It’s been awhile since I’ve written a positive review. Just leave it to the “Grandfather of the Zombie” to raise my spirits like a corpse from the grave. This was a big deal to the horror community when this came out. A new installment to the Dead Trilogy? Just as the original Star Wars trilogy was the holy trinity to Hollywood, the Dead Trilogy was the same for the B-Movie world. Did we need another one? I think Romero proved we did.
Land of the Dead presents a future where zombies have taken over but the real problem lies within the people. The people of Pittsburgh, PA have been split between two communities: the rich live in a prosperous, zombie-free community called “Fiddler’s Green” while the poor live in the slums across a river and swarming with zombies. The city’s ruler Paul Kaufman (Dennis Hopper) has sponsored a zombie kill-mobile called “Dead Reckoning” to do patrols through the slums. Simon “The Mentalist” Baker plays the commander of Dead Reckoning Riley Denbo who has mixed feelings with how Kaufman legislates. Things get out of hand in all out class war (with zombies) and also John Leguizamo is there as an assassin.
Almost twenty years passed before production started on Romero’s fourth installment. Romero had worked on a script years back but it wasn’t until the new millennium that he had realized how culturally relevant this story had become. All wrapped up it’s a witty and dark piece of action/horror that turned out to be both a critical and box office success. Though I can’t say much for the films that followed, Romero’s legacy is intact nonetheless.
That’s one way to get ahead