A few detailed thoughts in re-watching "Dawn" for the 7,165th time while drunk.

[JDFP]

As just about everything else in the film has been discussed ad infinitum (and probably most of these, if not all of them), just a few observations I had as I was getting drunk re-watching it again for # 7,165 earlier today (in anticipation of Thanksgiving tomorrow, because nothing says Thanksgiving like a re-watch of "Dawn of the Dead")...

-- When Gibbons (Gibbons/Givens? Which is it exactly? I didn't run it with the subtitles on) is in the control room yelling "Lucas, get back here on the console!" there's a blond that walks into the room. She's pretty damn hot and wearing all black. Even for 70's standards she's pretty damn hot. Anyone have any idea who this actress is? I'd like bang... er, meet her. Of course, she's 30 years older now. I wonder if she has a daughter. :)

-- I watched it 5 times. Frannie clearly says "DAVID' instead of 'Stephen' when he's giving her his "We've got to get out of here, someone has to survive" speech. How could something this simple go by without being corrected?

-- When Frannie and Stephen land at the police dock for some fuel for the copter (is this where television station helicopters normally get fuel?) before leaving...Frannie and Stephen see a dead body when they get out the chopper. (Stephen: "Just like that, until it spits out at you" -- of course my first thought was "That's what she said!"). Stephen never looks to see if the dead body has been shot in the head before running inside. How the hell did he know the dead body wasn't about to turn into a zombie? I could just imagine him running inside as Frannie is not paying attention pumping fuel into the helicopter and the body re-animating and going over to bite Frannie. Quick end to the film, there. I guess they just got lucky.

-- When they land at the air-strip to re-fuel the chopper and Stephen says: "I'm going to see what's left in the hangers". What does he mean by this? Is he going into the hangers to see if random gas cans are laying around that haven't been used? That doesn't seem very likely or reasonable to me. This is the only logical conclusion I can come to. Otherwise, what the hell would he be looking for exactly?

-- When they were at this air-strip, why didn't they raid the vending machines? They had no idea where the hell they were going and didn't have any food on the chopper (as far as I know). You would think Peter (while he was in the building where he got his free cup of coffee) would have thought: "Hey, maybe I should take some crackers, etc. from this machine for some food". All it would have taken would be a shot to the lock of the vending machine. Crackers that may be 3 weeks old may have technically expired, that doesn't mean they are bad to eat. Would have made more sense than Stephen's useless expedition to "look for what's left" in the hangers.

-- On the Coca-Cola (shameless promotion!) Gateway Football Schedule (quotes: "The keys to the kingdom!" "Grab that walkie-talkie" in the mall) it says that there are two away games -- one at North Allegheny on September 17th at 1:30PM and a second one at Fox Chapel on October 15th (also at 1:30PM). In 1977 both dates would fall on a Saturday (it wouldn't be a school date so kids wouldn't miss school -- which does technically make sense) but I can't recall any high schools playing football games on Saturdays (as far as I know they are usually on Friday evenings, perhaps the 70's were different?). Did high schools use to play football games on Saturday afternoons? Perhaps this was a JV schedule. Do JV teams play on Saturday afternoons?

-- Logical inconsistency. While they were in the helicopter Frannie said: "We have no food! (addressed this in my earlier point of interest on not raiding the vending machines) We don't know where we're going!" (rather vehemently) and then in the mall during the abortion discussion (how exactly does Roger know how to abort babies, by the way? Is part of SWAT training learning how to provide an abortion? Did he get it from his voodo grandpa?) she says: "Well, I guess we can forget about Canada then". Why would she say "We don't know where we are going" in the chopper if her desire was to eventually get to Canada?

-- During the first newscast with Dr. Rousch with the very Geraldo-looking reporter we see a zombie outside wearing nothing but swimming trunks. This is the middle of November - December when the events at the beginning of the film take place. Everyone is wearing jackets and the mall has signs for "Christmas sales" up. The only logical conclusion is that this zombie was in a hotel with an indoor swimming pool when he became a zombie. Otherwise, it just doesn't make much sense unless this zombie individual suffered from some type of Depression or manic bipolar disorder and enjoyed wearing swimming trunks (or possibly shorts, I can't tell, it was the 70's after all!) in the cold Pennsylvania winter.

-- When they are building the barricade to the stairwell they have a shopping cart for K-mart (look closely). I didn't think there was a K-mart in the mall. Was there? Where the hell did this shopping cart come from if there wasn't a K-mart in the mall?

