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— by Ben Cosgrove, with additional reporting by Larry Carroll
What is the sound of one zombie clapping?
Whatever the answer — Arrhythmic? Squishy? Really, really slow? — in an alternate zombie universe somewhere, that single clapping ghoul is being joined by others, and the applause is close to deafening right about now.
The reason? The cinematic zombie kingpin, George Romero, is back.
Twenty years after the release of "Day of the Dead" (from the "Dead" series that spawned the classics "Night of the Living Dead" in 1968 and "Dawn of the Dead" a decade later), Romero's latest film is headed for theaters. For horror fans, the new "Land of the Dead" is generating a buzz similar to the sort of champing-at-the-bit excitement that "The Return of the King" sparked among Middle Earth fanatics — although, admittedly, in this instance the emphasis is on plot points like intestine-chewing, head-blasting and wholesale bloodletting rather than the fate of noble halflings.
For the uninitiated, of course, the anticipation surrounding the release of a zombie film might appear ... well, a bit silly. Zombies? Aren't they sort of on a par with the cheesy, long-forgotten film monsters of the '50s and '60s? They're creepy, but generally kind of harmless, and not very scary. Right?
Wrong. Romero's zombies are genuinely terrifying, relentless in their slow-footed hunt for human flesh. (Responding to a question about why his zombies move so slowly in all his films, Romero's answer is characteristically funny, reasonable and gruesome: "My zombies don't run, man. Everybody says, 'Well, the new zombies run, don't they?' And I say, 'No, man. If my guys tried to run, their ankles would snap.' ")
His groundbreaking "Night of the Living Dead" is, arguably, the most influential horror film ever made, clearing the way for the increasingly graphic films of the past few decades. "Right from the start," Romero says, "we were basically trying to push the envelope a little bit. You know, not cutting away when the zombies pull the guy's stomach out."
(It's not merely as a horror director, however, that Romero is now recognized. In 1999, "Night of the Living Dead" was added to the Library of Congress's National Film Registry, joining films like "Casablanca" and "The Wizard of Oz" as an American masterpiece.)
But for Romero himself, the question of his own place in movie history hardly warrants thinking about.
"That's not what motivates me," the director says, his generally genial voice betraying a hint of irritation when asked about his influence. A tall, white-haired veteran of the cultural and political upheavals of the '60s who still proudly exudes the radicalism and speaks the language of those heady years, Romero is comfortable with his outsider status.
"I don't live in Hollywood," he says. "I don't think of myself that way. I'm still learning, man. All I think is, 'Boy, if I could only be better at this.' You know? [Legendary director] John Ford made 200 movies. He probably had every trick in his hip pocket, you know, man? I don't feel like I have all those tricks. Yeah, I'm able to design shots a little better, choreograph scenes a little better, move the eye better, but I certainly haven't learned how to do it all."
The release of the new film, meanwhile — while gratifying and exciting for the director — is ultimately just another benchmark in a moviemaking career that is now in its fifth decade and shows few signs of slowing down.
"You know, I don't really feel that I ever left," Romero says when asked why it took 20 years between "Day of the Dead" and his latest zombie flick. "I wrote the first version of 'Land of the Dead' before 9/11, and actually sent it around just a few days before 9/11. But then everybody wanted to make soft, fuzzy movies, so I pulled it and rejiggered it and made it a little more pertinent to this sort of 'new normal.' So, you know, there are references there, more obvious references to the post-9/11 atmosphere."
There sure are. In "Land of the Dead," flesh-eating zombies have effectively taken over the planet. The last humans live within a walled city — although, even in this horribly perilous world, class distinctions remain. The super-wealthy, led by a slimy megalomaniac known only as "Kaufman" (Dennis Hopper), live in a seemingly impregnable island tower called Fiddler's Green, while the less fortunate fend for themselves on the mean streets below. Zombies, meanwhile, are milling around outside, hungry, unhappy and (bad news for the survivors) slowly beginning to think.
For Romero, the situations he's created onscreen this time have an infuriatingly familiar ring.
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Not all of Romero's films feature flesh-eating zombies lurching inexorably toward their ultimate reward — but a lot of them do. Here are a few of the master's great works on DVD, as well as a couple of non-zombie related offerings that nevertheless provide chills (and, intentionally, some laughs).
