Dems? Liberals? Nah, just zombies

Like a brand spankin’ new Ginsu knife, there ain’t never a dull

moment in “George A. Romero’s Land of the Dead.”

Aimlessly they travel, blank of look, dull of expression, empty of

thought. No purpose, no future, no hope. Neither intelligible speech,

nor intelligent thought emanates from their vacant, vapid, vacuous

heads.

What are they? Liberals? Democrats? Editors?

They’re actually a form of life a fair number of rungs farther up

the evolutionary food chain.

You might know them as zombies or the living dead. In “Land of the

Dead”, they’re known as walkers or, more affectionately, stenchers.

There’s two ways to become a zombie. Either be dead, or be bitten

by a zombie, in which case, you’ll wish you were dead.

There’s one way to stop being a zombie; that’s to be shot in the

head, destroying the brain.

This, of course, leads to the obvious question, “What if it’s a

liberal zombie, therefore not having a brain to begin with?” A

mystery of the universe.

They’re trying to be us, because they used to be us, and they’d

like to be us again. Except they have rather degraded social skills.

Most common is this rather nasty habit of eating people. Alive.

That is a particularly unpleasant fate for those of us considered

consumables who would rather not be consumed.

And the eating habits of these overachieving masticators are quite

unrefined -- using their fingers, not using a napkin, grunting with

their mouths full. Barbarians.

And there’s a lot of ‘em. Anyone who’s dead reanimates, walks the

earth and becomes a star in one of the most ludicrously great films

you’ll ever see.

Yup, “Land of the Dead” despite its attempted, repeated and

sophomoric pretensions of social and economic satire is nothing more

than a killer gross-out flick.

Except now, the zombies are evolving. They walk a little faster

and think a little quicker than your garden-variety zombies.

They’re led to the Promised Land by their George Washington, some

semi-drooler named Big Daddy. What is the Promised Land?

Evidently, it is the only remaining bastion of civilization; a

fortified city called Fiddler’s Green -- corruptly run and socially

divided. In historical context, Fiddler’s Green is a mythical utopia

of milk and honey. For the zombies, it is their Emerald City, their

Xanadu, their Eldorado, their raison pour exister.

“Land of the Dead” doesn’t miss a stereotype, presumable in the

continuous pursuit of commentary about society, mores and who knows

what else. But you and me, residing here in the intellectually

shallow end of the thought pool, we really don’t care about stuff

like that.

There’s a Mexican gardener, a black butler and the obligatory

white megalomaniac, who is played rather wimpily by Dennis Hopper.

Probably the only person miscast in the flick, he’s uninteresting and

squirrelly.

There’s a few name actors in this thing, but hey, we’re in it for

the blood and guts.

The zombies, adorned in the finest of Goodwill reject clothing,

90-weight gear oil, and Billy Bob teeth, all schlep around like

they’re magna cum laude graduates of the Monty Python Ministry of

Silly Walks.

Adorned with chancres and cankers, scabs and scars they’re off to

chow down on the good folks of Fiddler’s Green.

Trouble is, to get to Fiddler’s Green, they gotta cross their

River Jordan. Big Daddy figgers out that, “Hey, we’re already dead.

We can’t drown, so let’s just hop in the river and saunter our

decaying butts over to the Promised Land.”

That they do.

When they get there, its chow time as the live people are nothing

but Lay’s potato chips -- the walkers can’t eat just one.

And eat they do in rather creative ways. There are more

disembowelments than a Perdue chicken factory. Fingers filleted,

entrails eaten, hearts harvested, brains bitten, spleens swallowed,

intestines ingested, diaphragms digested, lungs lunched and

gallbladders gobbled.

All of this is shown, as they used to say on TV eons ago, “in

living color.” And up front and personal. There were some serious

bucks spent in “Land of the Dead” for special effects and their

money’s worth was gotten for every last bloody dime.

Can’t remember seeing this many bodies exsanguinate and eviscerate

in so many creative and interesting ways.

Fortunately, the dialogue rarely raises itself above one-syllable

words. That’s cool, because the ham-handed moralizing that usually

occurs when the actors open their mouths is duller than bar of soap.

“Land of the Dead,” though, is a great, drooling, slobbering,

slaughtering classic of a film.

Its tag line, though, should be: Bite me.

* UNCLE DON reviews B-rated movies and cheesy musical acts for the

Daily Pilot. He can be reached by e-mail at reallybadwriting@

yahoo.com.