Land of The Dead – Unrated Director’s Cut
Picture: B-
Sound: B Extras: B- Film: B-
It has been 37 years since George Romero’s Night Of The
Living Dead (1968) changed the Horror genre forever. After years of waiting and some world events
that changed its tone, Romero’s Zombie films have become their own Quadrilogy
with Land Of The Dead, a film with mixed results that did not do well at
the box office when fans preferred to see the uncut edition. It has arrived on DVD and is a better
version of the picture, but it is also the strangest and most inconsistent of
the pictures to date.
Rumor has it that Romero had problems with the production,
beginning with its shooting being transplanted from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to
Canada. The original trilogy (all
reviewed elsewhere on this site) was all Pittsburgh, which was one of its
appeals. The fact that he finally
reached a fourth film in itself is a heady thing. Like Alien Resurrection (reviewed elsewhere on this site),
it is obvious that the Horror aspects are being stretched out a bit and the in
both cases, the films ride with that fact.
When the James Bond films reached their fourth installment with Thunderball
(1965), it was cleverly self-reflective, but Land was too far from its
last installment by twenty years to be able to take advantage of something like
that. Of course, no part four went for
comedy like the very entertaining Star Trek IV – The Voyage Home, which
departed from the “serious” side of Trek as much as possible.
The humor here in Land is able to skip being the
celebrated ugliness its many imitators and even send-ups have become. There is enough ironic distance and
well-drawn moments of people actually involved with acting out such sick
moments that Romero does succeed on this level. However, those scenes either resemble George Miller’s Mad Max
– Beyond Thunderdome or Steven Spielberg’s A.I., the latter of which
was totally lost with such scenes. This
is something Spielberg’s War Of The Worlds did not get trapped in, a
film released the same Summer as Land, both with their own problems in
dealing with post 9/11/01 America. In
Spielberg’s case, it’s the sudden tacked on ending that is the worst since the
disastrous theatrical Blade Runner, though we can add that after running
contrary of Romero in all his Horror genre work, Spielberg was able to meet him
head on for the first time in the darker side of Horror despite running into
his own complications.
Where Spielberg deals with an alien invasion in a still
industrial New Jersey town, Romero is back in his near-future version of
Pittsburgh, a place not unlike the prison city of John Carpenter’s Escape
From New York (1981, also reviewed on this site) in its militarism. This is meant to be the logical continuation
of such activity from Day Of The Dead, but it runs into some
trouble. For one, it has the burden of
The Dead Reckoning vehicle from the remake of Dawn Of the Dead, already
a compromise on Romero’s vision. Then
there are the zombies, who continue to become more self aware, but in a way
that is backwards versus what Romero examined in Day. An African-American gas station attendant
zombie becomes a lead zombie without any true exposition, something you would
never have seen in the previous films.
The violence makes it more effective in the way it propels the
narrative, while John Leguizamo is cast as the heroic lead as anti-hero who may
only be in zombie hunting for an ultimate payoff.
The situation of Pittsburgh being overrun by zombies is
topped off by the rich and elite holding their own in the militarily guarded
condo/mall combo living spot at top dollar has Dennis Hopper as its corrupt
head. In this case, the casting is to
have this figure of counterculture (and by the story being told here, the
failure of that counterculture) as the villain to show how dirty the world and
its ability to corrupt has become.
Hopper has played this kind of role before, but not always with this
context.
However, the film has too many Action genre moments that
do not ring of Romero at all and the larger statements of the collapse of
Capitalism from most people becoming zombies is too lost in that as a
result. Still, like the corporations in
Blade Runner, the big money private interests hold on as the world goes
into decline. Too bad Romero’s
screenplay does not say anything new about this. Asia Argento is the female lead for all intents and purposes, but
her role is not as developed as Lori Cardille’s was in Day Of The Dead,
yet another missed opportunity. Though
the current tired state of the Action genre, she and other females in the film
are reduced to carbon copies of the men.
If this was a statement about how women have been masculinized in the
genre, it never comes across that way.
The opening is a statement about how marriage has failed civilization
completely. In all this, even in this
more open cut of the film, you can see how this film got away from Romero.
Other moments with the zombies are just too unrealistic,
while this is not to say they suddenly become supernatural, they still do not
seem as gory, plausible and defined as they were in the trilogy. Another missing element involves scientists,
or the lack of; a point examined very much in Day Of The Dead. Though this was not complementary, it told
the story better in that the science becomes a tool for the worst, exploited in
its ability to only give facts and not the deeper truth. Even without scientists, however, there are
truths the film cannot and does not address.
