene.
* BrickJoke: The zombie with the gun who steals Peter's other gun at the end.
* [[CampUnsafeIsntSafeAnymore Camp Unsafe Isn't Safe Anymore]] : The characters begin the film believing that a mall is the perfect hiding place, but later discover they cannot stay there forever because eventually they're going to run out of food, and the zombies will get in sooner or later.
* ComicBookTime: The film apparently takes place a few weeks after the events of ''Night'', released a decade earlier. This pretty much holds true for all the rest of Romero's ''Dead'' films.
* CosyCatastrophe: For a while, at least. The montage of the group enjoying their time in the shopping mall comes to mind.
%%* CrazySurvivalist: Several cast members.
* CreatorCameo: George Romero appears twice in the film, first as a WGON news director and then as a biker [[BadSanta donning a Santa suit]].
%%* CuriosityKilledTheCast
* DaylightHorror: The scene at the gas station.
%%* DeadHandShot
%%* DeathByMaterialism: The whole point, really.
* DevelopingDoomedCharacters: Soundly avoided, with a gory police raid on a zombie-infested tenement coming early in the film.
%%* DistressedDamsel: Subverted.
* DrivenToSuicide: [[spoiler:Subverted in Peter's case since he decides that he wants to live at the last minute and escapes with Francine.]]
* EnclosedSpace: Most of the film takes place inside a shopping mall.
%%* {{Foreshadowing}}
* FourTemperamentEnsemble: Stephen is choleric, Roger is sanguine, Peter is melancholic and Francine is phlegmatic.
* {{Gorn}}: ''And how!'' Not as bad as Day of the Dead, but still plenty.
* AHouseDivided: Part of the reason why HumansAreTheRealMonsters. It's strongly shown that the zombies are practically harmless, if you know what you're doing, but so many people are squabbling over what to do that they just get to multiply beyond control.
* HumansAreTheRealMonsters: Most famously, the zombies are an outright satire of mindless consumer culture and "mall drones." Throughout the film, the zombies are handled almost effortlessly; the only danger to humans come when the living humans get stupid or careless -- it's just that humans are more concerned with arguing with each other, engaging in mindless behavior (such as the bikers raiding the mall for things like gold rings and money), and otherwise ignoring the problem.
* ImprobableAimingSkills: Averted; Stephen misses a lone slow zombie multiple times before Roger steps in to put it down.
* IncongruouslyDressedZombie: The Hare Krishna and nun zombies.
* ItsTheOnlyWayToBeSure: Dr. Rausch suggests the use of nukes against the zombies, perhaps forgetting that all the living humans killed by radiation or severe burns will eventually get back up. Fortunately, no one takes this suggestion seriously.
* JerkAss: Wooley, one of the men in Roger's SWAT unit. A gigantic racist, to boot: he's eager to kill Blacks, Jews, and Puerto Ricans (though not in those terms) before the raid on the tenement begins, and slaughters tenants indiscriminately in said raid. [[LaserGuidedKarma Peter, a black man, pumps him full of lead]].
** A special mention goes to the WGON station manager who's willing to run a scroll of (by now) inoperative rescue stations because, as he puts it, "every minute that those stations aren't on, people won't watch us. They'll tune us out."
* JerkAssHasAPoint: Just like the other two movies in the Dead trilogy the human antagonist's goals are not too far removed from those of the heroes, and in fact may well be a whole lot smarter. While the Bikers plunder is pretty damn irritating for the heroes, its little different from the protagonists' own earlier ramsacking of the mall (plus they only begin hunting Peter and Steven after the latter idiotically starts shooting at them) and after they are done they get the hell out and move on, which takes the heroes months to bring themselves to do.
* JustBeforeTheEnd: Civilization seems to be collapsing during the first half of the film.
* KillEmAll: The scripted ending ended with everyone dying, but by the time it came to film it Romero had grown to like the characters and decided it would just be pointlessly depressing.
** [[spoiler:It also would have been '''WAY''' too similar to the end of the previous film, 1968's ''Night of the Living Dead''.]]
* TheLoad: Stephen and Francine. Originally all he has going for him is his skills as a helicopter pilot, despite his efforts. Francine starts with nothing. However, as Roger's health fails Stephen is forced to become more proactive and even early on manages to discover the vent system they use to move safely at several points. Francine does very little, though she does learn basic shooting and how to fly the copter.
* TheMall: Chief setting of the film, used to skewer American consumerism by comparing it to the zombie hordes who "consume" everything in sight.
* {{Melee a trois}}: The film has a climatic 3-way battle with Peter and Stephen vs. the bikers invading the mall vs. The Zombies.
* NeutralFemale: The actress playing Francine famously refused to be just another ScreamingWoman. However, during the first confrontation at the airport she just stands there while her boyfriend is fighting with a zombie, neither running nor helping. She [[TookALevelInBadass does get better though]].
