Return of the Living DeadGee, zombies sure can ruin a happening night out among friends just chilling in a graveyard. The Return of the Living Dead is a zombie comedy (with a dash of parody) about...well, the return of the living dead! See, the story goes--as related by medical supply warehouse manager, Frank (James Karen), to the new guy, Freddy (Thom Mathews)--that the movie The Night of the Living Dead was true, even if the facts got rearranged. And that the zombies that were produced as a result of a chemical leak by the army--and later contained--got misrouted to their warehouse and are in canisters in the basement. With this kind of setup, what could possibly go wrong?!
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Written and directed by Dan O'Bannon (perhaps best known for writing the screenplay of Alien), The Return of the Living Dead is a wacky movie, packed full with cornball, punk vibes juxtaposed with shambling corpses screaming "brains". The movie drives hard into being appealing to punks everywhere, even if it essentially makes fun of them by way of some of Freddy's "friends". The soundtrack deserves special mention in and of itself. It is laden with music by the likes of Roky Erickson and The Damned, songs that are rocking and amusing at the same time. In this way, the music to The Return of the Living Dead is pitch perfect for the intended audience, even if the characters in it are essentially Mad Magazine caricatures of punk. But, to be fair, that's also the appeal of the movie, because it never takes itself too seriously, right up to the end. I mean, the first several minutes build tension with Frank's story about the living dead like the best kind of campfire stories. The first real punchline comes by way of a "punch", when Frank shows Freddy the canisters, and proudly says that they are "Army built" so will withstand anything. He hits the side of it, breaching it, and a massive spray of toxic gas hits them both in the face, thus triggering the zombie apocalypse. Classic. The Return of the Living Dead is really a combination of two parallel stories--the one about Frank and Freddy's mess getting worse and worse on an epic scale, and the one about his friends getting caught up in it. These goobers exemplify every Eighties stereotype, so it's evident that they aren't meant to be taken seriously. This gives the audience "permission" to laugh at their misfortune (for the most part). Take Trash (Linnea Quigley) for instance--yes, that's actually her name. She's a proto-goth/punk with flaming red hair, who opines in the graveyard to her pal, "Spider" (Miguel A. Núñez Jr.), that her biggest fear is to be eaten alive by a bunch of old men who would tear her clothes off. She then proceeds to rip her own clothing off and dance on a grave to the tune of "Tonight (We'll Make Love Until We Die)" by SSQ. Really. But the best part is that when the predictable zombie attack comes, Trash is pulled down by several zombies and...well, you can probably figure out the rest. And there is "Suicide" (Mark Venturini), who has more metal on his face than there is in his hoopty convertible; he also takes his punk "lifestyle" all too seriously. So as it befits the horror movie genre, we don't get too attached to these redshirts, and all but expect them to be picked off one by one; and we won't be disappointed.
If you were to gamble on where The Return of the Living Dead falls on the comedy/horror roulette wheel, I'd place my bet on comedy. Sure, there are zombies...brain eating zombies, to be specific, but it's hard to take them too seriously when they emerge from their graves to the hard rock tune of "Partytime" by Grave 45. At one point, the survivors--which includes Frank and Freddy's self-serving boss, Burt (Clu Gulager), and his mortician buddy, Ernie (Don Calfa)...and yes, that's "Bert and Ernie" for those paying attention--capture a zombie (well...half of a zombie). She informs them that they eat brains because it staves off the abject pain of being dead. (Well, so much for resting in piece, I guess.) And...that's about as much as you need to know about why the zombies do it. Honestly, the film doesn't pay it much more thought after this, nor should it. Instead, it is content to set up a bevy of gags to counterbalance the horror and violence, doing so often. One of the best comes after the paramedics are called to check out Frank and Freddy, who are "medically" dead, even if they still walk and talk. The confused EMTs go back out to their ambulance, only to be ambushed by the horde of flesh eaters. When their radio dispatch calls out to them on the ham radio, one of the more loquacious zombies (if only by comparison) groans, "send...more...paramedics". And yes, more paramedics show up with predictable results. Fast forward a bit when the police (finally) show up, and the joke gets repeated. There's no sane way to look at these comical moments and not full-on laugh at the absurdity of it. And for the purpose of the zombie horror, even the laws of physics--as it pertains to anatomy, at least--get broken willy-nilly. Frank and Freddy first discover something is amiss after their accident with the gas because they discover one of the "half-dogs" (used ostensibly for veterinary classes) reanimated and whining painfully. Frank panics and screams like a baby at the poor critter. And there is even outright silliness in the way that our hapless heroes try to deal with the reanimated cadaver they were keeping on ice, all yellowed with jaundice. They recall that in The Night of the Living Dead, destroying the brain is supposed to stop them. Sounds logical...only it doesn't work, so they end up with a headless cadaver flailing around and running amok. Once they finally do subdue the body, Burt believes that he can convince Ernie to let them burn the moving pieces by pretending that they're rabid weasels...and Ernie ain't buying. And let's not forget that Ernie (the mortician) seems to be a believer in open-carry laws, wearing his pistol and holster over his mortician's uniform, for all the good that it does him against a swarm of targets that can't be killed. I mean...that's not something you see everyday, no matter what neighborhood your mortuary is in. There's a small subplot about an army man named Colonel Glover (Jonathan Terry)--kind of a jerk who lives in a cushy mansion on the west coast and turns his nose up at the lamb chops his wife, Ethel (Cathleen Cordell), made because he had it for lunch. Once he learns about the zombie outbreak, his response is predictably horrible and stupid all at once, because you can't trust the government, I guess. But the real "fun" of The Return of the Living Dead is not to be found in deep contemplation about life after death or government cover-ups. It's in a gleeful subversion and parody of the zombie horror subgenre, inviting audiences to laugh at the misfortunate plague of undeath instead of cringe, because it's a mad world, and zombies are people too...or were...I kind of lost the thread there.
