The Return of the Living Dead (1985)

Sex :
Violence :
Director Dan O'Bannon
Writers Dan O'Bannon
Starring Clu Gulager, James Karen, Don Calfa, Thom Mathews, Beverly Randolph, John Philbin, Jewel Shepard, Miguel A. Nunez Jr, Linnea Quigley, Mark Venturini
Genre Zombie
Tagline They're Back From The Grave and Ready To Party!
Country

Review

"I love you...and you've got to let me eat your braaaaaaaaaaains!" - Zombie Freddy, best line ever from a zombie.

Freddy is on the first day of his new job at the Uneeda Medical Supply Warehouse ("Man, what a hideous ugly place!" "I like it. It's a statement"); he's learning the ropes from Frank and the pair are staying late to do whatever needs to be done as night falls. Frank tells Freddy some tales about the trade and mentions that the events depicted in the movie Night of the Living Dead are based on real events, with the military forcing changes to names, locations, etc. Not surprisingly the military have some canned undead for testing but one shipment went astray and ended up at the very warehouse Freddy is now gainfully employed at. Naturally they have to go down into the basement to check it out.

Meanwhile a group of Freddy's friends - and my what a diverse selection we have, ranging from punk rockers through Michael Jackson impersonators to preppy types - are waiting in a nearby graveyard for Freddy to get off work so they can go partying.

Frank shows Freddy one of the zombie canisters that houses a pretty gonzo corpse, and mentions how well the military constructs things. He demonstrates this by kicking the canister, which immediately ruptures, giving both Frank and Freddy a pretty large dose of toxic shock. Things get real cool from here. The gas gets into the building's systems and we have cadavers, split dogs (don't ask), and, rather improbably, butterflies animating. Ladies and gentlemen, we have our zombie outbreak.

Our fearless duo call in the boss Burt - well what else are you going to do with the dead coming back to life? - and they deal with a reanimated corpse. Unfortunately, we learn that the old "shoot them in the head" strategy doesn't work. One dismembered corpse later and we are across the road in the local mortuary with Burt trying to convince Ernie, the gun-toting mortician, that they need to fire up the kiln to get rid of a whole bunch of "rabid weasels" (great name for a rock band btw). Burning the still-animated body parts proves to be a slight issue as the smoke mixes with rain to fall on the local cemetery where Freddy's diverse group of punker mates are partying. Talk about your walking dead issues, suddenly everyone is knee deep in the undead and all they want is fresh brains! A humorous movie ensues. Ready to party with the living dead?

An excellent horror comedy that has become a cult classic that reaches beyond the core Audience

Dan O'Bannon had spent quite some time writing scripts to various movies, notably the excellent Alien, but hadn't managed to get the big gig until Return of the Living Dead (ROTLD) got the green light. Slight detour here, am writing this review on a train hurtling towards Sydney's Central station and some brainless chick is rabbiting away about the most inane crap at the top of her voice on her mobile. People really do need to realise that the vast majority of us aren't all that interesting, and this particular chick needs to realise she's even more boring than, well, an animated corpse after brains. The suffering I have to endure to get these reviews to the site! Anyway, ROTLD marks O'Bannon's debut in the director's chair and he does the business. Apparently some of my fellow travellers are also unimpressed with phone girl, who amazingly is still managing to carp on about driving of all things, with plenty of - he goes - interspersed in the conversation to ensure that we are all informed of poor education standards. Back to the movie, phone girl has mercifully got off at Strathfield.

I have to say I was digging the whole "based on a true story" schlock O'Bannon had going down, excellent tie in to Uncle George's Night of the Living Dead. ROTLD starts with the claim that "The events portrayed in this film are all true. The names are real names of real people and real organizations". Try repeating that second sentence a few times, like a good wine ages yadda yadda. Clearly O'Bannon is having a slight dig at a number of movies that had a "based on a true story" marketing campaign going down and I for one appreciated the wink to the audience. Michael Bay please note, only the gullible and South Australians were fooled by the whole schlock you managed to run with when pushing the remakes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Amityville Horror. Melissa George please note, we all know you're a blonde, you don't need to act like the stereotype.

