The Dumb Cool Weird Podcast
It is a podcast that covers old movies from the 20th century that are funny and ridiculous. We cover what is dumb, cool, and weird about each movie. We are raw and don't show mercy!!
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The Dumb Cool Weird Podcast
Dawn of the Dead (1978): Whimsy Meets Horror in a Zombie Classic - Episode 55
Ever wondered what makes a film both whimsically entertaining and spine-chillingly terrifying? Join Wes and Nick as they explore the weird and wonderful world of "Dawn of the Dead," a cornerstone in the zombie genre that blends humor with horror in unexpected ways. Nick, our enthusiastic co-host, relishes the experience of sharing this classic with a first-time viewer, celebrating both its endearing quirks and its intense moments, like the unforgettable basement confrontation and the mall's bizarre allure. We chat about the baffling decisions made by the biker gang and tackle the realistic hurdles of surviving a zombie apocalypse, all while tipping our hats to George A. Romero’s personal cameo that adds a special touch to the film’s chaotic newsroom scene.
Join our conversation on how "Dawn of the Dead" laid the groundwork for modern zombie lore, influencing not just its immediate successors but also defining features like "The Walking Dead." We reflect on the film's whimsical charm, recognizing that while it may not satisfy those hungry for bleak narratives, it remains a beloved piece of cinematic history. As anticipation builds for next week's darker feature, "Day of the Dead," we extend a special thanks to our Atlanta listeners, urging everyone to spread the word about our Dumb, Cool, Weird Podcast.
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dumb cool, weird podcast. Dumb cool, weird podcast. It's dumb cool, weird halloween this month and it's about to get freaky. Yeah, so we talked about night of the living dead this previous week, but now we're talking about dawn of the dead, which is one of nick's favorite movies, so I'll let Nick take it away, all right.
Speaker 1:As you may know, it's a classic movie where these main characters, peter Roger, stephen and White Bitch, go into the mall to survive out the zombie apocalypse, and then they meet Tom Savini and his gang of hooligans Prior to this. We get to see what the guys are doing way before, so we get a nice little scene of a creepy news broadcast and then house-to-house fighting to get rid of the zombies and the gang members held up inside of the projects. And that was pretty cool. Yeah, I mean when Peter shoots Willie right in the back after he blows people's brains out just indiscriminately, going batshit, insane, and they're like willie's going batshit, and nobody thinks, you know, we're gonna stop him. No, they just let him go apartment to apartment blasting people until peter just got gets him. Yeah, I think any trap, though, when they knocked out that door in the basement and all those zombies came flooding in, just imagine how you would shit your pants. Oh yeah, absolutely, but it's interesting.
Speaker 1:This is the first time I've actually seen this movie. Most of the time when me and Nick watch a movie, I'm usually showing him a movie that I've seen before or it's a movie that we both haven't seen. But this is actually a twist. For once this is a movie I've never seen and Nick's seen this, and so Nick, the whole time, was really excited when I was watching certain parts of it and I got to say it's a lot more whimsical than I thought it would be. I honestly I forgot a lot of the whimsy but I loved it because Roger and Peter yeah, they started off technically on the wrong footing because Roger's part of Willie's group, yeah, and then Peter shoots him and then they just meet up in the basement and they connect. They're like bros and they're walking, they're running to the mall with all the whimsical music, all the whimsical mall perspective.
Speaker 1:This movie is definitely very fascinating because I honestly expect there to be more people in it. For some reason I thought the shopping mall would have seven or eight people, but really it was just four people. And then the gang of bikers who decide oh, I'm going to destroy this mall and I'm going to try to steal all the money and the TVs and the jewelry and the cash, even though that shit probably doesn't mean anything anymore. You know, what was actually very surprising is they didn't take the guns as much as they should have. Like the gun store at the end, when they pan off and they play the whimsical mall music again, when the end credits come in, you know they show the zombies just hanging out in the mall with it within the gun store and it's still full of guns and ammunition. At no point did they ever think to actually take the resources they need. They also wasted a bunch of the food by throwing pies and other desserts and everything. Yeah, honestly, I had no sympathy for those fucking bandits. They really I really had no sympathy for any of those motherfuckers. It's just, it made me very sick to my stomach seeing a bunch of people during an apocalypse not working together. I mean, I know that does happen, but you know it's weird because this movie is basically just long periods of whimsy and then fight scenes and then long periods of whimsy and we get the whimsy and then we get an abrupt case of oh, this is a horror movie, by the way, the music will be whimsical and then it'll go and all the bad music kicks in immediately.
