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Zombies, guns, exploding heads, shopping at the mall "Dawn of the Dead" has all the essentials of life to get you through the day. George Romero's classic horror sequel to "Night of the Living Dead" takes up exactly where the first film ends. Our quartet of heroes take to the skies trying to find a safe refuge. Low on gas, they land on the roof of a shopping mall. Finding everything there they need they decide to stay. Unfortunately, the zombies wander the confines of the mall as well. As one character puts it, "it was important to them". Either that or there happened to be a special going on. The rest of the film focuses on the struggle of these survivors to protect themselves from flesh eating zombies. I'd say they were trapped in the dead zone, but well, that's another movie and television series entirely. ***

When "Dawn of the Dead" first appeared critics hailed the film as a subtle satire about our consumer society. It's a satire all right but it was never subtle. Like the best satires, "Dead" works best when its over the top gore scenes quickly follow social commentary (sometimes it happens in the same scene). The performances are, shall we say, a bit stiff. Romero worked with professional actors that were not the product of the Hollywood breeding scene. In fact, arguably, "Dead" could be called one of the first true big budgeted independent films produced ("Night of the Living Dead" budget was so small it really qualifies as a grade z horror film with more meat on the bone than standard films of this sort). ---

"Dead" looks great. The high definition transfer done by Anchor Bay creates images that have vivid, bright colors and a sharpness to the picture not seen on previous versions. In fact, the transfer looks better than some big budget Hollywood films produced during the same time (1978). The enhanced picture works well if you also have a oblong 16x9 television set as the film has been remastered with widescreen presentation on these types of sets. If you have a more conventional television "Dawn" looks great as well. The film was matted (meaning it has the black borders at the top and bottom of the screen similar to other widescreen releases) for widescreen presentation in theaters. The good news is that the aspect ratio (the width x the height of the picture) means that the black bars don't take up most of the screen. ***

The soundtrack sounds pretty good considering the year it was made. Remastered for Dolby Digital 5.1 and stereo, you can listen to "Dead" on a state-of-the-art system and on your television speakers and it sounds pretty good both ways. The limitation of the original soundtrack means that the film doesn't use all the speakers for a 5.1 system as well as they should. That's not an issue though as the sound was never really designed with that in mind. ---