Dawn of the Dead (1978)

◄ Dawn of the Dead (1978)

Audio/visual unsynchronised

When Peter talks to Stephen at one point, his hand blocks his mouth. Moving away for a few seconds, however, it can be seen that Peter's lips do not match the words on the audio track.
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In the Director's Cut, the stairwell argument is edited such that when Fran says, "Stephen, for God's sake!" her lips are actually saying, "We've got to get up on the roof!" Compare this segment with the theatrical cut.
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Just before dying in the elevator, Stephen fires his pistol and shots are heard, but the gun doesn't actually fire.
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Character error

When the survivors are eating and watching TV for the first time in the safe room at the mall, Roger asks Stephen "what the hell time is it anyway", even though Roger is clearly wearing a stainless steel watch on his left wrist.
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Continuity

The blood on Roger's face and hands in the truck scene suddenly disappears after he turns around. When he drives off and starts running zombies over, the blood is back.
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In the truck, after Roger is almost attacked by a female zombie, Peter puts his gun down, but he is holding it again in the next shot.
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When the redneck posse shoots at an abandoned car with zombies around it, there is a cutaway. Cutting back to the car, it explodes, but the zombies have disappeared.
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Peter and Roger are cops in Philadelphia, but when they drive to the docks, their police car is that of the Pittsburgh Police Department.
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On a close up of the machete zombie, the skin around his eyes is standard caucasian flesh tone, not zombie-blue or gray.
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When Peter tells Roger to shoot the zombie with the tire iron, Peter's rifle is on his left shoulder. It jumps to his right shoulder, then back to his left, in successive shots.
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As the Trivia Section notes, shooting of the movie was done during the Christmas Season and was suspended during the holidays to avoid the cost of re-hanging decorations. As a result, JC Penney (the store of which they keep going in and out), has a sign in the window saying "After-Christmas Sale" later in the movie.
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Stephen tells Fran to meet up on the roof of WGON at 9:00pm because they are going to run. They meet Peter and Roger at the police dock in order to refuel. As the chopper takes off, we see a large office building in the background. In the lower right-hand side of the screen is a digital clock, the type one would find outside a business to inform people the time and temperature. It reads 6:00.
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In the final scene on the roof when Fran is waiting to see if Peter will come, it is pitch black outside. Then, as they are taking off in the chopper only a few seconds later, it is light outside.
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When Roger is about to shoot the zombie that broke through glass in the truck, there is already a bullet hole in the zombie's head before Roger fires.
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When Roger is being attacked by Zombies in the truck, Peter instructs him to "get his head up" and then shoots the zombie in the head. The neck and shoulders of Roger's shirt are already covered in blood before the blood from the zombie's head splashes on his face.
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The Anchor Bay DVD release of the theatrical cut is edited in such a way that the policemen at the dock just appear from out of nowhere.
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As Stephen is attacked in the elevator, he shoots a bearded zombie in the doorway, however, he shoots towards his left, but from the reverse angle, in which we see the zombie being shot, the shot is coming from what should have been Stephen's right.
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A distinctive zombie in a nurse's uniform survives right up until the final attack on the refuge, all the more remarkable considering she was seen in the mall during the lock-down (while all of the entrances were already blocked with trucks) and must therefore have been in there during the mass extermination.
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When Roger slides down the middle of the escalator and lands on the first first floor there is nothing there. When Peter, Roger and Stephen run down the steps just a few minutes later, there is a white trash can now blocking the middle of the escalator.
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After the heroes are locking the first entrance, you can see Stephen is ready to shoot. But the next scene, Stephen is talking to Fran in a walkie-talkie. The gun suddenly disappears.
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When Roger and Peter are entering Penny's department store as they are opening the doors, Roger lays his M-16 outside against the wall. As they fend off the dead Roger clearly throws his M-16 inside and it lands on the floor behind them, yet in later shots it still shows his rifle laying against the wall outside.
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Crew or equipment visible

When Roger closes the truck door after saying, "Let's go, number 2," a crew member can be seen in the door's window.
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Reflected in a window when the PA system is saying, "Now is the time to save, shoppers."
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When Peter, Roger, and Stephen are attacked while trying to get the shopping cart upstairs, (the part were Peter throws a Zombie over the balcony into the fountain) a crew member's hands can be seen preventing the Zombies that are attacking Stephen from bumping into the camera when he knocks them away. This is visible only on full-screen prints, however.
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When Peter grabs and throws the two zombie children onto the couch at the airport before shooting them, a hand can be seen entering the top right-hand portion of the screen.
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In the wide shot of the truck driving across the parking lot after Peter and Roger have placed the first truck, there's a cameraman visible on the very edge of the left side.
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When Peter and Roger are moving the trucks in front of the mall doors, you can clearly see a blue-skirted trampoline one of the stunt men uses to make it appear as if they've been hit by a truck.
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When Roger pulls in a zombie inside the department store "Penney's", a frame reveals a crew member's leg just on the left side.
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In the scene in the grocery store where Stephen and Peter are grabbing the loaves of bread, in the reverse shots of Peter talking to Steve you can see the silver microphone zeppelin in the left side of the screen.
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Factual errors

