“The Return of the Living Dead” review — brain’s on the menu in kitschy zombie classic
★★★☆☆ The dead are on the rampage in Dan O’Bannon’s comedy/horror that’s fun but rough around the edges.
After Night of the Living Dead, the zombie movie mutated into different forms.
Two branches forked from the shambling corpse of John Russo and George Romero’s seminal 1969 horror. Driven in reality by a dispute between the two men, Romero would go on to write and direct Dawn of the Dead, an all-time classic that would ultimately crown the Bronx-born filmmaker as the king of the genre.
Having secured the rights to make his own canon of movies under the banner of “Living Dead”, Russo’s turn to deliver his brand of zombie mayhem would come much later. Lurching onto screens in 1985, The Return of the Living Dead gave gorehounds a very different monster from what we’d come to expect.
The date is July 3, 1984. Uneeda medical supplies employee Frank is showing new recruit, Freddy around the warehouse. After some guidance and workplace banter, Frank attempts to impress his young colleague with a collection of military drums he says contains toxic gas that unleashed a horde of reanimated corpses years prior. A fun, meta-tinged poke at the original 1969 movie.
One thing inevitably leads to another, and before you can say “brains” Frank accidentally releases the mysterious gas, exposing the two men as well as the surrounding area. Meanwhile, Freddy’s friends, a rowdy young group with a punk attitude, are waiting for him in a neighbouring cemetery, completely unaware that the dead bodies beneath them are beginning to come back to life…
An alternative to Romero’s far more serious movies, The Return of the Living Dead is, as its poster cheerily suggests, a bit of a party. It’s unapologetically kitsch, a blend of blood and boobs owing a lot to Roger Corman’s craptastic (but awesome) B-movies. There’s also a similar feel to Stuart Gordon’s low-budget one-two — Re-Animator and From Beyond, released around the same time.
Attempting to break free from the shackles of simply being “the Alien guy”, screenwriter/director Dan O’Bannon indulged his inner teenager. His movie is laced with a distinctly punk spirit, a vibe pushed considerably with a soundtrack featuring genre heroes The Cramps, The Flesh Eaters and The Damned.
Par for the course in this era, nudity is also present in all its titillating glory. As the appropriately named red-haired vixen Trash, eighties scream queen Linnea Quigley bares all, dancing atop a gravestone for no other reason than to arouse immature young men. Mission accomplished.
But the zombies are the best thing about this movie, obviously. While I much prefer the silent inevitability of Romero’s less picky counterparts, Russo’s undead seemingly can’t be killed, not even by a headshot. They also talk, run and even explain their insatiable need to chow down on brains.
Zombies getting on the radio of a downed ambulance, requesting more paramedics for them to consume (if you don’t ask, you don’t get, I guess), provide the film’s biggest laughs, even if the joke is used one too many times.
This joke repetition is just a small part of the film’s larger problem. The plot is incredibly thin, and with a large ensemble of underwritten characters there’s not a lot to pad the film’s already slender runtime.
Strip away the repeated jokes, annoyingly samey zombie kills, shoe leather in quieter scenes, and, in the dramatic but darkly funny climax, literal reuse of visuals from earlier in the movie, its runtime would struggle to push past the hour mark.
It’s easy to see why The Return of the Living Dead enjoys such cult-like reverence. A goofball-zombie mashup with a delightfully mad new take on the undead, a memorable punk soundtrack and enough nudity to prematurely kickstart puberty.
A reboot is (unsurprisingly) rumoured to be in the works, but I can’t see how it can top the original’s perfectly shambolic party.
