![]() ![]() ![]() The reason for my delving back into just “Dawn”, the middle entry (and arguably the most celebrated one… though not my favorite… that position will always be secured by the stark nihilism of “Night”, with “Day” and “Dawn” in an on-going battle for runner-up position, with the winner depending on the day) of the classic, official Romero “Dead” trilogy (rather than a full-fledged Romero retro, or at least Romero ‘zombie’ retro) came about from my recently popping in the new 4K restoration release of Italian director Lucio Fulci’s quite different, yet equally as personal (and certainly auteur-driven) 1979 quasi-follow-up (or opportunistic rip-off, or whatever you wanna call it) to Romero’s box-office hit from the previous year, known in Italy as Zombi 2 (with, naturally, Romero’s film known there as Zombi).įinding myself newly blown away by Fulci’s lurid masterpiece of putrescent abjection (interestingly, while I still have a deep fondness for the political critiques and cleverness of “Dawn” and its pancake-makeup-faced zombies, it’s the raw purity of Zombi 2 that has that film growing in greater stature over time for me), I decided next that it was the perfect time to catch up with the in-name-only, late 80’s-produced sequels (with the recently released Severin blu’s conveniently sitting right up there on my shelves) Zombi 3 and Zombie 4: After Death, which ended up being fun to see, with a lot of the pleasure admittedly deriving from the disc extras discussing the torturous madness of shooting in the Philippines at the time and the occasional odd moment of inspiration amongst all the bad filmmaking (with Zombi 3 however, being draped in a bit of a depressing pall, displaying just how far director Fulci was tumbling from grace). Not exactly subtle, pretty much conking the audience over the head with their parallel of the raised dead finding meaning by mindlessly stumbling about the Mecca of consumer capitalism with the same attributes of their living counterparts (especially when compared against the first entry in Romero’s unbelievably important zombie trilogy, “Night”, where I’d argue the director wasn’t as consciously aware of his motivations for creating his apocalyptic vistas, with his themes expressed in less conscious ways, where his feelings towards societal critiques and recognition of the wildly exploding social turmoil at the time served as unspoken backdrop informing the milieu, rather than as directly approached subject matter), but, man, are they beautiful nuggets… perfect mixtures of tongue-in-cheek black humor with heady content, delivered with just the appropriate tone of seriousness (matching right up within a movie constantly assaulting us with garish images of violence that are grotesque, yes, but also have a deliberately quirky comic-book quality – in fact, it’s always been kinda hard for me to understand the uproar this film caused at the time – I’ve always felt the much harsher, in-your-face, still brilliantly impressive gore gags achieved by that grand master of gore himself, Tom Savini, for the follow-up and final trilogy entry, “Day” are far more censor-pushing). They’re so fun, so memorable, it’s a joy to repeat them by just typing them out. ![]() Remember that they want to be in here.”Īh, yes, those trenchant little observations about the importance of the suburban shopping mall for Romero’s shambling dead. ![]() This was an important place in their lives.” Zombi (aka, Dawn of the Dead) – Italian/Dario Argento cut (George A. ![]()
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