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Last week's Movie Quiz winners

Last week's quiz movie was George Romero's 2005 film Land of the Dead, the fourth in his "Living Dead" series and the first he'd done since Day of the Dead twenty years earlier. (He did another last year, Diary of the Dead.) While it certainly has its moments, even the fans who liked it admitted that it was, at the least, "a slight disappointment."

Give Romero credit for expanding the franchise: by now, the world of the living dead has resulted in a gigantic makeshift gated community, with the non-infected still-living confined to a post-apocalyptic city surrounded by fences. The zombies, on the other hand, roam the outside "old" abandoned world, where they seem to be thriving-- in fact, they're starting to learn how to use things like weapons. Some of the best scenes involve a "smart" one called Big Daddy, who's evolved enough to actually organize his undead peers.

Land of the Dead is also the only film in the series with name actors (I was going to say "real," but that's not fair-- or nice), like John Leguizamo, Simon Baker, and Dennis Hopper, plus horror director Dario Argento's daughter Asia. (One quiz winner even admitted, "Having her in the movie at least kept me watching to see if she got naked.") While I kind of missed the not-ready-for-prime-time performances of the other films, the professionalism of the entire cast (including the hundreds of decomposing extras) easily makes the film look the best of the bunch.

Still, it doesn't quite satisfy like the best in the series (the first two, in my opinion, although I like it more than the third, Day of the Dead). One quiz winner also pointed out, "Romero seemed to throw in bits and pieces from so many other movies when he made this one. The truck they use to hunt down the zombies, Dead Reckoning, looked like it drove straight out of Damnation Alley, and the whole setting had quite an Escape from New York feel." (He also added, "I was sad to see that for his next entry, Diary of the Dead, he went with the Blair Witch/Cloverfield handheld video style. And it looks like he's following it up with a sequel!")

Keeping with the above sentiments, there are youtube videos from some of the good moments from Land of the Dead, but for all their shocks and FX, not one can compare to the loopy charm of this classic moment from the first in the series. For decades, midnight movie audiences have been laughing at the sheriff's opinion of the zombie's speed.

The quiz must have been tougher than I thought-- it was the smallest turnout of answers in months. So special congratulations and a full tank of gas from Big Daddy to the following: Wayne Palmer, Bob Redwing, Bill Hearne, Song-Un Lee, Thomas Miller, Fred Lorence, John Middleton, Michael Mattson, Nancy Louise Rutherford, Denny Lynch, Bill Kelly, and Dave Mallow.

Posted by Steve Monaco at June 30, 2008 1:19 AM

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