Speaker 1:I do like how you pointed out that there was a cameo from fucking George A Romero and his wife. Oh, yeah, at the beginning when they're in the newsroom. Yeah, yeah, he's just sitting there smoking away. Yeah, that's actually really funny because he's not really doing anything different than he probably already was off camera. No, he was probably. Remember he. You also mentioned that he's like he edited that movie when he where the beginning credits were moving in, so he was probably like puffing down cigarettes by the dozen. He probably had like his nose filled with cigarettes.
Speaker 1:The thing is, I enjoyed watching this movie. Didn't expect it to be fucking two hours long. Of course, there was a lot of the mall scenes that could have been cut out or just condensed because, yeah, like you said, after Roger dies especially, it just goes stagnant. Yeah, and then everybody gets really annoyed and really bored. Yeah, but at the same time time it's like you said, with the, with the bikers coming in and stealing everything.
Speaker 1:Right after they get out of the city, they see the national guard and the community banding together and working together to kill the zombies in the outskirts of town. But then you wonder at what point did people decide we're going to live on the road like that? I mean, it's like you said, how long does it take? How are they? I mean they are burning through a bunch of gas, but how long until the gas just goes bad? That's a good question. I mean, it's the same question I always had in the Walking Dead, but they never really resolved that dead. But they never really resolved that because literally in the walking dead you, it's not only been five or ten years but there's a big time skip where it's been almost 15 years or more and it just doesn't make like any sense at all. And the fact is, at least in the walking dead the decay plays into effect and those zombies would have been a lot worse off in the walking dead too, being out in those elements like that. Yup, I agree the.
Speaker 1:I think the biggest thing for me watching this movie is I can definitely see where a lot of the modern uh influences for zombie movies come from in this movie. You know, aside from the fire thing you told me about with the voodoo thing yeah, the last movie but I could see where a lot of the zombie tropes are coming in with this movie how zombies are unnaturally strong, how they can just rip through flesh. Oh yeah, like when uh roger was like right in there and that one chick just jammed her thumb into his wound, I felt that that pain, though Like just he's already got this big bite inside of there and she's just jamming her thumb inside of there, yeah, and that's God, dude, that would really like freak me out, are you all right, percy? Yeah, make sure you drink. But yeah, from my perspective, this movie is one of those things where I really enjoyed just watching some of the makeup effects they did in the late 70s, also watching how they structured the movie.
Speaker 1:And I think it's very interesting that Tom Savini was in this movie. Not only was he the makeup effects guy for this movie, but he was also acting in the movie. And then George A Romero not only wrote and directed this movie, but he also was the editor too. It's funny, yeah. And the thing is, tom Savini this was not too long, probably after about 10 years, probably after he got home from Vietnam from working combat camera. So he had a lot of. He got a lot of his inspiration, apparently from some of the things that he saw in Dom. Yeah, I can see that. But overall I think that it's a good movie. I like it. I think it's very whimsical Didn't expect that, which whimsy was strange for the setting.
Speaker 1:I could tell the soundtrack played a little bit into the late 60s sound like they had from the original night of the living dead. I could tell they were starting to add a little bit more of a modern soundtrack for it. Once we get into day of the dead next week, I'm really gonna talk heavily yeah, I'm gonna. It's very dark. I'm gonna talk about how awesome that awesome. That soundtrack for Day of the Dead is Honestly a masterpiece it is.
Speaker 1:But one of the things I do think is that they at least give you that sort of sense, even within all the whimsy of this movie, that there's no hope. Yeah, pretty much. I mean there is no hope. When you watch this movie. It's very depressing, but they do have their moments where it's whimsical and happy, especially when they're going around the mall and just role playing, doing all these different things, especially that scene where they're eating dinner and Peter comes in and serves them food. Yeah, it's like I'm going to be the chef and I'm just going to go drink with Roger roger's grave right now. Yeah, here's one for you, homie, because they buried, they paired, roger in the fake uh plant um part of the mall where the fucking water's running. You know, since we're going down this route, right, let's go down into the dumb, cool and the weird here. Yeah, what do you think was the dumbest part about this movie?
Speaker 1:I think the dumbest part of this movie was the fact that they were like let's stop at this shopping mall and live here. No, let's not try to go find groups of other people to survive with that. Have a like-minded like us. No, let's just stay at the shopping mall and potentially risk ourselves getting fucking murdered because we don't know what's in the shopping mall. That was actually dumb, even though I know that's like a big plot point of the movie. Well, but here to go with that, the dumbest thing to me was the biker gang. I mean, you're surviving on the road, gas is scarce and you're looting every other person's thing. Instead of just teaming up with a group of people Like're saying, why not just work with people? It could fortify the outer perimeter of the shopping mall and turn into a major like base of operations, but no, we're gonna loot the shopping mall. Yep, that's what I thought was done. No, I agree, that is fucking dumb.
