EVANSVILLE – David Emge got a strange offer: would you like to fight off a bunch of zombies in a shopping mall?

The Evansville native naturally jumped at the chance. He'd studied acting at the University of Evansville, but was working as a chef in New York by the late '70s.

Now he was getting a call to star in "Dawn of the Dead": George A. Romero's first zombie flick since the director basically invented the genre with "Night of the Living Dead."

Starring as "Flyboy," a TV reporter who swipes the station's helicopter and jettisons a group of terrified humans to the extremely tenuous safety of the mall, Emge's character not only had to protect his pregnant girlfriend from the doddering undead. He also had to contend with a roving gang of sadistic bikers.

The 1978 film went on to become

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