Anyway, there's plenty more after this, but I'm pretty damn drunk and I'm going to go pass out now so I can prepare myself for eating lots of food and getting drunk again tomorrow. I need my energy for that important purpose. These are just some of the interesting tidbits I discovered in re-watching the majority of the film again tonight, you vanilla and chocolate men of HPotD. I figured it would be good for speculation and for some good ol' bickering (like we do best) and well... just for the hell of it. We haven't had a good thread in awhile dedicated to the original trilogy, so why not?

On a side note, re-watching this great film (yes, I nitpick the shit out of it, but it's all for discussions sake -- never think I don't find it to be a highly enjoyable film that I get more out of watching each time I view it), it makes me question whether or not Romero really directed the last 3 films or not. The original trilogy is fantastic and just fun as hell to watch and discuss. The last three films are, well, not so much. What the hell happened to Romero? How did he lose this ability to tell a story? Anyway, more discussion material.

I'm going to pass out now. Discuss amongst yourselves. Rhode Island is neither a road nor an island, discuss.

j.p.

[babomb]

Anyone have any idea who this actress is? She's probly not even an actress. She was probly just part of the production staff or someones wife/girlfriend/daughter. Hiring an actress specifically for that role is highly unlikely. That same girl is probly a zombie somewhere else in the movie too. Isn't that right around the time the-man-the-myth makes his cameo?

[krakenslayer]

She says "Steven". It does sound a little like David but there is a definite "N" sound at the end of the word and if you look closely you can see her mouth forming the "S" at the start of the word. She does pronounce the s, but almost at a whisper, and she stresses the middle part of the word, sort of like sTAVEn.

If you look and listen closely during her next line, when she repeats the word more clearly, you can see the similarities.

The quality of the dialogue recording in Dawn wasn't incredibly clear overall. When Roger says "There are no charges against you... yet" the audio comes over to me quite plainly as "yes", even though I can see his mouth form the "YET". It's just a side effect of muddy audio.

[ProfessorChaos]

Yp6UZf2cVwE

[JDFP]

Thanks for the laugh, Prof. I hate the holidays. Except Halloween and St. Patrick's Day. Eh, maybe Easter. The rest of them can go far away.

j.p.

[ProfessorChaos]

just playin around, jp. this just popped in my head and thought you'd get a kick out of it. uh, i'm kinda buzzed at the moment as well, so i can't put too much thought into those observations, but i'll return at a more convenient and coherent state and will check that stuff out...

[SymphonicX]

OK gotta write this quickly cos I got a poo about ready to explode from my backside and it won't be a pretty room after that...

Has anyone thought of stripping out the Dolby 5.1 to really get a handle on this "david/steven" issue? Just in case you all don't know - the Dolby stream on the DVDs that have the 5.1 audio, when decoded, are 6 separate audio streams that play out from each speaker individually - once the stream is decoded you can strip out everything except the centre channel which is for dialogue - this will remove all the background noise, music, sound effects, everything - leaving you with just the voice.

I've never tried this domestically in my life - however at work this is something we do all the time to strip out the good lines of dialogue for promos and whatnot which are usually buried beneath tons of explosions or music which totally interfers with whatever you're trying to make...

One of these days I'll bother to do it, I know the audio codec you'll need is called the AC3 codec - and I used to have years ago a program that would strip out and separate the 5.1 audio.

Anyway that would probably solve the issue entirely.

[Philly_SWAT]

-- When Gibbons (Gibbons/Givens? Which is it exactly? I didn't run it with the subtitles on) is in the control room yelling "Lucas, get back here on the console!" there's a blond that walks into the room. She's pretty damn hot and wearing all black. Even for 70's standards she's pretty damn hot. Anyone have any idea who this actress is? I'd like bang... er, meet her. Of course, she's 30 years older now. I wonder if she has a daughter. :)
I read this one and I thought..."Did I miss some random hottie in Dawn somehow?" Went back and looked...she is good looking, but I don't think she is especially hot or anything. If you look even more closely, I think she was already in the room (she didnt walk into the room, she was already in there) she was moving to take the place of the guy who was leaving. A few seconds earlier in a different shot, she is standing there looking all shocked, and her mouth is open and moving as if she is giving invisible head to someone. If you think she is hot, you may want to rewind a few seconds and look for that shot!



