EDGAR WRIGHT

The Church of George

I wish I had a cooler story about the first time I saw George A. Romero's Dawn
of the Dead. I'd like to say I snuck in to see it at a midnight show in Times
Square back in 1978. I'd like to say I saw it in the gloriously appropriate sur-
roundings of one of those cavernous shopping malls where the film was set.
This simply isn't the case, however. I was born in the West of England in 1974,
so to be honest, even saying that I'd caught it at the infamous Scala Cinema
in Kings Cross, London, would be a falsehood. Myfirstviewing of Dawn of the
Dead was on a bog standard VHS version put out by 4-Front video in the early
'90s. I watched it on a sunny cifternoon in my bedroom after having rented it
illegally from my local video shop. This was no random rental though. I was
already sold.
Dawn was a film I had obsessed over since I was six or seven. I had read
all about itseen the poster in the old issues of Starburst and Fangoria, pored
over the essays about it in Kim Newman's Nightmare Movies and John Mc-
Carthy's The Modern Horror Film, noted the warnings of "extremely violent
content," the claims of it being "the most violent film ever made" and boggled
over the three and a half star rating in Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide. I had to
see this film. For a large portion of my teenage years, I simply couldn't.
In the UK, Dawn was virtually unavailable. In the early '80s, before video
classification was properly regulated, the nascent video stores of the coun-
try were seemingly awash with blood, distributing unrated versions of horror
films by the bucket load. When the right wing press alerted Scotland Yard
to the situation (touching off what was later tagged the "video nasty" scan-
dal), pretty much every movie title to feature the words "blood," "zombie," or
"dead" were seized up. It was a witch-hunt of stupefying proportions, leaving
a whole generation devoid of classics like Fvil Dead, The Exorcist, and Texas
Chainsaw Massacre.

40
 While Dawn was never on the official hit list, there was a period when
it was nowhere to be found on video shelves across the land. Ironically in
this time I watched the original Mght of the Living Dead on television and the
uncut Day of the Dead on video (in a bizarre case of double-standards, it being
far more explicit than Dawn). By time I saw Jonathon Ross's Incredibly Strange
Film Show on Romero and his oeuvre, with countless clips of the film, I felt
like I was an aficionado in waiting.
Then one day, there it was, actually available to rent. Without any cer-
emony, I watched the film as soon I'd handed over my 3 and run back home.
Not waiting for it to get dark, I simply shut the curtains and curled up on a
beanbag in front of my i4-inch telly. Two hours later, two things struck me.
One, it wasn't quite the full "splatter fest" I was expecting. Several im-
ages that were imbedded in my brain from either seeing B&W stills or read-
ing grand accounts of carnage seemed to be absent. Where was the machete
zombie? Where were the scenes of guts being ripped from still-living humans?
Where were the zombie kids? What was the big deal with the screwdriver in-
cident? More pressingly, whither the exploding head? It slowly dawned on
me that this wasn't the full-blooded version, but with the film's pace, use of
montage, and the occasional odd sound edit, due to the scattershot approach
of mixing score and library music, it was difficult to ascertain exactly what
was missing. And, two, I realized that none of that mattered; this was much
more than a horror film. This was an epic, this was a western, this was a grand
action adventure. Admittedly, it was all on a budget, but this just made it all
the more admirable.
When you study Dawn in detail, the ambition of the enterprise is stag-
gering. It's not only a great horror film, but also a peerless example of inde-
pendent filmmaking. The sheer scale of the story, the use of locations, the
marshalling of extras and staggering number of set-ups is an awesome feat
for a low budget film. Not only that but Dawn goes far beyond the template of
Night and many other horror films of its ilk, by setting the proceeding in the
course of one long night. Dawn flirts with being a proper epic in terms of its
timeframe alone.
One of the more disappointing elements of last year's remake was that the
mall felt like a holding pattern for 14 hours, not making any great contribution
story-wise. In the original, the mall is the characters's castle and keep, their
makeshift home, as far as they know, until the end of time. That the fabled
location doesn't appear for a good 25 minutes is also amazing, coming after
a memorably chaotic opening in a TV studio on the brink of collapse, a bleak
episode in a zombie-infested tenement and an eerie pit stop at a deserted air-
strip. The incidents within these chapters would top most other films of its ilk,
but Dawn is barely getting started.

