This scene from DOTD (1979) is an example of body horror. Romero used gore to its
best effect to deliver scares in DOTD. He hired Tom Savini to work on
the special effects for the movie. Savini, before DOTD was in Vietnam as a
photographer. He saw death all around him. He witnessed limbs of bodies, people
bleeding out and was surrounded by the constant fear of dying. He took pictures
of these events, but, - the lens was his shield and made the horrible sights
feel less real. Savini then went to use this to create this realistic body
horror through his real life experience and the horror he had been through.
This is what made DOTD the most realistic body horror at the time of its
release
DOTD within
the institutional context was huge.
It shaped the body horror sub-genre. Nobody had done anything like this before
with these shocks on screen. However it came at a price. The film was very controversial.
The scenes were deemed to shocking; the film did not receive a rating and
couldn’t advertise in the USA. For any other film this would be hell. However
due to the success of Night if the Living Dead and Romero name the film
still went on to make a lot at the box office. We can see this through the
figures of the movie. It only had a small budget of $1.5 million, which for a
Hollywood film is nothing. However the film went on to make $40 million
worldwide. It just shows the power of the auteur
and they popularity they generate.
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