Monday, October 13, 2008

Speech of the Week #12

Hey guys, welcome to a new column here on YDKS Movies entitled Speech of the Week! For now on, every Monday I will post a new scene from a movie that features a speech of some sort being given. After all, there are a lot of famous scenes in film where characters give an influential speech of some sort. Then again, there are also a lot of scenes where characters give a speech and it just comes off cheesy and lame. In this section, you will see both kinds. That's right, people, I'm giving you the good and bad of film speeches all wrapped up in one great big package. I hope you all enjoy.

Today's speech is very unique because there are two versions of it in two different movies.

Did that just blow your mind?

Keeping along in Monster Fest spirit, I decided to go with Peter's "No More Room in Hell" speech from George A. Romero's zombie masterpiece Dawn of the Dead. However, as I looked it up I remembered that actor Ken Foree gives a revamped version of the same speech in Zack Synder's 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead as a television evangelist. 

Although I prefer Peter's delivery of the speech in the original Dawn (although it really is very short), the speech from the remake isn't that bad. In fact, it's actually pretty creepy. Let me say this: I don't like the Dawn of the Dead remake. I know that everyone else does but, for me, it wasn't all that. First off, zombies do not freaking run. They just don't. If zombies had not run in the remake, I probably would have liked it a lot more. You may find that as a sad reason... but just think about it.. why would zombies run? They are stiff and rotting. They would walk at best. The other thing is that there were too many characters and, honestly, I did not give a crap about a single one of them. One of the strongest things about Romero's Dawn was that the characters were very fleshed out (pun intended?) and were very identifiable. But no, none of that here. Plus, there wasn't any social commentary to be found, unlike Romero's version. It was all action, flashiness and style. No story, characterization or meaning.

However, watching this speech over again, I kind of want to give it a second chance. It's very effective. Still, gotta go with the original any day. After all, how could you watch a Dawn of the Dead movie without a score by Goblin?

Dawn of the Dead (1978) Version:



Dawn of the Dead (2004) version:

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