“Land of the Dead” is one of the most pointed conversations about America’s sordid racial history to hit the screen.

You heard me. George Romero’s return to the zombie series he first created with 1968s “Night of the Living Dead,” smartly packs issues of class, fear, politics and race into the center of a very tasty, very bloody treat.

In this film, the fourth in the “Dead” series, the zombies have pretty much taken over North America and, judging by the opening narration, possibly the world. In response, those with a pulse have taken refuge in Pittsburgh, now completely gated-off by electric fences and armed soldiers. Rising from the center of town is a luxury hotel known as Fiddler’s Green, a paradise for the upper class, who enjoy high-class shopping, fine dining and an existence that does not include zombies or even the poor left to scrabble outside its doors.

It is from this new poor that we meet our hero, Riley (Simon Baker), who leads a group soldiers into zombie-infested towns to raid for food and supplies. Traveling in an armored bus, called “Dead Reckoning,” we watch Riley, his deformed slow-witted brother, Charlie (Robert Joy), and second in command, Cholo (John Leguizamo), distract the zombies with fireworks while simultaneously mowing them down and raiding supermarkets. Romero doesn’t paint the zombies as the relentless pack of flesh-hungry murderers he had in the original. (They still have a jones for your bones, but hey, everybody’s gotta eat.) Here there are sympathetic creatures grasping for shreds of their former lives as we watch a zombie band trying to manipulate their instruments and a cheerleader still carrying her pom-poms. “They’re trying to be us,” Charlie notes. No, they are trying to become themselves.

Most sympathetic is a Black gas station attendant zombie who still emerges from the store to fill gas whenever something rings the bell. He is the first to gain a new conscious. He is the first to try to stop his brain-dead comrades from looking up while being chopped down. He is the first to take a gun and understand what it’s for. Like a zombie-version of Nat Turner the attendant, whose overalls bear the name “Big Daddy” leads his shuffling army towards the last bastion of humanity. Whether its food or revenge, what they hunger for is left up to us.

Like fireworks in the sky, we are temporarily distracted by Romero’s over-the-top gore and a typical hero storyline as Riley tries regaining the Dead Reckoning from a pissed-off Cholo. Like Oprah trying to shop at Hermes, Cholo is denied a coveted spot in Fiddler’s Green by owner Kaufman (Dennis Hopper) for reasons money can’t solve. Race and class come to mind as they often do here. As Kaufman points out later, he has created a schism among the living by providing luxury for the rich and vice for the poor. Exploiting both his own kind and the undead, he captures zombies to be bet on in steel cage matches and have them strung up for civilian target practice.

Though packed with enough blood, bone and gristle to please even the most twisted fan, it’s not likely that “Land” will send you home with any nightmares as the film seems to have more interested in turning your stomach than raising your neck hairs.

But below all the corn-syrup blood and latex guts lies the beating heart of a satire aimed squarely at this nation’s exploitation of minorities – namely Native Americans who were treated no better than these fictional zombies. It also comments heavily on how the elite whip lower classes into a frenzy over issues of race and culture while sitting back to reap fat rewards. Romero fans shouldn’t be surprised considering the original “Night” broke convention by having a Black hero, named Ben (Duane Jones), and a subtext about race relations in the Civil Rights Era.

Granted, “Land” may make you lose your lunch but it just might help you gain some perspective.

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