Dawn Of The Dead (1979) Roger Death

My final scene from Dawn of the Dead (1979) is when Roger gets killed by Peter before he turns into a zombie. This scene uses restricted narration as when Peter shoots at Roger we only hear the gun shooting and it killing Roger, we see a shot of Fran and Stephen in the other room looking scared at what’s just happened. 

This scene also uses cinematography as the close up shot of Roger's face shows the fear in his eyes that he is coming back to life as a zombie.

This scene also uses Propp and Todorov’s Classical Hollywood Narrative Structure as the unhappy ending of Roger's life is usually used in most horror films as shown in their book (Morphology Of The Folktale 1928). This then leads to the final scene of the remaining survivors trying to escape the Mall which Peter and Francine escape in the helicopter, which is an open ending which may then lead to a sequel. 

Dawn Of The Dead (1979) Zombies In Mall

This scene from Dawn of the Dead (1979) is when the characters try to leave the mall. This scene shows historical context as the consumerism of malls was growing in America at this time. This is also an auteur style of George Romero as he likes to link to context, which backs up Andrew Sarris' Auteur Theory in his book Film Theory and Criticism. Romero’s other films also use historical context as in Day of the Dead (1985) was about scientists and soldiers hiding in an underground bunker from the zombies above which relates to the cold war between the soviet union and usa who could use nuclear weapons at any minute.  

The contrapuntal music playing in this scene is the cheesy “musak” usually played in malls which goes against what is actually happening in the mall. The mise-en-scene used in this scene is creepy locations as abandoned buildings usually have low key lighting to make them more scary and claustrophobic for the audience.

This scene also uses Montage/Slow Sequence as it shows a lot of clips of the zombies in the mall to show the audience that the zombies are everywhere in the mall waiting to get the survivors stuck in the mall. This montage shows a Tense emotion as nobody knows what will happen next.

Dawn Of The Dead (1979) Biker Gore

This scene from Dawn of the Dead (1979) is where the biker gang get into the mall and let the zombies out and they start killing people. This shot shows that the institutional context of the horror industry has changed since the days of Psycho as it has more gore in it. This backs up the important of Thomas Schatz's Genre Theory as it has all of the features of a gory horror film, (Hollywood Genres 1979) and therefore appealed to its target audience when it made $30m on a budget of just $1.5m.

This scene uses body horror well as the guts of the biker are being pulled out of the biker’s stomach and you see it all happen. This was controversial and shocking at the time as was one of the first films to have this much gore in it, which is why the film was unrated at the time in the USA. The special effects in this film were done by Tom Savini who also did the special effects for other films such as Creep show 2 and Red Scorpion.

There was also parallel music in this scene as there was action music played throughout the scene of the action sequence of the zombies attacking. There was also montage/quick sequence in this scene to emphasise the action that was taking place in the mall, this is shown by the shooting of the zombies in the mall. This montage produces a panicky scared emotion as the zombies could attack any of the characters at any moment.