When killing Zombies in the basement of the project, Peter fires seven shots out of his revolver. Although revolvers can hold anywhere from 5-10 rounds, Peter's revolver only held 6 rounds.
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When Peter is inside the airport office with the plaid shirted zombie approaching him from behind, he jumps at the sight of the zombie and sees Stephen in the background aiming at him and the zombie. He jumps out of the way as Stephens first round misses and ricochets. Stephen then fires 2 more consecutive shots within a second of each other. Stephen has a Marlin Model 983 .22 caliber bolt action rifle. It would have been impossible for Stephen to work the bolt, aim and fire within a seconds time. Only with a semi or an automatic weapon would he have been able to fire that fast.
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Revealing mistakes

When Stephen and Peter are locking the front door to the mall, they are shown talking to each other from two angles, so it would appear that they are side by side. However, an old female zombie can be seen in both shots, proving it's the same spot from two different angles.
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When Roger hits a zombie with his truck, the trampoline the stunt man bounces off can be seen briefly.
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When Peter and Roger drive to the truck depot, Peter whoops, "Three more." In the background, a van can be seen driving past everything.
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A grenade in the back of the raiders' truck is obviously a fake.
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When Roger runs out of a truck and back toward the mall, one particular zombie in a red-and-black striped shirt gets out of character and decides to tuck in his shirt.
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When the group makes a run for it through the mall with Roger wounded in the wheelbarrow, a female zombie clearly jumps out of the way of the wheelbarrow.
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When the woman in the projects gets bitten in the shoulder by the zombie you clearly see the meat pack on her shoulder before it gets bitten
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When Peter shoots the biker with the tommy-gun off his bike, blood is already on the ground.
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When Peter shoots Blades off the second floor of the mall, he falls vertically and backwards. In the next shot he is falling over face first, and the shot of him hitting the fountain shows him falling in a stunt arc.
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When a one-armed female zombie grabs onto the back of the hero's car as they drive through the mall, she is shot through the eye. When blood comes pouring down, it can be seen that the zombie has a mustache. (For the main part of the zombie, a woman was used, but stunt man Taso N. Stavrakis took over for the part of being dragged behind the car.)
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When Blades sprays a seltzer bottle at the camera and soaks two zombies, a reflection of the optical flat (the piece of glass to keep the camera safe from effects) can be seen in the middle of the shot.
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At the airfield, while Roger is filling up the helicopter, a zombie climbs over some crates to get him. As he gets to the top, the blades of the helicopter chop off the top of his head. This causes blood to ooze out of the top of his head and down his body. The pump tube for the fake blood can be seen coming from up behind the crates and up the zombie's pant leg.
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When Stephen is attacked by the zombies in the elevator at the end of the film, the tube that pumps fake blood can be seen briefly when one of the zombies bites his leg.
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When Peter and Roger are blocking the doors with the trucks, in the shot where one sees a little hill, there's a woman running to get out of the shot.
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When Roger and the other police officer throw a female zombie onto a couch in the projects and shoot her, the string used to pull away the bullet hit on the zombie's forehead is visible.
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In the TV studio, when Stephen (David Emge) informs Fran (Gaylen Ross) that they're going to flee via helicopter, Ross accidentally refers to Emge as "David" rather than "Stephen." By the time the goof was realized, Ross was in Europe and unable to loop the line of dialog.
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When Roger is supposedly putting gas in the helicopter, he actually has the nozzle stuck in a footstep used for climbing up and inspecting the engine. The step has a spring-loaded cover that swings inward. The gas nozzle is simply stuck inside the cover.
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During the montage of the rednecks shooting the zombies, one falls dead just before a shot is fired.
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All of the M-16 assault rifles in the film clearly have blank adapters affixed to their barrels, which would make it impossible for the weapons to be fired with anything but blanks.
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The "M-16s" carried by the police officers are actually .22 LR caliber training guns. The .22LR magazine can be seen inside the fake M-16 sized "magazine" several times during the truck depot scenes. Look closely at the bottom of the "magazine" on Peter's M-16 when he helps Roger after the zombies get in the second truck he is taking.
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When the heroes are driving a car through the mall there's a part where a zombie gets rammed and falls back. If you watch closely the first shot of the car approaching the zombie shows it traveling at around 40 mph, in the next shot where it actually "hits" the zombie it's now obviously doing only around 10mph and even nearly comes to a complete stop before cutting to the next shot whereupon it's going at 40 mph again down the mall.
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When Stephen, Peter, Roger and Francine land their helicopter at small airport for fuel, the fuel pumps that Roger uses are clearly AVGAS pumps (aviation gasoline). The helicopter they are flying is a Bell Jetranger - a jet turbine powered helicopter, which can only burn jet fuel (JP-4 or similar kerosene type fuel).
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At about 24 minutes into the film, the four principal characters are riding in the helicopter. Peter nudges Francine to wake her up. She runs her hand through her "hair" (a wig), revealing her actual brown hair.
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When Roger hits a zombie with his truck the stunt man is clearly shorter than the windshield, so during the face splat he is standing on the bumper and also spitting out the fake blood on the glass.
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