-- I watched it 5 times. Frannie clearly says "DAVID' instead of 'Stephen' when he's giving her his "We've got to get out of here, someone has to survive" speech. How could something this simple go by without being corrected?
You know, I had always thought she says "David" not "Stephen", and a friend of mine who rewatched Dawn the other day called me and asked if I had ever noticed it before (which I had). But when someone here mentioned they thought she actually says "Stephen" and went back and rewatched and sure as shit, it seems like the does says Stephen, not David. Power of suggestion? I will have to listen again weeks/months from now and see what I think.
But in any event, this type of mistake (if it even was one) slips through now and again. In Days of Thunder (major studio movie) when Cole Trickle first meets Rowdy Burn's wife, she says "Hi Tom" (Cruise) not Hi Cole.



-- When Frannie and Stephen land at the police dock for some fuel for the copter (is this where television station helicopters normally get fuel?) before leaving...Frannie and Stephen see a dead body when they get out the chopper. (Stephen: "Just like that, until it spits out at you" -- of course my first thought was "That's what she said!"). Stephen never looks to see if the dead body has been shot in the head before running inside. How the hell did he know the dead body wasn't about to turn into a zombie? I could just imagine him running inside as Frannie is not paying attention pumping fuel into the helicopter and the body re-animating and going over to bite Frannie. Quick end to the film, there. I guess they just got lucky.
I also always thought sexually perverted thoughts hearing Flyboy say that (wtf kind of way is that to describe that?) and I always took it that since he was stealing the chopper in essense, he was looking to get fuel from someone other than the normal place. Good point about the body, but Flyboy was kind of nerdy, and even months into the outbreak was reckless, and seeing that 3 weeks in he was STILL doing traffic reports, he may have been living a type of 'Ron Burgandy' lifestyle and didnt realize you had to shoot them in the head. He seemed unaware of the "shoot in the head" thing later in the film when Roger shoot a zed in the head that Flyboy had twice hit in the body.



-- When they land at the air-strip to re-fuel the chopper and Stephen says: "I'm going to see what's left in the hangers". What does he mean by this? Is he going into the hangers to see if random gas cans are laying around that haven't been used? That doesn't seem very likely or reasonable to me. This is the only logical conclusion I can come to. Otherwise, what the hell would he be looking for exactly?
I took it that he was looking to see if there was any flying vehicles in there that they might want to steal instead of the chopper, and/or looking ahead in case they crashed the chopper later (remember he was falling asleep at the stick) and least he would know if there were other planes/choppers there. That's why he is dissapointed that it is just a "bunch of junk".



-- When they were at this air-strip, why didn't they raid the vending machines? They had no idea where the hell they were going and didn't have any food on the chopper (as far as I know). You would think Peter (while he was in the building where he got his free cup of coffee) would have thought: "Hey, maybe I should take some crackers, etc. from this machine for some food". All it would have taken would be a shot to the lock of the vending machine. Crackers that may be 3 weeks old may have technically expired, that doesn't mean they are bad to eat. Would have made more sense than Stephen's useless expedition to "look for what's left" in the hangers.
Great point. Could be there were freaked out over the zombie attacks and the Stephen/Peter dynamic to think about it. Or even though at that point they were "thieves and bad guys" their brains were still thinking they were law abiding citizens, and it didnt occur to steal from the machine.



-- On the Coca-Cola (shameless promotion!) Gateway Football Schedule (quotes: "The keys to the kingdom!" "Grab that walkie-talkie" in the mall) it says that there are two away games -- one at North Allegheny on September 17th at 1:30PM and a second one at Fox Chapel on October 15th (also at 1:30PM). In 1977 both dates would fall on a Saturday (it wouldn't be a school date so kids wouldn't miss school -- which does technically make sense) but I can't recall any high schools playing football games on Saturdays (as far as I know they are usually on Friday evenings, perhaps the 70's were different?). Did high schools use to play football games on Saturday afternoons? Perhaps this was a JV schedule. Do JV teams play on Saturday afternoons?
This just adds weight to my argument that this movie isnt set in any particular year, but in the perpetual "now", making this question irrelevant.



