The Return of the Living Dead
by Dan O'Bannon
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Beverly Randolph, Clu Gulager, Don Calfa, James Karen, Thom MathewsDirector: Dan O'Bannon
Writer: Dan O'Bannon
Producer: Derek Gibson
Producer: Graham Henderson
Producer: John Daly
Writer: John A. Russo
Writer: Rudy Ricci
Writer: Russell Streiner
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Letterboxed, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 91 minutes
Published: 2002-08-01
DVD Release Date: 2002-08-27
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Movie Reviews of The Return of the Living Dead
Movie Review: A great horror-comedy that hasn't lost its edge over the years.
Summary: 5 Stars
Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.
Horror-comedies can be an extremely tricky thing to pull off. Most filmmakers who attempt to do one usually veer too far in either direction and the result is usually quite less than stellar. But one thing I have noticed about a lot of horror films from the 80's is that some of the most memorable and excellent horror-comedies come from that decade. While Re-Animator, Bad Taste and The Toxic Avenger usually come to mind when 80's horror-comedies are mentioned, 1985's Return of the Living Dead ranks right up there with those classic film IMO and is an excellent example on how horror-comedies should be done.
While most people might think that this is some sort of pseudo-sequel of sorts to George Romero's classic zombie films, Return of the Living Dead (or ROTLD as I'll refer to it from now on) writer/director Dan O'Bannon took a completely different approach. According to this film, the events of the original B/W Night of the Living Dead ACTUALLY HAPPENED! But George Romero just changed a lot of the facts supposedly in his film. This allows ROTLD to pay tribute to that classic 1968 film while also making its own rules as far as zombie behavior and what happened to make the dead come back to life and have an insatiable appetite for human brains.
As the film starts out we meet Frank (James Karen) who works at the Uneeda Mecial Supply warehouse in Louisville, KY that is owned and operated by Burt Wilson (Clu Gulager). Frank is showing a new young employee by the name of Freddy (Thom Mathews) the ropes and how things operate in the warehouse. These scenes are especially funny as Frank and Freddy make a really funny comical team of sorts. Frank tells Freddy that there is supposedly a skeleton farm in India which is where almost all of the skeletons used in medical schools are sent out from. There's also a refrigerated room that has a dead body hanging from hooks in its ears for medical schools to use as well!
We also meet a collection of teenagers who are quite an eclectic bunch. There are the usual 80's punks but also a few that are sort of preppy. I've always wondered if the filmmakers meant for them to represent a complete cross section of mid-80's youth or something along those lines. One of the more prominent people other than Freddy's girlfriend in the group is the scream queen Linnea Quigley (who is called Trash) who spends much of the movie completely nude (and looking damn good I might add). One of the other girls is Freddy's girlfriend and they are trying to find something to do while waiting for Freddy to get off of work. They find they're way into a cemetary near the medical warehouse where Freddy is at just to burn some time.
While Frank is showing Freddy how to complete some forms, he asks Freddy is he's ever heard of the movie Night of the Living Dead. According to Frank, the events in that film really happened and that the dead were actually brought back to life by some sort of secret chemical that the military was working on to spray on marijuana plants. This chemical seeped down through the floor at some facility and caused the dead to come back to life. Turns out that some of these corpses were put in canisters and some of these canisters accidentally found their way to the Uneeda Medical warehouse 14 years ago.
Frank takes Freddy down in the basement to show him these canisters. Things start to get set in motion when Frank slaps the side of one of the canisters and the vaporous chemical is released in great quantity causing Frank and Freddy to pass out. They end up coming to about an hour later, but are extremely sick and sweating profusely. They go upstairs and they notice that a split-dog on one of the shelves has come back to life and the cadaver in the refrigerated room has also been re-animated and apparently isn't happy and wanting out.
Frank tries to take control of the situation by calling his boss Burt. Burt is completely upset that Frank messed with the canisters and calls on his friend Ernie Kaltenbrunner (Don Calfa) who runs a mortician shop across the street to burn the re-animated cadaver in his furnace after it gets chopped into pieces during a hilarious sequence in which Frank, Freddy and Burt find out that hitting the brain doesn't stop the zombies like it did in the movie Night of the Living Dead. (This scene contains some of my favorite lines of dialogue BTW).
This is where the movie really starts to pick up some serious pace. It also becomes apparent that all rules are out the window in the fact that bullets or sharp objects to a zombie's brain won't stop them.
While they are burning the body parts the smoke rises into the rain clouds and it immediately begins to rain making the zombie inducing chemicals rain down into the local cemetary bringing the dead back to life.
Meanwhile, Frank and Freddy are getting sicker and looking really bad. Until the paramedics arrive, nobody has figured out that they are actually quite dead and slowly turning into zombies.
The rest of the gang in the cemetary end up getting attacked by the zombies and take refuge in the medical supply warehouse where Freddy's girlfriend is trapped downstairs by a memorable zombie that has been dubbed Tar-Man by the filmmakers. She went in there earlier to try to find Freddy and got trapped.
What is truly great about the film up until this point is how funny it truly is while also managing to gross you out at the same time. There is a growing sense of dread that is occuring throughout the course of the film as things go from bad to worse.
Another thing that set this film apart from the majority of other zombie films (beside the great sense of humor) was the fact that the zombies in ROTLD can actually run instead of just lumbering around. Another great aspect to the living dead in this film is that they can actually think and are quite quick witted in some respects. Witness the scenes in which they keep ambushing the police officers and paramedics by using their CB's to call for more "assistance" (yes, the zombies can talk in this film as well).
