Land of the Dead (Unrated Edition)
by George A. Romero
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Asia Argento, Dennis Hopper, John Leguizamo, Robert Joy, Simon BakerDirector: George A. Romero
Brand: Universal Studios
Writer: George A. Romero
Producer: Bernie Goldmann
Producer: David Resnick
Producer: Dennis E. Jones
Producer: Lynwood Spinks
Producer: Mark Canton
Producer: Neil Canton
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; French (Original Language); Italian (Original Language); Polish (Original Language); Spanish (Original Language); French (Dubbed)
Format: AC-3, Color, Director's Cut, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 93 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-10-18
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Universal Studios
Movie Reviews of Land of the Dead (Unrated Edition)
Movie Review: Romero rises from obscurity to make the best zombie film in 20 years.
Summary: 5 Stars
Well after long last it's here, the culmination of the recent zombie craze, and the coda on Romero's universe. So is it great, is it epic, is it all I'd hoped for? Well, sort of. To understand Land of the Dead fully you have to understand its timeline and place within the Dead universe.
Night of the Living Dead 1969
The film that launched the now standard zombie archetype. Night tells the story of a handful of would-be survivors during the day, and night of, the original zombie outbreak. They hole up in a farmhouse, and do more fighting amongst themselves than against the zombies. A true classic of horror cinema, Romero examines human interactions in crisis. The zombies are little more than walking flesh eaters.
Dawn of the Dead 1978
Taking place approximately 6 weeks into the zombie outbreak, the decline of society has begun. This time four survivors flee from Pittsburgh and hole up in a shopping mall, where they attempt to ignore the problem outside for 5 months. Inevitably the zombies crash the party and only two escape. Here Romero is providing a metaphor for our consumerist culture via mindless zombie droves. The zombies are beginning to show signs that there is still a bit of the original person trapped inside. By miming activities they carried out in life, we begin to get the feeling they are evolving.
Day of the Dead 1985
Originally meant to be a zombie epic showing the transformation of human society into a Bartertown like cesspool, Romero was forced to scale this film back for budget reasons. What we get is the story of a government outpost set up sometime after the outbreak to research zombies. Staffed with scientists, military and a couple of civilians, the movie is an examination of people in a pressure cooker desperately clinging to the society that is now (about 2-3 years after the outbreak) lost. The zombie evolution is clearly seen in this film via Bub: the head scientist's pet zombie. Bub has retained a remarkable knowledge of the life he lead. It's also implied that he is still capable of feeling emotion.
This brings us up to date. Land of the Dead is set sometime about 10-15 years after the outbreak. Humans have organized themselves in various cities and created walled compounds in an effort to maintain some semblance of society. Scavenger teams roam the wastelands and rural areas searching for supplies to support such cities. The city of LOTD is ruled over by a group of elitists, embodied by Dennis Hopper, who control the security force, as well as the entire society, from their high rise: Fiddler's Green.
Enter Riley (Simon Baker) and Cholo (John Leguizamo) who, together with a bunch of red shirts and a few other notables, crew the Dead Reckoning, the heavy armed vehicle used for supply excursions. Basically the film is the story of Riley trying to play by the rules long enough to get the hell out of town. He can tell something is stirring with the zombie masses and just wants to head 'north, where there are no people', before it all goes totally south. Riley has also becomes disallusioned with the society that has been built by Kaufman (Dennis Hopper). Cholo, in contrast, will do whatever he has to earn a place among the elite in Fiddler's Green. Of course Dennis Hopper's character has other plans, and thus ensues the main drama of the film.
Oh yeah, the zombies. The zombies in this one serve as a complete separate storyline to the main drama of the Dead Reckoning crew. Apparently they have evolved, or at least some of them, to the point of basic cognitive ability. Romero begins the film giving us an almost idyllic portrait of modern zombie, small town, life. The sequence is similar to the beginning of Day of the Dead when the helicopter crew land in the seaside town. Except in Land, the zombies are shown without their living counterparts. Yes, it's a dreamy day in zombietown, until the Dead Reckoning shows up searching for supplies. Blasting its way through zombie hordes will not go unpunished anymore, it seems. One clever zombie, 'Big Daddy', upon witnessing the "murder" of his fellow flesh eaters, takes it upon himself to raise an undead army and besiege the city, Fiddler's Green in particular. Now I know this sounds silly, but believe me, the way Romero handles this zombie army, and new evolution, fit in perfectly with everything that has come before. And its not as if 'Big Daddy' creates some kind of zombie boot camp or anything. He just rallies the others around him with a series of gestures and grunts. Slowly teaching the others that they can control their wandering actions. The inevitable siege is extremely well done, with Romero juxtaposing the common people of the city with the invading zombie hordes. It draws parallels to their basic desire to just live in peace with their own kind. Of course there is the slight issue of zombies craving human flesh, but everybody's got issues.
So now on to some of the typical Romero stuff. Yes, I can say this IS a Romero Dead film. Some people have been worried about his ability to get HIS kind of film made within the Universal Studios structure. I'm here to say he's done it. The classic Romero horror scares (which he took from the old Tales from the Crypt comics of the 50's), are here in spades. The jumps, frights, and camera slowly revealing half chewed legs is all over this movie. Also, his trademark gore is here as well (for those that care). He gives us plenty of his famous 'zombie feasting' scenes, and enough creative zombie deaths to satisfy anyone. Perhaps Romero's most trademark of zombie visuals, the zombie character, is here as well. Known for creating true characters out of the undead through costume, he reminds us that these things used to BE regular people. Look over there it's cheerleader zombie, and over there its santa claus zombie, and my goodness, it's a zombie brass band. Sure it's a bit silly, but it makes perfect sense. People would have died in all states of dress. Some when they were at ballet practice, others when they were performing as Chuckie Cheese, and others simply in their office suits. Through the zombies we, once again, see a cross section of everyday people. This is one of the things that sets the Dead films apart from their more recent batch of copycats, who tend to portray zombies as featureless ghouls.
