'DEAD' A ZOMBIE FLICK WITH BITE.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

'GEORGE A. ROMERO'S Land of the Dead,'' the horror auteur's fourth zombie movie and his first in 20 years, is the second-best film of his career.

That's no backhanded compliment. ``Night of the Living Dead,'' Romero's no-budget, 1968 black-and-white feature debut, was such a perfect little combination of grotesque horror, gallows humor and implied social commentary that it simply can never be equaled - although innumerable, less-engaged talents have attempted to - or just stolen its best ideas for their own exploitive purposes - since.

Apart from ``Night's'' true classic status, though, it should be noted that the better-budgeted ``Land'' is certainly the best-crafted film Romero has ever made. It's the first of his zombie movies to employ a recognizable cast of Hollywood veterans, most of whom rise beyond their B-list status to give complex, impactful performances. The scale of the production is impressively big, without sacrificing the sense of doomed, claustrophobic entrapment that is the hallmark of Romero's dread-filled world.

And although Tom Savini's makeup effects for ``Dawn'' and ``Day of the Dead'' are quite properly worshipped in gore-fan circles, it must be said that Greg Nicotero and Howard Berger's ``Land'' zombie designs are often cleverer and uniformly more, well, lifelike. (The faithful will be glad to hear that Savini appears as a cannibalistic cadaver in the new movie, as do the two guys responsible for one of the best Romero homages, last year's cheeky ``Shaun of the Dead'').

The plot of this one is borderline brilliant, too, marred only by an unconvincing bit of humanism at the end. Sometime after the events of the earlier films, living humans have barricaded themselves in defensible cities. One such place, protected on most sides by rivers, is run with a cashmere-covered iron fist by ruthless businessman Kaufman (Dennis Hopper, who humanizes the plutocrat with an arsenal of off-the-wall zingers such as, ``Zombies, man, they freak me out''). His rich clients live in a luxury high-rise called Fiddler's Green. It's even got an upscale mall where the lucky few can pretend life is like it used to be.

Though this recalls ``Dawn of the Dead's'' droll critique of mass consumerism, ``Land's'' big issue is class. Most people live in squalor outside of the Green's heavily guarded doors. And to keep the rich supplied with goods, paramilitary mercenaries from the lower depths raid supermarkets in the zombie-infested countryside. The poor throngs on the city's streets must make do with whatever they can scrounge. But all of this is about to change as the presumably mindless, flesh-hungry zombies begin to actually think.

Simon Baker, of TV's ``The Guardian,'' plays the most heroic of the mercenaries, Riley; John Leguizamo is Cholo, the most selfish one. Asia Argento, daughter of Italian horror master and Romero buddy Dario, shoulders some artillery, too. They'll make and break alliances at a dizzying pace, as their survival or desires dictate.

And many will get bit and infected, if not thoroughly consumed. Romero can still stage scares with the best of them. What may be the most frightening thing about ``Land of the Dead,'' though, is that even in the face of incalculable crisis, the ruling class places more value on its own privilege than on the lives of people its supposed to protect.

Once again, George Romero has made a zombie movie for the times we live in.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

GEORGE A. ROMERO'S LAND OF THE DEAD - Three stars

(R: violence, language, sex, nudity, drug use)

Starring: Simon Baker, John Leguizamo, Dennis Hopper, Asia Argento, Robert Joy and Eugene Clark.

Director: George A. Romero.

Running time: 1 hr. 32 min.

Playing: In wide release.

In a nutshell: The original zombie master returns with the smartest, scariest and best-looking living-dead chiller since he reanimated his first corpse in 1968.