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 "Night of the Living Dead" (1968)
The one that started it all — and for those willing to suspend their disbelief, it's still one of the scariest premises ever devised. (Note: The immortal line uttered by Sheriff McClelland when discussing the rampaging zombies — "Yeah, they're dead. They're all messed up." — was improvised by the film's production manager, George Kosana. Where's his star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame?)
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 "Dawn of the Dead" (1978)
With still-shocking special-effects makeup by the legendary Tom Savini, "Dawn" ranks as one of the goriest films in the universe — and one of the few horror films of its type that gets better with age.
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 "Creepshow"
(1982)
Romero teamed up with buddy Stephen King for this tribute to the blood-and-guts-filled E.C. Comics of the early '50s. Feels a little like going to a Saturday afternoon matinee with your weirdest, scariest, most fascinating aunt. You know — the one who drinks.
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 "Day of the Dead" (1985)
The most controversial of the "Dead" movies — among Romero fans, at least. Some folks call it his masterpiece, others label it nihilistic crud, but "Day" is probably the director's purest expression of sheer, unalloyed pessimism. Scientists in an underground bunker in a post-apocalyptic world research captive zombies, until the inevitable brain-munching begins.
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 "Monkey Shines" (1988)
A young man confined to a wheelchair is provided a cute-as-a-button Capuchin monkey named Ella to act as his helpmate. The catch? Ella's not only a live-in simian nurse, but a genetically altered, super-intelligent, mind-reading and intensely jealous little monkey. Oops!
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"Think about it," he says. "The image of a truck driving through a small town, mowing people down, and everybody wondering why they're so pissed off at us? The tower and all the people inside it feeling that they're isolated and protected by water from the rest of the world? I'm not trying to hit you over the head with this allegory, but it's there."
The human tendency for real-world (as opposed to artificial and cinematic) violence obviously disgusts Romero, and when he discusses 9/11 and its aftermath — including the United States' decision to go to war with Iraq — his voice grows weary and angry.
"Look, man, I was a cat who thought the '60s were going to reform the world — that it was gonna be peace and love. And it didn't work. I can't really date when it all changed, but Vietnam and Martin Luther King Jr. and the Kennedy brothers getting killed and ... I mean, Jesus Christ, man! It just never changes — and now look where we are."
And the zombies in "Night of the Living Dead"? Critics from every point on the political spectrum have speculated on how allegorical the flesh-eaters were, in light of the fact that the movie was made and released at the height of the tumult and chaos of the late '60s. Were the zombies more than just zombies?
"In my mind, yes, they were," the director admits. "They were revolutionaries, destroying the old order, the old world. That's exactly what it was about."
But Romero is most comfortable, it seems, talking about the nuts-and-bolts craft of moviemaking, rather than the deeper, more symbolic themes that are so often attached, rightly or wrongly, to his work. While he does acknowledge that his movies carry more than one message — "I always think of the allegory first, and then overlay it with some sort of story that can stand on its own for people who don't want to bother with the allegory" — Romero is, first and always, a movie fan.
His own fans might be astonished, however, to learn that Romero's heroes are about as far removed from the horror genre as two filmmakers could possibly be.
"Michael [Powell] was my man," he says of the late, great British director of "Black Narcissus," "A Matter of Life and Death" and several other masterful, revered films of the '40s and '50s. "And Orson Welles — it might have been difficult for us to work together. We might not have gotten along. But if you try and find any stylistic influence on the stuff that I do, it's probably those two cats.
" 'Tales of Hoffmann,' " he continues, enthusiastically naming an almost-forgotten 1951 Powell film. "That's the one, man. That's the first one that got me. I was 11 years old. An aunt and uncle took me to see it at a downtown theater in Manhattan, and it just knocked me out."
Fifty years later, still in love with the movies, Romero glances back at that image of his younger self and talks like a young, still-eager director about the films he'd like to make.
"I'd love to make a Tarzan movie, man, because you go back to the movies that you loved as a kid, you know? One of those movies with a schooner going down the Amazon, with guys shooting poison darts at you. Those were the movies that I loved. Guilty pleasures and craftsmanship. That's what gets me every time — movies that carry you through."
Guilty pleasures and craftsmanship. For horror fans everywhere, those words are about as succinct an expression of the appeal of Romero's own films as one could wish. We've been waiting: Let the slow, unblinking, thrilling procession of flesh-eaters begin ... again.
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Photo: Michael Gibson/Universal Studios
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