I found this advertisement creepy, and even more the graphic art of the poster, the movie was called Zombies, (later I found out that its original title was Dawn of the Dead).
The film's rating was for 21 and over, at that time D censorship.
Obviously in the 70's with 11 years old I could not see this kind of films, so I always imagined the movie, in other words I always had my version of those that I could not see because of my age.
I imagined a horde of monstrous undead eating everything in its path and eating each other and devastating everything in its path.
I remember that in the early 80's in Venezuela began the boom of watching movies at home, especially in Beta format. An uncle bought a Betamax tape player, and began to rent movies in this format, my surprise was that one of the first tapes rented was Zombies!.
Given its crudeness for the time I had to watch it hidden and in bits and pieces every time my uncle was away from home and my mom was talking to my aunt, they swore I was watching some Disney movie. However, I was reveling in almost blue-colored Zombies that started tearing off limbs or biting out the jugulars of their victims, survivors of the zombie apocalypse who fought back to save their lives, and looters of a shopping mall who got their comeuppance from the zombies.
Later, I saw other films of this genre with much more gore and Splatter tendency courtesy of Italian filmmakers, but I noticed that once seen the original work, they tried to emulate and even surpass it with more gore, blood and splatter, Among these films there is one called Zombi 2 by Lucio Fulci which is also known as New York under the terror of the Zombies is from 1979 and my retina has not erased the scenes of the Zombie attacking a shark, and the end where these zombies coming from an island are heading towards New York.
I must say that these Zombie movies managed to tan my stomach and my endurance to these hard to digest genres such as gore and splattrer.
As I grew up and became a little more educated and mature I was able to approach this film from another point of view, the social one.
The film, Dawn of the Dead (1978) is directed by George A. Romero and is considered a key piece of gore horror cinema, this being a second part of a series of films by the director. The first, Night of the Living Dead (1968), Day of the Dead (1985), Land of the Dead (2005), Diary of the Dead (2008), and the last one survival of the Dead (2009).
Throughout the series, the dead have begun to rise from their graves to eat those who are still alive. They are zombies, and their bite is fatal, because whoever is affected becomes one of them in turn. Thus, they spread like a plague, displacing humans.
In Dawn of the Dead, four survivors manage to reach the rooftop of a shopping mall on the outskirts of the city in a helicopter. They take refuge on the top of the building, while the zombies have invaded the lower floors and wander aimlessly through the corridors, so the protagonists will try to continue surviving, waiting for the zombie attack to stop, or until they are rescued.
These zombies are aimless subjects, lost of senses, whose only certainty is that they must consume, they are basically cannibal beings; that is to say, entities that have reached the most extreme consumerism: eating human flesh.
This consumer zombie is a metaphor for the contemporary consumer, the mall is the home of the zombies, because it is the only place they have memory of, (this is something that is said in the dialogues of the film).
The mall, therefore, has become the only common space where the zombies can go, and it is also significant that this is not only the space where the undead arrive, but also the only place where the human protagonists can take refuge.
As the film progresses, the humans make the mall their home, an extension of their individuality. They furnish and decorate the floor where they take shelter, in such a way that they begin to lose awareness of their position of danger and of the presence of the zombies. The mall is a refuge space for the human and the inhuman.
Humans and zombies have a consumerist and monstrous character which is shared. The film shows us how one and the other feast on consumption in the mall. On the other hand, the cruelty of the humans towards the slow and clumsy cannibalistic zombies calls into question who the monsters really are.
The special effects are the work of Tom Savini,(quite the makeup master), and really manage to make the hairs stand on end when the undead start tearing off limbs or chomping out the jugulars of their victims.
The performances in general are quite overacted, but above them all was Ken Foree, who gave us a character that to this day remains an icon of the genre. He played Peter, a hero facing the zombies.
This is my entry in Cine TV Contest #83 - Favorite Zombie Movie Link Here
Thanks to the CineTv community for letting me share. Good luck to all participants.
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