The acting is dead on Romero style as well. His characters always seem like stereotypes (the drunk Irishman in Day, the screaming girl in Night), but through those archetypes Romero is able to distill certain core principles and traits that help serve the parable of his films. Cholo, for example, looks like what he is. A no nonsense guy trying to scrape his way to a better life, rough around the edges but smart and capable. So too, Asia Argento's character. A hot ass chick who has more to offer than it originally appears. (It should be mentioned that Asia Argento is the daughter of Italian horror maestro, Dario Argento, who helped finance Dawn of the Dead and is a close friend of George Romero). These are almost cartoonish people. Much has been made of Dennis Hopper's seemingly, over cooked performance. It's been said that he phones it in. The thing is though, that's how his character is written. He IS over the top, he IS cartoony. But it's what the character stands for that Romero is trying to get at, and he isn't known for nuance when trying to make a point. Just check out Rhodes in Day of the Dead. Truly one of the only sane people left at the outpost, he explodes with emotion and cheesy dialogue at every chance. Of course these people ARE dealing with walking corpses, you must remember. The beauty of these zombie films is that the subject matter of the dead returning to eat the living is handled with the utmost sincerity and seriousness. No doubt some of the survivors would act a bit batty.
The music of the film is also classic Romero. Don't be fooled by the nu-metal featured in the trailers, it's not present in the film. I do wish, however, that he had found a way to work the Dawn of the Dead mall theme in. Speaking of cameos, Tom Savini's cameo is great. Savini, in addition to providing makeup effects for the previous Dead films (a task taken over by Greg Nicotero for this one, himself a former student and Savini assistant), also played Blades: a machete wielding biker in Dawn of the Dead. In that film Blades meats with the business end of a zombie, and one can assume gets turned himself. Well here he is 10 years later. Blades-zombie, it seems, has been roaming for quite a while only to end up at Fiddler's Green. One can take from this, as well as the description of the local topography, that the city, is indeed, suppose to be Pittsburgh.
Now for the unRomero stuff. Of course this film IS a low budget Hollywood horror action movie. And being so, it contains much more gunplay and action than Romero has ever put to film before. Some of the standard Romero plot development and dialogue, which usually serves to give insight into the zombie menace, seems hampered by this emphasis on creating an action packed movie. That being said, considering that an Unrated Director's Cut was part of his contract, I think when we get the dvd version, these issues will be addressed. Still this minor quibble didn't really detract from the film for me. It's definitely still a classic Romero zombie film with all of his touches, even if some are a bit muted.
Overall, this film is great. It fits well within the Dead series, and hasn't been compromised by its Hollywood genre trappings. It's a real success for Romero, a man that has made his own films, his own way. Often trading larger budgets for creative freedom, he was never liked by the Hollywood studios, and only enjoyed minor success with Creepshow and the Dark Half, his biggest productions prior to Land. Those films came from his friendship with Stephen King, another fan of 50's horror comics. It took Danny Boyle's zombie re-envisioning, 28 Days Later, to spark a new zombie craze which has allowed Romero to properly finish his tale of humanity at the end of the world. He did it his way. He waited for the market to come to him. In a day when cheap horror movies turn amazing profits, and any gore-filled unrated dvd flies off store shelves, Hollywood came looking for Romero. Is this film the epic, gold standard zombie film some had been hoping for? No, its not. That movie could never have been made. He is not Terrence Malick or Michael Mann, or Steven Spielberg after all. He's Romero, and he's made a decidedly Romero movie. Land of the Dead is a very good genre movie. It's also an awesome zombie film, but most importantly it's a great addition to the Dead universe that continues the themes and social commentary he started in 1969. Because the ultimate truth is that "They're us, we're them and they're us." And its nice that the zombie master, the man that created and defined the genre, got a chance to place his mark on the zombie resurgence, finishing his story, and in the process, showing the imitators exactly how it's done.
Next to Robert Kirkman's comic series; "The Walking Dead", this film is the best thing to happen to the genre since it's recent rebirth.
Summary of Land of the Dead (Unrated Edition)
LAND OF THE DEAD DIRECTOR'S CUT - DVD MovieBolstered by the success of 28 Days Later, Shaun of the Dead, the Resident Evil movies and the hit remake of his own Dawn of the Dead, George A. Romero returns to the horror subgenre he invented with Land of the Dead. The fourth installment in Romero's zombie cycle (and the first since 1985's Day of the Dead) presents a logical progression of events since 1968's horror classic Night of the Living Dead: Zombies (also known as "stenches" for their rotting odor) are the dominant population, and they've begun to show signs of undead intelligence and gathering power. The wealthiest survivors live comfortably in a luxury high-rise within a barricaded safe zone, ignoring the horrors of the outside world while armed scavengers stage raids in the zombie-zone to gather much-needed food and supplies. Simon Baker and John Leguizamo play mercenaries-for-hire; Dennis Hopper is their nefarious boss; and horror favorite Asia Argento (daughter of Suspiria director Dario Argento) plays a former hooker recruited into Baker's scavenger squad. While none of this seems particularly fresh or inspired, Land of the Dead benefits from hints of the social satire that made Romero's earlier zombie films so memorable. Not so much funny as gruesomely peculiar, Romero's plot isn't as inventive as it could've been, but as a big-scale B-movie, Land of the Dead delivers a handful of shocks and horror-celebrity cameos (including gore-masters Tom Savini and Greg Nicotero) that should keep horror buffs happy until the next zombie opus comes along. --Jeff Shannon
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