In 1985, the creator of the zombie genre, George A. Romero created “Day of The Dead.” It was a film about a bunch of survivors in the army who were living underground, protected from the living dead who now ruled the earth. It was another one of his “dead” films, its prequel “Dawn of The Dead” and its prequel “Night of The Living Dead.” “Day of The Dead” was nothing more than a careless gore-fest, and what could have been a masterpiece like its two predecessors, just carried lots and lots of zombies. And nothing else.

I say you have definitely redeemed yourself. In Romero’s “Land of the Dead,” the world is in ruins, nothing new there. The dead have risen from their graves and targeted the living as their food supply, human flesh. The remaining humans, that the audience knows of, live in a protected Pittsburgh, PA, or perhaps a trapped one. The city is protected by water on three sides, and the other side a powerful electric fence.

The movie can be portrayed as one describes America, but it can depend on your point of view. The wealthy live in a protected skyscraper, called Fiddler’s Green, while those who are not fortunate enough to afford the apartments live on the streets in shantytowns and live as homeless. Kaufman (Dennis Hopper) can be put as the “tyrant” of the city, is the richest and reigns over everyone in the city, watching others do his bidding.

Though the armies of the dead are changing and becoming more dangerous by the day. They communicate with each other, organize, and have learned to use weapons in ways to take down their live prey. Attempting to plan a new future, a group of mercenaries hired by Kaufman, Riley (Simon Baker), and the daring Cholo (John Leguizamo) who make their green by raiding abandoned super markets and liquor stores to sell in Fiddler’s Green.

Each mercenary has plans of their own future, and when Cholo is refused an apartment by Kaufman, he steals the two million dollar anti-zombie tank, “Dead Reckoning” and holds the city under ransom unless Cholo is paid his money with interest. While Cholo seems to have the only other protection of the citizens of the city than the electric fence (guarding on one side), the zombie army is approaching and no longer see the water as a barrier…

If you have the stomach for the intense gore that this movie throws out, this is a good horror movie to go see, previous junk Hollywood has given us to view such as “The Grudge” will never be able to compete with Romero’s films. As the trailers say for this movie, “… one man made us fear the night,” speaks for itself. I wasn’t around when the original masterpiece “The Night of The Living Dead” was released, nor its two sequels. But I did manage to see it over the past year and was surprised at the old and creepy look it had to it, and I realized what kind of terror it brought to people when they were walking home back to the college campus.

By today’s standards this could very well be the scariest movie of all time. “Land of the Dead” is still far from a masterpiece, but does have many likeable characters which must have been hard to develop obviously when you were concentrating the entire script about odd happenings originally, and trying to intensify the gore outside black and white in ketchup and chocolate syrup, Romero really made necessary room this time.

Attempting to compete against the past “Resident Evil” (terrible!) films, “Land” has only a running time of 93 minutes (I wished it was longer), but still manages to please us with a liked story line, memorable characters and without having to resort to crazy corporations and superhuman mutations. This film is definitely better than “Day of The Dead,” just as good as “Dawn of The Dead,” and still a little shy from “Night.” But this trilogy can easily end as a memorable saga and retire next to “Star Wars.”

With that I can say, to George Romero, congratulations on another big success, especially releasing it in a new way and keeping your old black humor that still managed to get quite a few chuckles out of the audience, no matter how gory. And hey, if you haven’t become a member of the undead and stay around long enough to make another film, I’m sure I’ll be a little anxious to see what you have next…

Rated R for pervasive strong violence and gore, language, brief sexuality, and some drug use. Running time 93 minutes

MAXimum Warning! This film is extremely graphic and is NOT a film to take children to, you have been warned.