SCREAM YOUR ENTHUSIASM (12)

By: Marc Weidenbaum
November 11, 2024

One in a series of 25 enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, on the topic of favorite horror movies. Series edited by Heather Quinlan.

DAWN OF THE DEAD | d. GEORGE A. ROMERO | 1978

There’s just one solitary naked boob on the screen — and metaphorically speaking, all life has been sucked out of it. This is Dawn of the Dead, the classic 1978 horror movie that we’re talking about. Nudity is an indisputable line item in the horror social contract: there will be blood, and there will be nudity. The late zombie auteur George A. Romero, the film’s director, writer and editor, may have been a moralist, but not of the chiding punitive variety, not in the “slay the moments-earlier deflowered virgin” mode. Romero was a moralist of the broader socio-political perspective, concerned with the lure of consumerism rather than with mere out-of-wedlock copulation. And so there is no joy in this exposed boob, no pleasure. The woman in question reclines in bed next to the father of their as yet unborn child, and they appear undead — but not like zombies. They look like mannequins. The decor, the setting, the lighting — Romero knew exactly what he was doing. He told the audience: I’ve fulfilled my end of the bargain.

Dawn of the Dead takes place almost entirely in a suburban shopping mall. That’s after the opening sequence, which occurs in gritty urban 1970s Philadelphia, where society crumbles at the start of the zombie apocalypse. We witness the media and authorities grapple with dwindling facts and rising chaos; then the media goes offline and the authorities go AWOL. Our four heroes, thrown together in the moment, retreat by helicopter and take refuge in the mall.

By the time the boob appears, much has happened. The four of them have cleared the abandoned structure of the undead, secured it best they can, camouflaged a makeshift home (side note: Dawn of the Dead is among the most architecturally literate films of all time, up there with Die Hard), grown weary of cost-free shopping (after a giddy spree), and lost one of their own in one of the most tragic moments in all of horror film. That is one of two such instances in a film packed with gruesome deaths, images as icon-worthy as the baby carriage in Battleship Potemkin or the alien’s illuminated finger in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. The other key death scene, quite early, happens when a woman embraces an undead loved one, only to have her neck promptly munched on. I first saw this movie when it came out, and those moments have never left me.

Nor has the boob. The reason the couple look like mannequins is because life in the mall, despite (arguably due to) all it has to offer in material goods, is an empty life. Even with a kid on the way, there is no hope within reach. The “gotcha” in zombie fiction is that humans are the problem. In Dawn of the Dead, Romero employed its one moment of titillation to inform the audience not only that you don’t have to die to be undead, but that you may be so already.

This one goes out to Eric Engelhardt (1966-2007).

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SCREAM YOUR ENTHUSIASM (12)

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