Today I decided to work on my post for this week, about some flavored vodkas from Truly. I'd tried the vodkas a few months ago, so that was done, and started to research the beverage, and the manufacturer. After that, though, I had some twinges of doubt, so I went through my old catalog of posts. And discovered that I'd already covered some Truly products, in an article about some of their hard seltzers back on September 22, 2018. This happens. When you've done over 500 total posts, and probably at least 300 about weird foods and drinks, some repetition is inevitable--I can't always recall if I've tried something while I'm standing there in the liquor store or grocery. But, it wasn't a complete loss, as these drinks were at least not the same exact type I'd sampled before. However, I won't repeat myself, so if you're curious about details of the Truly Distillery, or about the company that acquired the brand (Boston Beer Company, best known for brewing Sam Adams beer), head on over to that September 22, 2018 post. Otherwise, I'll report on the Truly vodkas, and then move on to my comments on the ending of the original 1979 version of "Dawn of the Dead."
Truly pineapple mango vodka: This one had a orange-yellow color, and fruity odor. Its alcohol content was 30%, and it contained 5% juice. I could detect the pineapple and mango tastes. The actual juice probably helped with this. I'm not a huge vodka fan in general, so the flavoring surely helped. It was alright. Not great, but okay.
Truly wild berry vodka: Had a yellowish-orange color, and berry-ish smell. Same alcohol content and juice content as the previous. Kind of similar to the first one. Okay, nice berry flavor--not too strong, not too weak. Not awesome, but solid.
Truly strawberry lemonade vodka. Same amount of booze and fruit juice. Pinkish hue. I could taste the advertised flavor. (Which was okay, since I like regular pink lemonade alright.) Nicely tart. Maybe a bit harsher than the other two. Still, not to be a broken record, but once again this was good, but not great.
The fact that I liked, but didn't love these is actually quite a compliment. Considering my very negative opinion of the Truly Hard Seltzers. Which makes sense, since in general I like some vodkas (and especially some vodka-based cocktails), but have no appreciation for any seltzer.
I did a trivia dive on the original, 1979 version of "Dawn of the Dead," (see my post on October 30, 2021), and have surely mentioned it a few more times. With good reason--it's one of the very best zombie movies ever. If it's not at least in your top 5 zombie films I deeply question your taste in living dead movies. Anyway, if you haven't seen it, I couldn't possibly recommend it more. But there will be many SPOILERS about the movie ahead.
Being an obsessive fan, I've learned over the years from documentaries, and articles, that the original ending of the movie was different. In it, Roger and Stephen expire as they do in the eventual version, but Peter and Fran die as well. Peter by shooting himself in the head, and Fran by standing up and putting her head in the moving helicopter blades. And I found this potential ending to be quite poor. In the eventual version, Peter does contemplate suicide with a gun, but snaps out of it at the last moment and runs up to the roof and joins Fran as they fly away. So if Peter did kill himself I wouldn't really like it, but it's not totally out of character. But Frannie--Hell no! Not my Fran! In the earliest viewings of "Dawn" as a teen I liked all four main characters, but my favorite was Roger, as he was competent, but endearingly childlike and enthusiastic. But the more times I've seen it, I've switched to appreciating Fran the most. She has the biggest character arc by far. She starts out as a television station employee, possibly a producer or something like that. Or, essentially, she has no relevant skills in the living dead apocalypse. She clearly has no weapons or fighting experience--she hadn't been in the military, the police, and she didn't possess any other survival skills. She's a liability at first--Peter and the guys forbid her from joining them down in the zombie-strewn mall, because she can't be of any use. Fran is almost killed by a single zombie (the Hare Krishna one) that manages to make it to their upstairs hideout. But, critically, she learns. She practices, and learns how to shoot, and also picks up how to avoid the zombies. After a time she helps Peter and Stephen block up the four mall entrances to secure it. Better than Roger does, as his carelessness results in his being bitten and doomed early on during this process. And, very importantly, she's the only one to learn how to fly the helicopter, even though her boyfriend Stephen is clearly not very pleased to teach her. Good old practical minded Fran realized that survival in this world required people to be as versatile as possible, and to be self-reliant. Also, she's pregnant. I don't see her going through all the travails and difficulty associated with this for 7-8 months only to decide to chuck it and commit suicide near the end. In short, I don't think that Fran would commit suicide--she's too much of a survivor. She seems like the weakest of the bunch at the start, but clearly she's the strongest of them, mentally at least, by the end. Roger was fatally careless, and it costs him his life. Stephen lets his greed for the mall and its contents cloud his judgement, and he engages the bikers, which results in his death, and revival as a zombie. He could have just stayed quiet, and hidden, and he would have survived. Finally, Peter was strong, psychologically, but as I mentioned before, committing suicide doesn't seem completely unrealistic. But Fran would keep fighting. Maybe she would eat a bullet if she was bitten, or hopelessly surrounded by a zombie horde (to protect herself from an agonizing death, and to protect others), but not if there was a possible escape. Moreover, "Dawn" is an incredibly depressing movie. Society has basically ended, and just about everyone appears to be dead (but not gone!). The audience deserves a tiny ray of hope. I'm not against bleak endings, wherein everyone dies, across the board (as in Romero's earlier "Night of the Living Dead"), but not this character, and Peter. That would be too much. Also, it's not like the eventual ending was some ludicrously happy ending--Fran and Peter have very little fuel left, so they might not survive much longer anyway.
So, all in all, that's why I'm glad that George Romero rethought things and changed the ending to the one we know today. It is amusing to see that the crew was very practical, though, and reused the fake Fran head in another scene. Specifically, the one early on in the housing project raid, when the crazed Wooley shotguns a guy's head apart. They just repainted the head, added facial hair, and filled it with a bunch of meat, fake blood, and condoms, and voila!--cool exploding head gag. To paraphrase the common 1960's graffiti, Frannie (not Frodo) lives! At least technically, as the movie cuts to the credits. After that Peter and she may well have died quickly, perhaps a half mile away. But not by her own hand, if there was any hope of getting away.
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