* NoNameGiven: The character Richard France plays (the TV scientist with the eye patch) is never addressed by name, and is referred to in the credits only as "Scientist." Curiously, he is [[http://www2.gol.com/users/noman/liv05.htm often identified]] in reference to the film as "[[http://www.urbandead.com/screenshot.html Dr. Milliard Rausch,]]" a name that once used to be on [[https://web.archive.org/web/20031002004440/http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077402/ the Internet Movie Database,]] but has [[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077402/ since been changed back]] to "Scientist."
* NotUsingTheZWord: Averted. In fact, this movie is actually the origin of the use of "zombie" meaning [[FleshEatingZombie flesh-eating undead]].
* PieInTheFace: The scene where the bikers pelt the zombies with pies and seltzer water.
* PrecisionFStrike: Peter and Stephen are on the roof watching the bikers come down from the hill and into the parking lot. Stephen lets out a long, slow "Holy Shit!"
* ReCut: Clocked in at 139 minutes for its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival; this was subsequently trimmed by Romero to 126 minutes for general U.S. release, and there was a 119-minute cut supervised by Creator/DarioArgento for the film's European release (as ''Zombi''). In 2004, Anchor Bay released an "Ultimate" DVD box set containing all three cuts.
* RoomFullOfZombies: The film has a SWAT team raid a housing complex that has their basement filled with zombies.
%%* RuleOfScary
* SoundtrackDissonance: There are numerous scenes of the Zombies in the mall stumbling about to shopping muzak, notably the end [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cikP6C_BqJw credits.]]
* StrawManNewsMedia: In the opening scenes, we see that Francine's bosses at WGON clearly don't give a shit about anything other than continuing to draw as many remaining viewers as they can, by any means necessary. Such as, for instance, deliberately listing rescue stations that are no longer operational.
%%* TaughtByExperience
* ThematicSeries: This film is a loose-knit sequel to ''Night of the Living Dead'' as are the sequels that follow.
* TooDumbToLive: Several characters. Most of them do in fact die.
** The most egregious example being the Mexican bandito biker ''taking his blood pressure while his friends are getting shot at, eaten, or otherwise leaving the mall and zombies are visibly surrounding him.'' Also serves as a great BrickJoke.
** Noticeably, Roger's attitude and reckless actions while barricading the mall [[spoiler:bring him about to like three bites, which unsurprisingly ends with him turning into a zombie]].
--->"We got this, man! [[TemptingFate We got this by the ass!]]"
** Stephen could give Roger a run for his money in reckless behavior: [[spoiler:He shoots at a zombie with a rifle and misses, nearly hitting Peter. He takes the only handgun and runs off to find Peter and Roger in the mall, leaving Fran defenseless when a zombie wanders up. He shoots at the bike gang after Peter warns him not to and, upon retreating, drops his rifle down the elevator shaft. Finally, when he's bitten and dying, he wastes the last few bullets in his handgun warding off his last few attackers and leaves his brain intact so that when he dies, his zombie self still remembers the hidden nest where Peter and Fran are, and brings an army of flesh-eaters right behind him.]]
** Really, this is the only reason ''why'' zombies are a danger in this movie. It's shown repeatedly that if you keep your head on straight, you can easily handle zombies -- there are multiple scenes of characters running straight through crowds of the undead or fighting their way free of groups. ''With their bare hands'', no less. Because people are more concerned with acting like idiots (for example, the people who refuse to heed government warnings about how all dead bodies need to be instantly cremated/decapitated/decerebrated, thus leading to things like the infested tenement building at the start of the movie, the bikers casually smashing their way in and leaving a huge opening for zombies to pour through -- and even then most of the bikers escape alive, if they haven't been shot), the zombies are able to get the drop on them and, from a large-scale perspective, are able to multiply to threatening levels in the first place.
* UndeadChild: Two (running) zombie kids who attack Peter at the airport.
* UnbuiltTrope: So, you think a ZombieApocalypse or [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt some other doomsday disaster]] would be cool, huh? According to Romero, that means you probably hold a grudge against some part of society, [[DareToBeBadass fantasize about being a badass]], or want to [[AnarchyIsChaos run wild]]. Also, even if you ''do'' manage to find safety, be prepared to spend a good portion of your ''actual'' time bored out of your mind.
* WhileRomeBurns: The survivors are shown prancing about in the mall as the zombie numbers outside grow bigger.
* YourHeadASplode: The scene where a [=SWAT=] cop breaks down an apartment door in a raid and blows an innocent man's head apart with a single shotgun blast.
* ZombieApocalypse: Sorta the whole point. It carries on from where ''Night'' left off, i.e. the start of the zombie apocalypse.
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"Where is Flyboy?"

