Dawn of the Dead (1978) Image analysis 1

This scene from Dawn of the Dead (DOTD, 1979) takes place after the armed forces burst into the house to eradicate the zombies. The man who shoots this zombie/civilian is named Wooley and the zombie's ethnicity was Puerto Rican. This contextually is Romero’s way of portraying the attitudes towards racism of the time. The body horror effects used are of a head exploding after the zombie is shot in the head by a shotgun. These gore effects are created by Tom Savini who – in terms of the institutional context - was seen as a master of gore during this time period following his success on Martin (1977). It was these kinds of factors that made the film so successful and helped to produce a $55,000,000 profit.  This would relate to the critic André Bazin and his "Genius of the system" theory in which he says with any successful movie there are combination of factors which make it successful, in this case we have great gore effects from Tom Savini, a great director (Romero) who is an auteur, and it had relevance to the context of the time. In comparison to Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, DOTD (1979) was a lot gorier, and this was due to the Hays Code being abolished some years before this film was made. The Cinematography used for this shot is a medium close up, which allows the audience to see the action happen on screen. High Key lighting is used in order to draw attention to Body Horror that is used here, and the scene was considered so brutal that it was initially cut from the UK release. The Editing within this scene is very quick, using collision cutting to contrast between Wooley investigating rooms before shooting this victim. The slower build up makes the audience feel scared and builds up tension to this pivotal moment.