Trailer(s) of the Week - Dawn of the Dead

One thing I've been listening to over the last year has been the superb Evolution of Horror podcast.  A fine discussion of the genre, host Mike Muncer breaks the genre down to separate sub-genres, and discusses with various guests the main titles that have truly shaped that branch of horror.  So far there have been four seasons, with the subject for the fifth already announced as the evolution of Occult movies, focusing on tales of Witchcraft, Satanism, and the Devil.  It's well worth going back through the first few seasons too, on Slashers, Ghost Stories, and Folk Horror.  The latest season that just wrapped up is on the topic of the Zombie film, ending with the viewer's top ten.  I was thinking of doing my own top ten zombie films, thinking that it would be fairly easy given how damn ubiquitous the undead buggers are, but I genuinely couldn't make up my mind.  There are a tonne of crap zombie properties out there, but when the subgenre is good, it's really damn good!  So as a result, I thought what I'd do instead is have this week's trailer post be a look at several different promos for perhaps the film that shaped the subgenre the most, and one that would definitely fit somewhere into my personal top ten, 1978's Dawn of the Dead...

First up, the original US theatrical trailer.  Now this is a great trailer; giving you just the right hints of the action without giving every key moment away, and stating upfront the big reason to be excited about this, namely that it's the long awaited sequel to Night of the Living Dead.  That being said, there's a good amount of cheese to this trailer too; I love the line the narrator has that it's a "hauntingly accurate portrayal of the excesses of a society gone mad".  I'm uncertain if "accurate" is the right word considering, y'know, the undead, but it does acknowledge the film's satirical message.  Plus it's well set against a shot of the film I've always liked, where the bikers nick all of a zombie's jewelry.  Now one cool thing about Dawn is that there are different cuts of the film, all with their own particular plus points, which can help to keep rewatches fresh, doing different versions at different times.  The main theatrical cut, which is 127 minutes long, was George A. Romero's preferred version, that's his "director's cut" if you will.  I'll get into the other cuts later.

Now here's a UK trailer, where it was originally released under the title of Zombies, I guess keeping it in line with the rest of Europe where it was released as Zombie. (I'll get into that in a moment).  Weirdly, it does acknowledge the Dawn of the Dead title, but here it's mentioned and shown as either a subtitle or a tagline.  Not sure why they took that approach.  Now this trailer is a bit more thrown together, not as well thought through as the previous one.  For example, I really don't know why they had the bit with the biker and the blood pressure machine in here.  When it first got released over here, the BBFC had quite a few issues with it, with the result that the version that got released was only just over 120 minutes long.  I've actually seen that version, on the big screen, shown at the Barbican many years ago. A seamless re-edit it is not, I remember the whole audience being a bit weirded out by some of the cuts.  It was a pretty beaten up old print too, so I wouldn't be surprised if a few extra cuts were in there, due to poor maintenance and unscrupulous projectionists nicking frames (which does happen!).  Fun fact: In Spaced series 2, there's a quad poster for this version of the film on the wall of the flat; a not-too subtle hint about what the creators would make next there...

I mentioned the European cut of the film earlier, here's a trailer for that.  So Dawn was partially funded by Italian horror legend Dario Argento; the deal being he would handle the European distribution rights, with a cut he thought would play best in that market.  It was sold as Zombi, a stand-alone film rather than an acknowledged sequel to Night, and was a big success, to the extent that it spawned an odd branch of the living dead family tree.  It's interesting seeing a very different editing style and such at work; note that this is by far the most explicit and action packed of the trailers on here.  That's true of the whole film; this cut (119 minutes long) pushes the action and horror the most; it does lessen the satire a bit, but given that it's still got that zombie mugging I mentioned earlier, it's not gone altogether.  It's the most blockbuster-ish of the versions, though with one or two interesting omissions and changes; now it gets the characters to the mall as fast as possible, but it does mean losing one very notable gore scene, the zombie that stands up too tall by a helicopter.

Here's one for the UK VHS in 1989.  Side note; yes Dawn did get swept up in the "video nasties" debacle, but interestingly (considering how titles like Zombie Flesh Eaters were the poster boys for the controversy) it wasn't on the main "section 2" lists being prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act.  It was on the Section 3 list, so police could still come round your video shop and take your copies away, but you wouldn't be prosecuted for it; I'm sure that was a big comfort to the store owners who just had their inventory grabbed by the popo.  Not much more I can say on this one, except that it was cut even more than the UK cinema release (though only 12 seconds more, which given it was the days of the Video Recordings Act wasn't much), and it's interesting that the individual zombie focused on most is the Hare Krishna.

Last one, but I am so pleased to have found this to put on here.  This was a trailer for the first BBC showing of Dawn of the Dead, which aired as part of BBC 2's Forbidden Season in 1997.  (Other stuff in there included Shivers, Videodrome, El Topo, Eyes Without a Face... man, if I was into horror back then, I'd be in heaven!).  Now this version is the one that became the main one on UK video for a good few years; the Extended Cut.  This cut was the original rough cut of the film George Romero showed at Cannes, it is sometimes called a director's cut, but that's really the theatrical one.  That version is 140 minutes long, has a few extra character beats, no major extra gore, and has more library music than the other versions, less of the Goblin Soundtrack.  It was cut by six seconds for a few years in the UK (mainly due to the wake of the Dunblane incident), but that got updated in 2003 (just in time to cash in on the remake and Shaun).  Now why this is special for me is that this little trailer is the first ever glimpse I got of the film, and I was fascinated yet utterly terrified.  That line "it gets up and kills, the people it kills get up and kill!" stuck with me for so long, inspiring many a sleepless night.  I was only just 11 (thanks BBC Genome for confirming the date!), so this kind of was what first made me aware of what a horror film could be.  Now my memory is a bit hazy; in my head, the trailer I saw was longer than this, so I'm not sure if there was another promo, but that could just be so many details of it seering into my young brain.  I'm glad that with this little Dawn retrospective I could share this childhood memory, which makes it a good spot to wrap up this trailer reel.  Now you either really want to watch Dawn, or you are sick to (un)death of it.

One last bit on Dawn; currently Second Sight Films in the UK, a great little boutique film publisher, are working on an all-new 4K restoration of the film, to be released on UHD, which apparently will be in all three major cuts!  It's taken a while for this to happen, as Richard Rubenstein, the producer, has been asking a lot for home video rights due to a 3D conversion he made of the film not selling (can't imagine why not. :deactivate sarcasm mode:).  Filmmaker Nicholas Winding Refn recently oversaw a 4K restoration of the Italian cut; it will be interesting to see if Second Sight go with that or do another scan themselves.  Oh, and they'll be releasing the film Romero did just before this as well, the vampire deconstruction Martin.  They have done great work in the past with titles like Assault on Precinct 13, The Changeling, Midnight Run, Stop Making Sense, and a tonne more, so it's in safe hands here.  Yeah, you bet I'm pre-ordering both the second they become available.  Hope they have very good servers for their website, given what happened with Arrow when their special editions of The Thing became live...