* UnbuiltTrope: So, you think a ZombieApocalypse or [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt some other doomsday disaster]] would be cool, huh? According to Romero, that means you probably hold a grudge against some part of society, [[DareToBeBadass fantasize about being a badass]], or want to [[AnarchyIsChaos run wild]]. (''Website/{{Cracked}}'' said [[http://www.cracked.com/article/136_5-reasons-you-secretly-want-zombie-apocalypse/ pretty much the same thing]] three decades later.) Also, even if you ''do'' manage to find safety, be prepared to spend a good portion of your ''actual'' time bored out of your mind.

* IncongruouslyDressedZombie: The Hare Krishna zombie.

* NoNameGiven: The character Richard France plays (the TV scientist with the eye patch) is never addressed by name, and is referred to in the credits only as "Scientist." Curiously, he is [[http://www2.gol.com/users/noman/liv05.htm often identified]] in reference to the film as "[[http://www.urbandead.com/screenshot.html Dr. Milliard Rausch]]," a name that once used to be on [[https://web.archive.org/web/20031002004440/http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077402/ the Internet Movie Database]], but has [[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077402/ since been changed back]] to "Scientist."

* DrivenToSuicide: [[spoiler:Subverted to Peter's case since he decides that he wants to live in the last minute and escapes with Francine.]]

* ZombieApocalypse: Sorta the whole point. It carries on from where Night of the Living Dead left off, i.e. the start of the zombie apocalypse.

* FourTemperamentEnsemble: Stephen is choleric, Francine is melancholic, Roger is sanguine and Peter is phlegmatic.

%%* CosyCatastrophe: For a while, at least.

* FourTemperamentEnsemble: Roger is choleric, Stephen is sanguine, Francine is melancholic and Peter is phlegmatic.

%%* ActionGirl: Francine gradually becomes one.

%%* DaylightHorror

%%* EnclosedSpace

%%* {{Gorn}}: ''And how!''

%%* JustBeforeTheEnd

%%* ZombieApocalypse: Sorta the whole point.

* CreatorCameo: George Romero appears twice in the film, first as a KGON news director and then as a biker [[BadSanta donning a Santa suit]].

* CreatorCameo: George Romero appears twice in the film, first as a TV news director and then as a biker [[BadSanta donning a Santa suit]].

'''''Dawn of the Dead''''' is the second movie in the ''Dead'' series of ZombieApocalypse films written and directed by George A. Romero. It was released in 1978, ten years after the original film in the series, ''Film/NightOfTheLivingDead''.

* NotUsingTheZWord: Averted. In fact, this movie is actually the origin of the use of "zombie" meaning flesh-eating undead.