On DVD: After Six Dead FIlms, Has George A. Romero Shot Sophistication in the Head?

Survival of the Dead represents George A. Romero's sixth entry in his Dead series of zombie movies -- which amounts to well over 370 oozing-exploding head shots and several dozen impromptu ways to topple a meat-walker. But who's counting?

Romero started this whole zombie thing in 1968, when the first Night of the Living Dead crept across the drive-in/grindhouse landscape in chilly black-and-white and gave teenagers reason to bring a barf bag to the movies. Seriously, I remember when I was a kid in the '70s, as the film would get periodically revived, reading in my local paper that it was "one of the most gruesome and grueling films ever made." Times change -- our stomachs get tougher, as if we've acclimated to prison food -- and now Romero's crazy formula not only persists but thrives. Consider that there is little doubt that our last three U.S. presidents have all seen at least one zombie movie, and that movie was probably one of Romero's.

For what it's worth, the first Living Dead movie is still a roughshod masterpiece of anxiety that may inadvertently be the best film "about" Vietnam made during that war. By now, of course, we're as familiar with the arbitrary rules Romero invented (why only head shots? Why not?) as we are with the wallpaper facing the toilets in our homes. Not that it matters terribly: Survival of the Dead is a less epic entry in the series, a kind of subplot standing on its own shaky legs. Conscious of budget as always -- as in, he prefers not to have one -- Romero quarantines his post-apocalyptic scenario to Plum Island, Del., an odd bucolic horse-farm haven where two Irish-accented patriarchs exercise their lifelong Hatfield-McCoy feud over what to do with the zombies (kill them or try to treat them humanely, and when that doesn't work, then kill them anyway).

A brace of mercenary Marines looking for sanctuary wander into the fray, providing Romero the opportunity to indulge in the tooth-ache-causing tough-guy comic book dialogue he's always been fond of. Rest assured there's none of the political subtexts that muddied up Land of the Dead, just an indie-sized pulp tale punctuated with exploding brains. Forgive me for being a little creeped out by this trend, frankly -- in Romero's first film, the thrust was about fearing the unreasonable onslaught of zombie teeth. As you should. By now, as you know, it has evolved into running string of gags: How many cool, violent, effortless ways can you kill a zombie? Look what a jigsaw can do! I've got a weed whacker!

I don't know if this means the new generation of avid zombie film fans are heartless humanoids, or if the kill-ability of zombies is inherently funny. (Like Wile E. Coyote?) Maybe it's the power tools. Whatever; all we know is we're not going to a Romero for the sophisticated storytelling.