Theatre of the Dead #5 - Return of the Living Dead (1985)

Director: Don O'Bannon Stars: Clu Gulager, James Karen

Review:

In the 80s horror movies took a change in pure horror to more of horror comedies. Generally I do not appreciate horror comedies for scary and funny are opposite emotions. Return of the Living Dead (1985) would be the first zombie comedy considering our more harsh definition of zombies, and to my surprise this is one of my favourate zombie film of all time.

Most scary looking zombie I have seen.

A newcomer employee Freddy of a medical supply warehouse was shown a tour. His supervisor Frank knows he likes the scary stuff, dead bodies and those thing told him a secret of the company. He said the movie Night of the Living Dead was actually based on true events, and the dead were contained by this company from the order of the military. The movie changed the facts for avoiding lawsuits and actually it was a chemical that is bringing back the life. They went to the basement to watch the zombies contained in cans, but the gas in the can leaks, and all hell breaks loose.

Zombie in a can. One tap of the can and the gas leaks. It's must be made in china.

The zombie formular have changed again and this variation of Romero zombies is the most power zombie species in zombie history. They can run, have some intelligence that are able to ambursh people, and eat only brains. The real major problem is that they can not be killed. Destroying their brains wont work and their brains were eatten by other zombies anyways. If you severed their limbs, their limbs will movie on their own to come after you. Burning them is an absolutely no-no. The smokes raise to the sky and come down as rain, which would resurrect more zombies. How do you kill it you may ask? You dont. You contain them in a can. But how do you contain hundreds of them out there with several teamate you got here? Well that is the trouble.

Girl dancing naked for she's feeling horning of fantasizing of being killed horribly.

This movie is parody of the whole death metal culture. Death metalist or fans always think death is cool, till they be eating alive by the dead. Freddy have a group of friend that is into death metal or something like that. They hang around the cemetary to wait for Freddy. One slut always wanted to being killed horribly, and get horny fantasizing "a bunch of old man...eating her alive". She got so high, that she started dancing naked. I said un-necessary nuditiy is a omen for bad horror movies, but here it is necessary for it opens up all funny moments that comes ahead, when the rain with zombie chemical falls and burns her skin, and not able to run with no shoes. Well what do you know? She had her dreams come true. Take that bitch. I hope that bitch in Nekromantik (1987) get the same treatment too.

Still horny now slut?

Another highlight would be they captured and interrogated one of the zombies. They asked the zombie why do they eat brains. The zombie answered that it is painful to be dead, feeling yourself rotting away, and eating brains relieves the pain. We get also from the people that is turning into zombie, as the formular stated, that it is painful for the rigor mortis. It medically makes sense. Pressure your legs for 30 minutes to block the bloodflow and see what happens. Imagine your whole body is like that. Now you know that pain.

The writer of this movie, John Russo, is the co-writer of Night of the Living Dead, together with George A. Romero. It is a shame that usually only Romero got remembered. He and Don O'Bannon gives interesting new ideas to the zombie genre and they need to be given credits. Return of the Living Dead spawned two sequels, but none of them were any good. After whole lot of conventional zombies, get some un-conventional ones.