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.