As far as 9/11 is concerned, it is a big hit on the economy and
Capitalism as we know it, no matter how it happened and who allowed it to
happen. The film cannot address those
issue, but the trilogy has subtly sent up Capitalism throughout. What post-9/11 did do is show that the
system is more durable (for better and for worse) than its critics, detractors
and even many supporters expected. That
is especially compared to Communism.
The film presents no modifying or expanding of a position, so that makes
it the least attached to the time of its release. That is a great missed opportunity.
One film that comes to mind that has been put on
indefinite hold after many false starts since the late 1980s is Francis Ford
Coppola’s Megaopolis, which also wanted to examine (in the style
of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead) a great advanced civilization on
the verge of losing its greatness for al the wrong reasons. This film could have covered that too, but
misses that opportunity as well, though many may argue that the critique of Capitalism
Romero style might have made this more difficult. Taking the film for what is here, it still has plenty of
issues. SPOILERS AHEAD…
Land does a reverse on the issue of money, where it
actually has spendability at the moment, versus Day with money blowing
in the streets uselessly. Some critics
on the Left may be disappointed by that, while the film may even negate the
previous films in that a Capitalism Elite was spending money and living well in
all the horrors despite the zombies outnumbering the humans by
100,000ish-to-1. However, with a
contracting economy and contracting civil rights, to have it relegated to a few
armed luxury buildings is more in line with the trilogy. Like Spielberg’s War Of The Worlds,
the end of the world is all over the place.
And like yet another part four, J. Lee Thompson’s Conquest Of The
Planet Of the Apes (1972), you have an armed takeover of an elite, though
the zombies in this case are their own weapons. As a gag, Romero gives a few of them “human” instruments as they
move forward. This is not always
realized either, as the later sequence seems more like a repeat of the same
sequence in Dawn, which is most of Dawn with less spontaneous
results.
One thing Land does have in common with Thunderball
is that it is the first installment in its series to be shot in a scope
frame. This does not necessarily open
up the Horror factor here, and the way Thunderball was accused of being
overblown and gadgetry (though still the top ticket-selling Bond to date), the
wider frame may actually put this film a bit out of its element. Cinematographer Miroslaw Baszak, who does
create an effectively creepy atmosphere despite the extensive use of obvious
digital visual effects that render some of the gore less believable, shot the
anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1 image on Fuji stocks in Super 35. Cine-Byte did the digital internegative,
which is not as good as E-Film’s work, but has its own unique look and
feel. Perhaps Romero wanted to keep the
film in the cinematic world as opposed to the widescreen high definition ratio
and this transfer is not bad, but too much digital and digital enhancement cuts
into the picture quality. There are
even older visual techniques that are used and do not work well.
The sound is here in two 5.1 mixes, Dolby Digital and an
especially impressive DTS, a treatment the first two Dead sequels
received goods DTS mixes in their Divimax Anchor Bay releases, but Land
is the first film to be made in the digital sound era and takes full advantage
with a very rich, solid mix with a fine soundfield and warm dialogue. Reinhold Heil’s score is not bad and this is
one of the best sound DVDs of the year, easily.
Extras include this cut’s four extra minutes, the stars of
Shawn Of The Dead meeting Romero and having their cameo in the film,
deleted scenes that are not bad, a making of featurette, a Music Video, making
the zombies with make-up and digital work, storyboard comparisons from the
film, green screen work that had mixed results, make-up head Greg Nicotero on
his work in the film, Leguizamo hosting a look at the film, previews for a
video game and a couple other Universal Horror titles and an audio commentary
by Romero, producer Peter Grunwald and editor Michael Daughtery. Some of the extras are only on this edition
of the DVD, which is the one to get.
Depending on how you look at it, Land Of The Dead is either a
spectacular disappointment or an interesting failure. After a film as impressive as Monkey Shines – An Experiment In
Fear back in 1988, I was certain Romero would have some new surprises by
now for this film, but it just does not pan out. Now, we’ll see if a fifth film gets made or if Romero is
overtaken by a different kind of zombie film.
Until then, it is the most imitated franchise in Horror cinema save The
Silence Of the Lambs, Alien and Seven. Then Romero may have another different kind
of Horror film in mind next, for which he may get back on track.
- Nicholas Sheffo
