RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD (1985) Directed by Dan O’Bannon
Getting into a classic this time! I have a confession here; I’ve only ever watched half of this movie before, never seen the whole thing until now. Ok, I’ll let that soak in for a bit. Got it? Ready to go now? Cool! So yeah…a classic in the zombie genre that was NOT directed by Romero. As a kid I always thought this was a sequel to Night of the Living Dead by Romero, but it is a stand-alone film. Return does mention Night of the Living Dead a few times as if it inspired an actual event of zombies created by the government killing people.
The film starts with a guy named Freddy working at a medical supply company. Freddy is getting the tour from coworker Frank. The building contains numerous medical supplies, along with corpses and split dogs. Freddy asks Frank about the craziest thing he’s seen working for the company. Frank goes on to describe basically what happens in Night of the Living Dead (if you haven’t seen that, then you should watch it, like…now!) where an experiment went awry. To further his story, Frank takes Freddy into the basement and shows him the remains of one of the zombies in a army barrel. When showing the barrel, a seal blows and gas is released into the air. The gas makes Frank and Freddy pass out cold on the basement floor.
After a while the two wake up and realize the body inside the barrel has disappeared. They discover that the gas reanimated the corpse in a meat locker and it begins to attack them. They call their boss to come in and assist. Burt, the boss comes in and helps Frank and Freddy wrestle the corpse down. They bury a pick axe into its skull to destroy the brain. The corpse continues to move, and Frank claims that’s how they destroyed the zombies in the movie. Burn quickly saws the head off the corpse and the body jumps up and runs around destroying stuff. You quickly begin to notice the humor of this movie at this point. Sure its silly but its definitely a good time. The three guys take the corpse to the mortuary to cremate the still living remains.
While all this is happening, Freddy’s friends are driving around in a convertible. They have such attractive names as Trash, Scuz, Suicide, Spider, Casey, Chuck and Tina. Tina is Freddy’s girlfriend. She informs the others about Freddy’s new job at the medical supply company. They decide to wait for Freddy to get out of work, where do they wait? They wait in a graveyard of course, why not? While in the graveyard they party, Trash takes her clothes off because she’s played by Linnea Quigley, and she always has to be naked. Trash continues to dance naked in the middle of a graveyard and its pretty hot, not gonna lie. Tina in the meantime leaves to see Freddy at work. She arrives and notices that no one is there. She goes into the basement and is attacked by a heavily decaying zombie known as Tar Man. This is where the classic line “BRAAAINS!” is uttered. Tina locks herself into a locker to hide.
Meanwhile, the guys take the corpse to the mortuary and talk Ernie the mortician into cremating the remains of the zombie. They are relieved thinking the cremation took care of the problem, but little do they know the smoke creates acid rain. The punks in the graveyard run to their car to get shelter from the burning rain. Trash of course is still tits out naked, like only wearing leg warmers naked. Of course the car won’t start because this is a horror movie. The punks run out and take refuge in the warehouse. Spider hears Tina screaming and rescues her from Tarman that was using a chain and winch to open the locker or closet thing that Tina hid in. Tarman takes a huge bite out of Suicide’s skull, thus killing him. The special effects on Tarman are awesome by the way. Then the group runs to the cemetery to find Freddy after seeing him go into the mortuary. It is in the cemetery where they witness the dead rising from the grave. The naked Trash gets caught and eaten alive by a large group of zombies.
Freddy and Frank continue to feel ill from the gas that was released from the tank/barrel thing. Ernie calls the paramedics to come and check them out. The paramedics show up, run some tests on the guys and realize that they’re actually dead, but they’re conscious. The medics go to the truck and get attacked and killed by the zombies. Ernie tries to use the truck to escape but he’s attacked and flees back into the mortuary. A zombie gets on the radio and tells dispatch to send more medics. Freddy and Frank continue to feel worse so they put them into the chapel and Lisa refuses to leave Freddy, that’s incredibly smart.
The group of punks, Ernie, and Burt barricade the front door up and Scuz gets killed by a zombie. Ernie captures the zombie that kills Scuz so he can study it. The half zombie tells the group that they eat brains because it helps with the pain of dying. Meanwhile in the chapel Freddy is a zombie now and tries to attack Lisa, because who didn’t see that coming…dumb broad. Ernie throws a beaker of nitric acid in Freddy’s face, thus blinding him. Frank escapes through the open door and goes to the crematory and throws himself in. Burt and Spider escape in a cop car, leaving Ernie and Lisa behind. Burt is kind of a jerk so it is to be expected. Ernie and Lisa go into the crawlspace to hide, while Burt and Spider go back to the supply building to find Chuck and Casey there. They let Tarman out and Burt knocks his head off. Burt goes into the basement and calls the number on the tank. A military general or captain or something answers and vows to take care of it.
Ernie and Lisa are getting harassed by zombie Freddy in the crawlspace. Trash the zombie and the others attack a police barricade that includes a chopper. Suddenly the military man that was on the phone dials in coordinates and the army drops a nuke on the area, thus wiping out everything in its path. The movie comes to an end and you are to believe everything has been destroyed. He says that the rain should wash everything away, but of course it causes the dead to rise again.
This movie was nuts, lots of stuff happens and it was hard to wrap up quickly, thus the length of this review haha. This is actually the first zombie film that I’m aware of that shows zombies eating solely the brains of the living. It has many iconic scenes such as Trash dancing naked, Tarman, and the memorable line of “brraaaaains”. If you are a fan of zombie movies, you should definitely watch this one. It has some good laughs and amazing gore. Some of the images such as a zombie eating the brains out of the paramedic’s skull are very strong and grotesque. I love how hopeless this movie is, it doesn’t matter what you do to the zombies they keep coming. You can cut its head off, burn it, shoot it, anything and it wont stop, the pieces will attack you or the ashes will create rain that brings more to life. My favorite character has to be Ernie, he’s odd but kind of a bad ass. Lastly, even though her hair was hideous, Linnea Quigley was still hot in this movie, plus she runs around butt naked most of the time. I’d give this movie an A-. The gore was great, story was great, some of the acting was wooden but you can’t expect much with this kind of film. Give it a watch!
