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Though Night of the Living Dead came first, Dawn of the Dead is the movie that forever established exactly what a zombie movie needed to be. Even now, thirty years later, it is the standard by which all other “the dead have risen and are munching my flesh” movies are judged. From start to finish, Dawn of the Dead is two hours of non-stop decaying society, armed resistance and balls-to-the-wall undead awesome.

In every way, it’s an over the top comic book of a movie, but that helps rather than hinders it. The zombies just have kinda gray-blue makeup and the blood (of which there is plenty, believe me) is a pink so bright it’s almost radioactive. When the movie came out in 1978, I don’t think audiences would have been ready for something this violent that was also completely realistic. Instead, the broad cartoony touches allowed people to realize they could have a rollicking good time even in the company of severed limbs and gaping headwounds and intestines galore. The stylistic choices not only helped this movie to succeed but opened the door for increasingly true-to-life gore and splatter in years to come, and thank god for that; nothing makes my heart soar quite so much as gut-wrenchingly believable violence and mayhem.

The story of any zombie movie is essentially the same: The dead rise to feast on the living and a small band of human survivors holes up somewhere, shooting everyone they see in the head in the process. In this particular instance, our heroes—a bland guy, a loose cannon, a black guy and, of course, a pregnant woman—make their new home in a shopping mall. Massive indoor malls were a relatively new concept at the time of this movie’s release; as the characters approach it in their helicopter, some of them don’t even realize what it is. And it’s not just for fun that the movie takes place in a mall, no sir. It’s the perfect place for writer/director George Romero to bludgeon the audience with some of his trademark subtle-as-a-proctological-exam social commentary.

Romero comes down pretty hard in this movie on what he sees as the braindead consumerism of American society. It’s commented early on that the teeming hordes of mindless zombies are attracted to the shopping mall because it was an important place to them, that they’re drawn to it because it impressed itself so strongly on their memories when they were alive. Numerous shots show zombies shuffling aimlessly through the vast expanses of the mall, wandering from store to store with glazed expressions, all of which is clearly meant to make us think: “Oh goodness, our obsession with the acquisition of wealth turns us into zombies, does it not? Thank you, George Romero. Your liberal politics have shown me the light!” In case the audience still missed the point through all that, there’s a scene where one character looks out upon the swarm of zombies and asks, “What are they?” The response comes: “They’re us.” Talk about a light touch and the skillful integrating of metaphor and symbolism into your script!

Whether you agree with Romero’s rather cynical take on capitalism or not, there is one thing on which all of us, from the smallest babies to the crotchetiest old fogies, can agree: it is super awesome when corpses wander around munching on people’s skin. Not to mention when heads are chopped up by helicopter blades. Or when arms come off in the cuff of a blood pressure tester. Or when screwdrivers get jammed into ears. Or when zombies are smashed with semis. Or, perhaps best of all, when a roving gang of bikers engages in a pie fight with the undead. Yes, that really happens, plus the bikers spray the zombies with seltzer bottles. How could anything in the universe be more incredible than that?

With each passing George Romero Dead film, the endings get a little bit less bleak. In the end of the original Night of the Living Dead, everyone ended up dead. By the time Land of the Dead came around, it appeared the band of heroes was all set to live out the rest of their lives in happiness and safety despite the zombie masses overrunning the world. This movie does the best job of leaving things ambiguous, combining a bleak outlook with just enough glimmers of hope. Some of our heroes escape their immediate zombie ordeal (zombdeal?), but numerous unanswered questions remain. Where will they go? How will they survive if they make it there? Are there any others left alive?

In short, Dawn of the Dead is an excellent movie that succeeds at everything it sets out to do. It’s been imitated more times than anyone could count in the years since its release, but it’s never been equalled, much less surpassed. The recent remake of the film managed to be enjoyable in different ways, but nothing compares to the genuine article. When it comes to armies of the undead, nobody does it better than George Romero, and Dawn of the Dead is the best of the best.

If you don’t like Dawn of the Dead, you will also totally hate:

If You Hated This, You Will Also Totally Hate:

• Night of the Living Dead
• Halloween in September
• Dead Alive
• Wednesday Top Ten: Superior Sequels
• 28 Days Later