-- Logical inconsistency. While they were in the helicopter Frannie said: "We have no food! (addressed this in my earlier point of interest on not raiding the vending machines) We don't know where we're going!" (rather vehemently) and then in the mall during the abortion discussion (how exactly does Roger know how to abort babies, by the way? Is part of SWAT training learning how to provide an abortion? Did he get it from his voodo grandpa?) she says: "Well, I guess we can forget about Canada then". Why would she say "We don't know where we are going" in the chopper if her desire was to eventually get to Canada?
I remember this being discussed before here, seems the most logical conclusion that off-screen she and Flyboy must have discussed going to Canada to get away (although flying almost due west from Philly is an odd way to get to Canada to begin with.) The "dont know where we are going"comment may just have been her referring to from minute-to-minute, not over-all destination. She may have thought that they were making their way to Canada, but no one knew the best/safest/most-fuel-abundant-way to get there.
And I am sure it was a typo, but you know it was PETER, not ROGER (as you typed) that claimed to know how to perform abortions. But that is an interesting question that we will never know the answer to. Of course the real answer is that it was just a device to get the abortion question in the movie, and no thought whatsoever was given to the "how would Peter know" question.



-- During the first newscast with Dr. Rousch with the very Geraldo-looking reporter we see a zombie outside wearing nothing but swimming trunks. This is the middle of November - December when the events at the beginning of the film take place. Everyone is wearing jackets and the mall has signs for "Christmas sales" up. The only logical conclusion is that this zombie was in a hotel with an indoor swimming pool when he became a zombie. Otherwise, it just doesn't make much sense unless this zombie individual suffered from some type of Depression or manic bipolar disorder and enjoyed wearing swimming trunks (or possibly shorts, I can't tell, it was the 70's after all!) in the cold Pennsylvania winter.
LOL I dont think that guy looks like Geraldo (but did you notice how he takes a swig of alcohol on the air?). I think that there are many other logical conclusions that could be drawn though. Here is one. He was inside the comfort of his very warm house, wearing just a pair of shorts (which was his custom when at home) and he looks out and sees his wife who was returning from the store get out of the car and being attacked by the now zombiefied neighbor. He rushes out to help wife, gets bit himself, and now he is outdoors in nothing but a swim suit.



-- When they are building the barricade to the stairwell they have a shopping cart for K-mart (look closely). I didn't think there was a K-mart in the mall. Was there? Where the hell did this shopping cart come from if there wasn't a K-mart in the mall?
I could be mistaken, but I think there was a K-Mart in the strip plaza that was there on mall property? You can see an A&P grocery store in that plaza when they are bringing the trucks down the hill. So it is logical to assume that a few K-Mart carts would have 'mysteriously' found there way into the mall, even pre-outbreak even in real life, and they just grabbed it during that scene cuz it was there.

Great thread by the way!

[FunkyPertwee]

It was supposed to be assumed by the 1978 audience that he knows how to perform a once illegal activity because he is a street wise black man, which would have translated into criminal experience for the audience of the time.

During some times in history, the only way to get an abortion was to do it illegally, and the audience of the time must have thought Ken Foree looked like the kind of guy who would know how. Maybe he had to use it to make a quick buck at some point.

[SymphonicX]

Abortion issue: I always had it down to more simpler reasons: Peter comes from a line of Caribbean descent - hence his grandfather. So I figured his dad grew up rurally in Trinidad/Tobago and learnt this "skill" which he may have passed onto Peter if they ever spent a long amount of time living there, which was possible.

[acealive1]

http://www.facebook.com/search.php?q=nicole%20maynard&init=quick&tas=0.8949899753716508#!/profile.php?id=524221563


the kmart is before the mall to the left of the entire shopping area tucked into a corner next to don pablo's. its on the exact opposite side of where the hill used in the movie is

[hadrian0117]

...Stephen says: "I'm going to see what's left in the hangers". What does he mean by this? Is he going into the hangers to see if random gas cans are laying around that haven't been used? That doesn't seem very likely or reasonable to me. This is the only logical conclusion I can come to. Otherwise, what the hell would he be looking for exactly?...-- During the first newscast with Dr. Rousch with the very Geraldo-looking reporter we see a zombie outside wearing nothing but swimming trunks.The only logical conclusion is that this zombie was in a hotel with an indoor swimming pool when he became a zombie...

There's alot of things Stephen could've been looking for besides gas that could've been in the hanger; charts, survival supplies, firearms, food, pornography, etc. Yeah, raiding the vending machines would've made sense, but then Romero would've had to pay to repair a broken vending machine. ;) That's also why at no point did a zombie ever break any of the glass windows or doors. Your explanation for swimmsuit guy is as good as any. He also could've just had an indoor pool. I say that because my grandparents house, in small town PA, was custom build in the mid '70s with an indoor pool in the basement/lower floor (the house was build on a hill, from the front it was a basement, from the rear the 1st floor). Sure it was (& still) pretty unusual, but not unheard off. They weren't super-rich either.

[Zombie Snack]

Day.....It Just Keeps on Kicking Ass...