ROTLD is shot in an almost Creepshow way; there's that same comic feeling to it with the colours being slightly too bright, and the sets being just a touch beyond what one would expect in the real world. Which is of course perfectly fine as we are in horror comedy terror-story here kids. The colourisation is achieved through bright lighting - there are some pretty drab sets in use here - and of course the actual sets themselves are by and largely of the sound stage variety rather than being locations. Surprisingly there are only three sets in use (the warehouse, the mortuary, the graveyard), with a limited amount of filming being done on location, the external shots. As a result, O'Bannon has complete control over all aspects of the film and he delivers on that. Every aspect of the lensing of ROTLD is an example of how to get it right on a limited budget. I might be a big fan of location shooting - anyone getting precious Boredwood "A" list actors out in the trenches gets my nod of approval - but when you do get someone able to nail sound stage work you just have to high five the whole deal.

Surprisingly ROTLD was initially conceived as a sequel to Night of the Living Dead but contractual issues between Romero and his partners forced a change of direction, as the concepts of Romero's movie could not be utilised without the problem of lengthy and expensive legal action. Dan O'Bannon decided on the risky idea of playing it all for laughs while keeping the basic concept of the zombie as devised by Romero unlive and well. O'Bannon delivers on the laughs - there are some eccentric and memorable characters spouting one-liners - but also adds his own twist to the zombie mythology. O'Bannon's zombies are certainly more intelligent than Romero's ones - "send more paramedics" - and have a liking for fresh brains rather than other parts of living human bodies. O'Bannon even goes so far as to explain the brain thing: death is painful and live human brains offer a sort of unholy panadol treatment. I kind of thought O'Bannon was meaning death was painful for zombies - that decaying thing can't be a walk in the park - rather than in general terms. Also nice to consider that O'Bannon doesn't trust the military or powers that be anymore than Romero does. In either "dead" universe it's not only the undead you need to be concerned about.

Creature effects are uniformly pretty good with the zombies looking like you would expect the undead to look. Sort of similar to Wellingtonians to be honest. Special mention of course to the star of the zombie stampede, - The Tarman (don't ask, have no idea where the name comes from), who looked all raw and covered in strawberry sauce. Nice effort also put into two of our characters who are slowly succumbing to the zombie effect. Rigor mortis, ouch, and I don't even want to contemplate the blood pooling thing!

Okay not going to mention all the "stars" in this one, as O'Bannon kind of intertwines two stories and hence we have a few too many people crowding the signing booth. Clu Gulager (Burt) is absolutely hilarious as the down home boss who has an answer for everything and doesn't miss a beat with even the most left field development. Gulager knocks it out of the ballpark. James Karen (Frank) and Thom Mathews (Freddy) were wonderfully playing off each other as the bumbling warehouse workers who initiate the whole situation. Perfect comedic timing and scene-chewing from the duo, top marks for their screen chemistry. There's a whole bunch of other characters who are simply there with "victim" tattooed to their foreheads, but for my mine even though some of the characters were slightly irritating, no one drops the ball when it comes to the acting side of the corpse.

Special mention of Linnea Quigley (Trash) who is certainly memorable in this movie, was that a body stocking or does she partake of the Yul Brynner approach to personal hygiene? Oops that's our T&A quota covered as well, we either get Linnea starkers through out or in a real tight body stocking, your guess is as good as mine amigos.

The soundtrack for ROTLD is a keeper if into 1980s rock music. O'Bannon ties it in nicely to the visuals and pacing; I would tend to go get a copy of the CD if available at your local music store.

Well I had a blast with Return of the Living Dead. The movie combines some decent zombie carnage, humour, and memorable characters. Everything is wrapped in a (within the ROTD universe) believable storyline and nothing is left dangling. Dug the ending of the movie and of course the promise it held for further zombie outbreaks - put your trust in the military kids. End of day I was real glad I ran across a copy of this movie.

Showing that the internet can be a force for good, or that some people have way too much time on their hands, Michael Allred created a web page to campaign for ROTLD to get a DVD release. He contacted Dan O'Bannon and MGM (the studio that owned the movie), and pointed out the groundswell of support for a DVD release. The rest is history with not only the first movie getting a release, but also its two sequels.

If you haven't had the pleasure to check out ROTLD yet - and you call yourself a horror fan! - then I would rush down my local DVD store and scoop up a copy. One classic horror movie, and perhaps one of the top ten ever horror/comedies, the flick is well worth hunting out. It doesn't take much brains to work out that this is required viewing for any fan of the dark genre.

ScaryMinds Rates this movie as ...

  One of the great zombie comedy movies that defined the territory.