Speaker 1:What I thought was really cool about this movie was the squib work and, you know, the blank work with shooting with the guns. I thought like they did a really good job of that, and I even think the zombie makeup looked pretty good for the time, you know, yeah, no, and was pretty realistic. The faces were completely drained out. Some of those people were decaying. I mean, even in the first one, they had decaying people, but they were working with 1960s effects and black and white film. So, yeah, it was only as good as it was going to get. I personally think one of the things that was cool, though, was when you listened in the background is how they were talking about that. You hear somebody say that, mention that this happened, this they're continuing off three weeks prior to being the night of the living dead, so that means that, in sort of the movie universe, that this exists. This is three weeks after the initial inspection, even though it was 10 years ago, chronologically, yeah, but they definitely worked around it as well as they could. Yeah, and I get that.
Speaker 1:One of the things we need to talk about also that's cool is it was pretty cool they had access to a shopping mall. Oh yeah, as a set, that must have cost something. I mean, maybe they got a really good deal on the mall I don't really know, but it's really cool that they were able to get that. I think, from what I remember, that there was like a there. The reason that they were able to get the shopping mall was because it was like during the holiday. It was like a. The reason that they were able to get the shopping mall was because it was like during the holiday. It was like during the holidays or like sometime past the holidays. It did say Christmas sale, yeah. So I think what they were doing was they were shooting at night when the mall was closed. Oh, that makes sense If I remember watching a review years ago.
Speaker 1:Also really cool thing actually that I want to bring up is Tom Savini. Those two kid zombies were Tom Savini's niece and nephew and that created a lot of outrage for people when Peter shot the kid zombies. But you know, I mean that was part of the darkness of the film. Yep, I totally agree, that is very dark. Let's move on to the weird.
Speaker 1:So the weirdest part of this movie for me was that fucking Hispanic guy that kept checking his blood pressure. Dude, I kept telling you, just watch this guy, it's going to blow your fucking mind. Like, hey, holmes, let me just put this in here real quick. He puts his arm in there, like literally getting surrounded right now, and you're like, oh, maybe this is a bad idea. And now he can't get out. Yeah, he's fucking stuck in the blood pressure cuff. And then the blood pressure comes back and it's oh, zero, zero, zero. So I like how it's warning him stay still, can't stay still. Literally, the blood pressure, the pressure of the blood, is getting leaked out of his fucking arm. I just didn't understand, though. Your blood pressure's gonna be raised because you're getting shot at Yep.
Speaker 1:But you know what else was weird Is how they robbed that bank in the mall. They grabbed all that money. I just think the biker we talked about how they were dumb, dumb, the biker gangs, but they're fucking weird too. You literally have no nothing else better to do but steal all this shit. That means nothing, literally, money that doesn't even mean anything anymore. There's no broadcast for the TVs.
Speaker 1:You know what else is weird the girl. She was pregnant and she was fucking drinking. Oh God, that was hilarious, because that's the weirdest part of the movie. She's drinking champagne and wine throughout the whole movie and smoking cigarettes chain-smoking cigarettes the whole time. Yeah, it's, but she wants to keep the baby. Yeah, she wanted to keep the baby. God, that's so crazy to me. I guess 1970s babies were a little bit more resilient to the alcohol and tobacco use of their parents. Yeah, I guess so, but that's basically Dawn of the Dead.
Speaker 1:Dawn of the Dead is where a lot of your zombie tropes come from. It's, I think, early beginnings, even more so than Night of the Living Dead, and I personally liked it my first time watching it. I'd recommend you watch it for purposes of trying to see where it all began. It may be a little too whimsical for some of you people who like the darker shit, but next week we're going to have Dawn, the Day of the Dead, and you guys are going to be in for a surprise for that, because that is a really fucking dark movie. It's where a lot of modern zombie movies get a lot of their dark themes from, especially the walking dead. So definitely stay tuned for that. Oh yeah, nick, you want to sign us up? Stay sexy, atlanta. Thanks for watching the dumb, cool, weird podcast, where we cover some of your favorite movies in 20 minutes or less for your convenience. We go over what is dumb, cool and weird about movies and check out our way back wednesdays. We do sometimes for other stuff, and please share us with your friends.