Recommended for: Fans of a silly zombie movie with deliberately two-dimensional characters, so as to not detract from the gleeful juggling of comedy and horror. The Return of the Living Dead just so happened to establish some of the best known "zombie" tropes today, not least of which is the overwhelming desire to eat brains, as proudly barked out by the iconic "Tarman Zombie" (Allan Trautman), who exemplifies the movie's combination of the grotesque and ridiculous all by himself for all of his brief screen time.
If you were to gamble on where The Return of the Living Dead falls on the comedy/horror roulette wheel, I'd place my bet on comedy. Sure, there are zombies...brain eating zombies, to be specific, but it's hard to take them too seriously when they emerge from their graves to the hard rock tune of "Partytime" by Grave 45. At one point, the survivors--which includes Frank and Freddy's self-serving boss, Burt (Clu Gulager), and his mortician buddy, Ernie (Don Calfa)...and yes, that's "Bert and Ernie" for those paying attention--capture a zombie (well...half of a zombie). She informs them that they eat brains because it staves off the abject pain of being dead. (Well, so much for resting in piece, I guess.) And...that's about as much as you need to know about why the zombies do it. Honestly, the film doesn't pay it much more thought after this, nor should it. Instead, it is content to set up a bevy of gags to counterbalance the horror and violence, doing so often. One of the best comes after the paramedics are called to check out Frank and Freddy, who are "medically" dead, even if they still walk and talk. The confused EMTs go back out to their ambulance, only to be ambushed by the horde of flesh eaters. When their radio dispatch calls out to them on the ham radio, one of the more loquacious zombies (if only by comparison) groans, "send...more...paramedics". And yes, more paramedics show up with predictable results. Fast forward a bit when the police (finally) show up, and the joke gets repeated. There's no sane way to look at these comical moments and not full-on laugh at the absurdity of it. And for the purpose of the zombie horror, even the laws of physics--as it pertains to anatomy, at least--get broken willy-nilly. Frank and Freddy first discover something is amiss after their accident with the gas because they discover one of the "half-dogs" (used ostensibly for veterinary classes) reanimated and whining painfully. Frank panics and screams like a baby at the poor critter. And there is even outright silliness in the way that our hapless heroes try to deal with the reanimated cadaver they were keeping on ice, all yellowed with jaundice. They recall that in The Night of the Living Dead, destroying the brain is supposed to stop them. Sounds logical...only it doesn't work, so they end up with a headless cadaver flailing around and running amok. Once they finally do subdue the body, Burt believes that he can convince Ernie to let them burn the moving pieces by pretending that they're rabid weasels...and Ernie ain't buying. And let's not forget that Ernie (the mortician) seems to be a believer in open-carry laws, wearing his pistol and holster over his mortician's uniform, for all the good that it does him against a swarm of targets that can't be killed. I mean...that's not something you see everyday, no matter what neighborhood your mortuary is in. There's a small subplot about an army man named Colonel Glover (Jonathan Terry)--kind of a jerk who lives in a cushy mansion on the west coast and turns his nose up at the lamb chops his wife, Ethel (Cathleen Cordell), made because he had it for lunch. Once he learns about the zombie outbreak, his response is predictably horrible and stupid all at once, because you can't trust the government, I guess. But the real "fun" of The Return of the Living Dead is not to be found in deep contemplation about life after death or government cover-ups. It's in a gleeful subversion and parody of the zombie horror subgenre, inviting audiences to laugh at the misfortunate plague of undeath instead of cringe, because it's a mad world, and zombies are people too...or were...I kind of lost the thread there.
Recommended for: Fans of a silly zombie movie with deliberately two-dimensional characters, so as to not detract from the gleeful juggling of comedy and horror. The Return of the Living Dead just so happened to establish some of the best known "zombie" tropes today, not least of which is the overwhelming desire to eat brains, as proudly barked out by the iconic "Tarman Zombie" (Allan Trautman), who exemplifies the movie's combination of the grotesque and ridiculous all by himself for all of his brief screen time.