EDGAR WRIGHT 41
 Not only is the film paced differently than other horror films, but you
truly get to live with the characters, coming to know them so well that you
don't want any of them to die (not even Roger). That's a remarkable feat for
a so-called "splatter fest." Given that most horror films have the rhythm of a
porn film, with some kind of splat every 20 minutes. Dawn's diversion from
the norm, makes it seem truly revolutionary.
There are countless shots or moments that still make my neck hairs tin-
gle; mystery handprints on the condensation of a cockpit, the Lowrie-esque
matchstick zombies shambling toward us on the ice-rink, rednecks shooting
down silhouetted creatures on the brow of a hill, the break-taking montages
that accompany bleak television discussion, with zombies walking down up
escalators and chewing on cash registers. Romero's mix of documentary style
and commercial montage tip the film from a B-movie into some kind of an-
thropological study.
The music that runs throughout from the Goblins's magnificent prog-elec-
tro score to the random needle drop suspense music to the insane use of jolly
trad-jazz Muzak, lend the film an otherworldly feeling. This is bolstered by
the use of locations you've never seen since and, for the most part, actors you
haven't either. This timeless feeling gives the whole film a sense that it been
beamed in from another dimension, that we're watching an alien broadcast in
shades of bluey gray, blood red, and never-ending plaid. Manyfilmsyou want
to get lost in. Dawn you want to hole up in.
Hell, even the flaws make it lovable, be it the one zombie doing a terrible
job in a wide shot, the truly goofy hero music for Peter's last minute escape
to the helicopter or even the odd wooden line reading (the cameraman in
the opening who solemnly intones "Our responsibility is finished"). Some of
these odd details or mistakes seem to make it all the more real, like when
Stephenfiuffshis hammer swing at a zombie and collapses in a girly heap. It's
exactly what I would do.
The one other major infiuence this film wields over me is the sense of
the apocalypse becoming some adult playground, that for all the bleakness
and uncertainty, there are chances to play out long held fantasies, the knowl-
edge that essentially you can do anything, however juvenile. This is best il-
lustrated by Roger's gleeful slide down the center of the escalator when they
run through a deserted department store. Along will the faux bank raid and
the general fun had while confusing the hell out of zombies (in the excellent
strategic middle section of the film), forms at least part of the spark, which
later made the Romero template perfect for video games.
Certainly my inspiration for making Shaun of the Dead came partly from
playing the CAPCOM Resident Evil games from the mid '90s. These managed
to capture the spirit of George's film better than anything else in recent years.

42 THEVIRGINIA QUARTERLY REVIEW

Not only was the eerie tone just right, but they stuck rigidly to the central
zombie action logic: that one can generally outrun a zombie, but one can also
easily become unstuck if one gets cocky. This in turn, sparked not only an-
other dusting off of my Dawn VHS, but then further wandering into what-if
territory. Not only was I wondering how I would get from my flat to the local
shop in the wake of a zombie attack, but also just how one would cope with a
zombie in the garden one hungover Sunday morning . . .
Making our bloody Valentine to George with Shaun of the Dead has al-
lowed me to bond, not only with my colleague Simon Pegg about our love for
the original Dawn, but also with actors and filmmakers the world over. Now I
realize that I am far from alone in my obsessions over The Gonk, postbox-red
blood, and all things bluey gray and shambling.
As I write, my belated fandom has just paid off a thousand fold, having
just returned from Toronto, where I played a blink-and-you'11-miss-it zombie
cameo in the latest Romero epic Land of the Dead. The experience of being
covered in latex and directed by George was overwhelming to say the least. I
can now claim to be a tiny zombie cog in a huge machine, much like those
tireless Pittsburghers when they did their zombie bit way back in 1977.
That's if I make the c u t . . .
Whatever, it was a perfect way to top off what feels like a five-year pil-
grimage to the Church of George. And while Dawn of the Dead remains un-
doubtedly the granddaddy of the zombie genre, it sometimes seems a shame
to damn it with the perceived faint praise of the Z-word. It's a great end of the
world film full stop. It's a great horror film full stop. It's a great film. Full stop.

EDGAR W R I C HT 43