DAWN OF THE DEAD MISTAKES

A complete list of the mistakes in Dawn is impossible, with repeated viewings revealing more continuity and technical errors. The setting is supposedly Philadephia in the beginning, though during the S.W.A.T. raid and at the police dock, the police vehicles can be spotted with Pittsburgh Dept. insignias. 

When Miguelito is fired at by S.W.A.T.’s, a single chest shot is seen but the audio sync-up is that of a machine gun burst. Before the redneck gunmen shoot at the old car in the field, zombies are a few feet away, passing by. When a second shot is fired, it blows up but no zombies are seen anywhere near the area. 

In the chart house, when the zombie children run out of the closet door (a zombie behavior mistake in itself), no gun shots are visible on any portion of the door – even though he had shot at it earlier. A few moments later, no exit wound is visible in the back of the head of the bald airport zombie who falls from Roger’s gun shot. 

When Peter and Roger are looking down through a skylight on the mall roof, the scene of Peter taking out his flashlight is cut out of some prints – making the flashlight beam appear to come out of nowhere. In the first attempt to get into the Penney’s dept. store doors, Peter throws the ring of keys into the store. In the next shot, the keys are visible still in the lock as Peter fights off zombies. Stephen struggling with ghouls in the corridor is being approached by a zombie in a white shirt. 

In a bad jump cut, while Peter is yelling "you’re cornered! Run this way!" the zombie is facing the other direction. How the men moved from inside the roof got safely to the truck lot is not shown or explained. How the living dead managed to fill a mall is also unexplained. 

When Roger gets out of truck, he runs into a ghoul and punches him (bodily contact with corpses is not recommended but anyway..). In the background of the next shot in the same scene, a zombie is seen tucking in his red and black striped shirt. As Peter tells Roger "three more!" in the truck moving scene – look for a white van moving in the distance, in a place supposedly abandoned. When Roger approaches the first truck, its passenger door is mysteriously ajar already. Peter’s M-16 switches sides from left to right then to left again in a series of shots during Roger’s scene with the tire iron zombie. When Peter kills the blonde truck zombie, blood splashes on Roger’s face. A moment later, he gets up and turns around – and the blood is all gone without a trace. When Roger closes the truck door and says "let’s go baby, number two" a crew member reflection is visible on the right side. Roger hits a zombie (played by Tom Savini) with the truck and the blood splashes on the windshield. Immediately after, especially visible on "pause" – is a trampoline Savini used to simulate the impact of the hit and run. 

As Peter and Stephen lock the mall entrance doors from the inside, they appear to be talking side by side or back to back. But in successive shots showing the glass doors in front of both actors is the same female zombie - revealing that they must have been set up in front of the same door during shooting. Look for a reflection of the crew sitting opposite of the car driving past the store window. 

The ubiquitous nurse zombie and other familiar zombies - presumed destroyed when the four took the mall car and cleaned out the mall – appear again near the end during the biker raid. Seltzer water being sprayed in the face of one ghoul and later, blood, gets on the camera lens. A string attached to the sewing button effect of a zombie is clearly visible in a violent sequence preceding shots of Stephen hiding in a store. 

Sledge kills a female zombie by slamming his sledgehammer into her head near a teepee. When the teepee falls over a moment later, she flinches and rolls out of the way! 

When Peter shoots Blades off the second floor – two different stunt falls were edited in. The first is a vertical dive the next is not. Peter shoots the tommy gun in the bike sidecar. When he falls off the bike, you can see a pool of blood has already been placed on the ground. Making matters worse, is that the same biker gets up and starts shooting in front of him, without looking backwards once – at the obvious army of zombies gathering.