The living dead have taken over the world, and the last humans live in a walled city to protect themselves as they come to grips with the situation.
Twenty years, twenty fuckin’ years it took for Romero to make this film, I could’ve waited longer.
I have an internal conflict with this film as “Day Of The Dead” was my favourite film of the original trilogy and “Land Of The Dead” is mostly based on the original, much longer script for “Day Of The Dead”. It shows how a trimmed script and budget restraints can help a film.
This is the first film of George A. Romero’s “Living Dead” series which uses digital effects and it shows, the CGI is blatantly obvious and it doesn’t help the film at all, in-fact it hinders it. I think a-lot of fans were disappointed with this as they expected George to keep it ‘old school’, me included.
The story itself is a really muddled one and full of plot holes, the characters aren’t the most likable. Don’t get me wrong I enjoyed how life continues after the zombies have took over and on paper it all should have worked but it really didn’t, Dennis Hopper couldn’t even save it.
Also, yes that is Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright featured as zombies in the photo-booth in the carnival/bar-room sequence. George A. Romero was so impressed with “Shaun of the Dead” that he asked them to appear in this, They also feature prominently in the artwork for the unrated directors’ cut.
This was a lackluster return for Romero but admittedly it was good to see him back among the undead.
Miscellaneous facts about the film:
George A. Romero’s daughter appears in the film. She is the soldier who shoots the zombie on the electrified fence.
There were four titles before “Land of the Dead” was chosen: “Dead City,” “Dead Reckoning,” “Twilight of the Dead,” and “Night of the Living Dead: Dead Reckoning.”
At the beginning of the movie, if you listen carefully to the tuba and tambourine zombies in the town bandstand they are playing notes from ‘The Gonk’, the mall music from Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978).
An amputee actor played the legless zombie climbing the back of the Dead Reckoning. His name is David Campbell and was also in ‘Dawn of the Dead (2004)’ as the “Squished Zombie”
The zombie of Tom Savini’s biker character, who is killed in Dawn of the Dead (1978), can be seen in one of the scenes.
The view of the zombies rising from out of the river is an homage to the classic scene from Herk Harvey’s Carnival of Souls (1962) where the dead rise out of the Great Salt Lake before the dance sequence.
“Land of the Dead”‘s Pittsburgh premiere was at the Byham Theatre, which used to be called the Fulton Theatre. This theatre, when it was still the Fulton, was the same theatre where Night of the Living Dead (1968) premiered in 1968.
One working title for the film was “Dead Reckoning,” but it was changed to avoid confusion with the Humphrey Bogart film of the same name.
This is the fourth film in George Romero’s zombie series, which Romero says takes place after Night of the Living Dead (1968) with no specific time frame. The last zombie film he wrote and directed was Day of the Dead (1985), which was released nineteen years before “Land.”
“Fiddler’s Green” is a song about the place where cavalrymen go when they die located “Halfway down the trail to hell” and, in the end, advocates suicide by pistol when death is certain and the hostiles are closing in. “Fiddler’s Green” possibly originated in England at least to the 19th century and is still sung today. The song speaks of a place where fisherman go if they don’t go to hell. It found its way to the U.S.A with the help of Cornish settlers. The fictional place of Fiddler’s Green is also the final resting place for pirates.
Dennis Hopper based his performance as Kaufman on Donald Rumsfeld.
In the scene where the zombies get into the city, the soldier playing cards who has his head pulled off, his camouflage uniform says “Rickles” in the name area. Rickles was the name of one of the soldiers from “Day of the Dead”, one of George A. Romero’s earlier zombie films.
This is the first film of George A. Romero’s “Living Dead” series which uses digital effects.
A non-union zombie would make CDN$9 per hour, while a union zombie, for a minimum of 8 hours, would make CDN$158.
George A. Romero intended to make this film in his home town Pittsburgh – the story is set there and it’s where he made his other zombie films; however, the producers insisted on filming Toronto in order to take advantage of Canadian tax incentives, creating a setting that retains Pittsburgh’s geography with physical locations of Toronto that have been altered.
The name of the military vehicle mainly used in the movie is Dead Reckoning, one of the film’s original titles.
The opening credits includes a montage detailing the zombie outbreak leading up to the events of the film with black and white footage and radio broadcasts depicting the infection’s spread over the Earth. Some of the images come from Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968) portraying the beginning of the outbreak. Romero wanted to use more footage from the other two films of the series up to that point, Dawn of the Dead (1978) and Day of the Dead (1985) but was unable to due to complications with the rights of those films. This is because each of his zombie films have been produced by different studios. This can also be seen in the credits for Tom Savini’s cameo in the film. He is the undead version of the character he portrayed in Dawn of the Dead, named “Blades”, but he could only be credited in this film as “Machete Zombie”.
The first and, to date, only ‘George A. Romero’ zombie film to use the 2.35:1 aspect ratio. The other films used standard 4:3 or Flat Ratios. Night of the Living Dead (1968) (1.33:1), Dawn of the Dead (1978) (1.85:1), Day of the Dead (1985) (1.85:1), Diary of the Dead (2007) (16:9 aka 1.78:1).
Susan Wloszczyna, a reporter for USA Today, appeared as one of the zombies. She was there interviewing her fellow zombies as well as the director. She spent nearly an hour and 45 minutes in the make-up chair.
Asia Argento (Slack) is the daughter of noted Italian horror filmmaker Dario Argento, who was the co-producer and co-composer of one of the previous entries in George Romero’s zombie series, Dawn of the Dead (1978).
The assault rifle Big Daddy finds is an Austrian Steyr Aug.
Alan Van Sprang and Shawn Roberts are the only two actors to carry over to another ‘of the Dead’ movie by playing different characters. Alan Van Sprang was in Land of the Dead (2005) as a soldier named Brubaker who died and became a zombie and he was Sarge in Diary of the Dead (2007) and Survival of the Dead (2009). Whereas Shawn Roberts played a rookie called Mike in Land of the Dead (2005) and one of the students called Tony Ravello in Diary of the Dead (2007)
Second movie that John Leguizamo and Dennis Hopper star in, the other is 1993’s Super Mario Bros
The rifle carried by Charlie is an M-1 Carbine, a weapon developed during World War II. It was noted for its superb accuracy (for a carbine) and also hated by the Marines for its puny stopping power.
Dennis Hopper and Robert Joy previously co-starred together in Waterworld (1995). At one point in that movie, Hopper’s character licks his thumb and then touches his rifle’s sight before taking a shot. This is the signature quirk of Joy’s character in ‘Land of the Dead’.
Movie theaters showing this film in the USA were given a replacement track for the typical music and commercials usually heard playing over still images of advertisements before a movie starts. This track consisted of sound bites of music and lines from Night of the Living Dead, the original version, and Day of the Dead. Along with an advert for then upcoming airings of Day of the Dead on a pay per view network.
John Leguizamo’s character’s name “Cholo” is a pejorative word used in South American Spanish to refer to Ecuatorians, Peruvians, and Bolivians who have strong Indian features.
Boyd Banks: Boyd Banks, the actor who played Tucker in Dawn of the Dead (2004) (a remake of Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978)) and “White Man” in Romero’s Diary of the Dead (2007) also plays “the butcher” in Land of the Dead.
George A. Romero: his voice can be heard as one of the puppets in the children’s show, saying, “Take that, you smelly zombie.”
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