The Dead Will Walk (2004) is a documentary on the making of Dawn of the Dead and the perspective of it’s impact from those who made it. This doco is also included in the special edition DVD of Dawn of the Dead, as well as the original, the extended, and the European cuts of the film (check it here).
When there’s no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth – Peter
George A Romero:
- Was inspired by old monster classics
- Tales of Hoffman, based on an opera, is the ‘one’ that made him want to make movies
- His first short story was called Night of Anubis. He admits it was a total rip off of I am Legend by Richard Matheson, but in adapting and changing it, it became the screenplay for Night of the Living Dead
- Shot Night of the Living Dead over the course of a year
- Resisted Hollywood calls to make another movie or make others movies straight afterwards.
- Took a tour of the Monroeville Mall, one of the first indoor malls, which was owned by friends. Was told could survive nuclear attack in there, Romero thought ‘what about a zombie attack?’.
- Went to Rome to write screenplay for Dawn, encouraged by Dario Argento.
- Always writes his vision and then works out how to do it
- George’s instruction to Tom Savini, makeup & cosmetic special effects, was to simply “think of ways to kill people”. And that’s what he did.
- The zombies had no direction in ‘zombie shuffling’ and could make it up as they went, as long as they were consistent.
- Part of what they did in filming was to cover as many angles as possible andget as many shots as possible so there were many options during the editing process.
- Tom Savini admired by the crew and cast as “invaluable and talented”, “couldn’t believe some of the ideas he came up with”. Savini says his time in Vietnam as a combat photographer had a big influence on him when it came to working with gory special effects.
- Dario Argento tweaked the editing for non-English countries. George’s original edit was quite long for Dario, and thus ended up creating an entirely different version from Romero’s with less gore and comic scenes. Dario contributed to the score as well with the Goblins.
George: I wanted to try to give it the same thematic core that the original film had and speak about some of my own ideas about society and … I don’t think it’s an underlying message, it’s like in your face, right up front. The way society has been conditioned to think that as long as you have this stuff, life is wonderful and being falsely attracted and seduced by things that really shouldn’t have value in your life, but do.
Tom: Everybody would love to be holed up in a shopping mall, everything you want is right there. Jewellery, money, it’s a fantasy come true.
The main cast understood what George was on about with his ‘satire of consumerism’, noting that George understood it earlier than most as shopping malls were barely starting in the late 70s. Gaylen Ross, who played Fran, said she was ‘surprised by the intelligence of the script. It’s a reflection of who we are. It’s funny.”
Romero: It’s a comic book, it’s a romp. With this underlying sense of society going to hell, I wanted to have this mash like effect of you can laugh, you can have as much fun as you want, but there’s something else going on here.
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- Initially with European distribution they made a lot of money, but when they took it around the US, the distributors would come out of the screenings loving it, but saying ‘wow, that’s really rough, let’s clean it up’. Romero wanted to keep it as strong as possible and didn’t edit it further.
- They ended up running the film themselves and United Film Distribution went and saw the intense reaction by the audience at one of the showings and did a deal right there.
- Not having a rating on the film helped contribute to popularity, but advertising and showing was very limited because of it.
- Audience very excited by gory scenes. Lots of different reactions with clapping during decapitating zombies, or running out vomiting. ’If we’d done anything at all, we had made a crowd pleaser’ – Romero.
- Romero so happy with intense fans who fly from all over the world to see him and love the film so much. Fans often say to actors how the film changed their lives. Another fan said: ‘When I die, I want the movie in my casket’. One fan had tattoos covering himself of every character from all of George’s movies.
- Some wanted a sequel right away, but Romero wanted to work on other things first, including working with Stephen King.
- When Day of the Dead came out, it had smaller distribution and it didn’t do any business, as George admits it ‘may have hurt us’.
- Helped careers of many of those who worked on the film. George mentored everyone. “Lovely, bright, sweet man that you give 110% for. One of the best people I’ve ever known.” – Donna Siegel, assistant producer.
- George is very comfortable with his body of work, though Hollywood still considers him a maverick. He’s ‘happy as hell’ to just keep doing what he wants.
- Land of Dead (called Dead Reckoning at the time) script was all about ignoring the problem, ‘like trying to live with terrorism’ and reflecting what is going on today.
