Poor Flyboy

Heralded as one of the greatest horror films of all time and a staple amongst fans' top ten lists, George Romero's Dawn Of The Dead is scary for any number of reasons. But as I watched this film for the 5000th time this past weekend, it occurred to me that there is another, more subconscious feeling of terror that this film lays upon me, as I am sure it does other men.

I'll cut to the chase. Flyboy (no need for explanation, fans already know characters, plot, etc), this skinny little twerp who has problems firing even the smallest gun correctly is trapped inside of a mall with his baby mama and a black guy. Not just some black guy either, this isn't Urkel. PETER! (played by Ken Foree) is a big pro-wrestler looking son of a bitch who has no trouble firing a huge gun and never missing his target. Following me? I mean the guy's name is Flyboy for crying out loud, obviously nobody respects him or his abilities, even his tramp of a girlfriend who appears sexually frustrated.

If this were me, somebody would be zombie chow. There's no way I could survive the apocalypse trapped between a broad who thinks I'm a lame and a gigantic black penis, it just couldn't work. This is one horror film where it should have been obvious that the black guy die first. If for nothing more than peace of mind. It's like, at that point Flyboy's high-maintenance girlfriend would have no choice but to put up with his unsatisfying swerve techniques. Next time she is lying in bed next to him with that cold-ass look making him feel insecure, he can just say, "Oh you can do better?" And since it is the end of the world and he is the only warm body left with a working man member, she really can't.

Not that any of this is Peter's fault, he basically spends the whole movie looking bored at the prospect of having to smash another snow bunny. By the end of the movie he is so disturbed over the idea, that he even contemplates blowing his brains out and having his body gnarled on by zombies before eventually coming to accept that in a society void of living females, having a white woman who is obviously in heat at his disposal isn't all that bad of a thing. We all know
what happened inside of that helicopter after they flew off of that building.

I know horror fans and Dawn Of The Dead purists will cringe at everything I just wrote, but I am just saying. Romero is a smart guy and a socially conscious one at that. Maybe he was trying to pull on some internal strings that we would be too insecure to say out loud but knew awkwardly we'd be thinking about. The scariest thing inside of that mall wasn't the zombies.