The film takes a little more of a serious tone during the third act but it is appropriate in the overall structure and the humor takes a little more of a back seat to the horror elements.
The acting is pretty much great with James Karen and Thom Mathews proving to be a great comic team. Clu Gulager is also hilarious as their boss Burt. But the one who steals the show is Don Calfa as the mortician Ernie. His performance is hilarious and some of his reactions and deliveries of his lines are truly inspired. The rest of the young cast does solid work as well with the exception of Linnea Quigley. As great as she looks nude in this film, her acting left quite a bit to be desired. But thankfully, she isn't the focal point of the film and her death at the hands of the zombies is appropriately grisly.
Their is a pretty good amount of graphic violence and gore throughout the film, especially for an R-rated film. The MPAA hadn't started cracking down on horror films like they began to in just a few years and as a result ROTLD features more carnage than you might expect. But I still felt that the movie could have used a bit more gore as some of the kills happen slightly off-screen or a victim will just disappear in a swarm of zombies. There still is enough here to please gorehounds though.
The zombie makeup is also pretty good and just wait until you see the zombie dubbed Tar-Man in most horror circles. He is truly a show-stopper!
The direction is also quite good. This was the first directing effort for Dan O'Bannon. Up until this point he had made a name for himself by being a co-writer on the 1974 John Carpenter film Dark Star as well as writing the 1979 classic Alien directed by Ridley Scott. He also wrote a couple of the segments in the animated short-story anthology Heavy Metal from 1981 as well as 1983's Blue Thunder. For a relatively low budget film with a budget of only about 4 million, he made the film look quite polished throughout.
Dan O'Bannon displays a natural touch to the material and strikes an almost perfect balance between the comedy and the horror. This is most apparent during the first hour or so. An unsuspecting viewer will be getting shocked and disgusted while also laughing at the absurdity of the situations at the same time.
The ROTLD series has seen 2 sequels to date. The 2nd one was wretched but the 3rd one is more of a stand alone film that actually works quite well. But nothing will be able to touch the first ROTLD. It's got gore, lots of gratuitous nudity, tons of laughs and plenty of genuine scares. What more could a horror fan ask for?
The recent DVD of this film from MGM is absolutely fantastic. First of all, the film has been digitally remastered and looks better than it probably ever has. Colors are great and the nighttime scenes display just a hint of grain. Instead of remastering the audio in Dolby Digital, MGM just touched up the original mono-soundtrack which admittedly sounds just fine. The film is presented in it's original anamorphic matted 1.85:1 theatrical ratio on side A and a open matte full screen version on side B. While I normally always prefer widescreen versions of films, this is an extremely rare case where I actually prefer the full frame version which loses just a tiny bit of picture information on the sides. You gain a very small amount of picture on the sides for the widescreen version and you lose quite a bit of picture information on the top and bottom. I guess all the years of watching it on full-frame VHS makes me more comfortable with the full frame version. There are also a few instances where the full frame version also displays a little bit more gore and nudity in various scenes on the bottom of the frame versus the widescreen transfer which blocks some of this out. Due to the complete lack of boom mic in the full frame version, I would think that they may filmed the movie with the intentions of it being full frame and just matted it down for the theatrical run.
Of particular mention is the full length commentary track with writer/director Dan O'Bannon and production designer William Stout. While there are a few dead spots and a couple of instances where they are just saying what's happening on screen, they also give out quite a bit of useful information about making the film and how it came to be. Definitely worth a listen for fans of the film.
There is also about a 10 minute featurette with interviews with Dan O'Bannon and William Stout that gives even more insight into the making of the film. Another brief featurette where William Stout shows off someof his original drawings and designs for the zombies in the film.
Rounding it all out are the usual assortments of theatrical and T.V. trailers.
I picked this up for only 9.99 brand new when it came out on DVD in 2002 and I applaud MGM for giving this film the proper treatment it deserves. Great picture quality and a good selection of supplements make this one a steal for fans of the film or horror fans just wanting to see how a horror-comedy should be done right.
Return of the Living Dead is rated R and contains graphic violence, gore, nudity and language.
Summary of The Return of the Living Dead
Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the cemetery'those brain-eating zombies are back and hungry for more tasty mortals. A fiendish mix of outrageous humor and heart-stopping terror, The Return of the Living Dead is a veritable smorgasbord of fun (LA Herald-Examiner) filled with skin-crawling jolts, eye-popping visuals and relentless surprise! On his first day on the job at an army surplus store, poor Freddy unwittingly releases nerve gas from a secret U.S. military canister, unleashing an unbelievable terror. The gas re-animates a corps of corpses, who arise from their graves with a ravenous hunger for human brains! And luckily for those carnivorous cadavers, there is a group of partying teens nearby, just waiting to be eaten!"Do ya wanna party?" challenges the soundtrack to this freaky and funny reworking of George Romero's Night of the Living Dead. Paced to the beat of a pounding rock score, this comic flesh feast delivers both laughs and outlandish gore. No longer lumbering, moaning creatures, these lithe, feral, and cunning undead claw their way out of the cemetery and into the skulls of a human smorgasbord. They even master the art of home delivery: "Send more cops," croaks a corpse into a patrol car radio. Director Dan O'Bannon even takes pains to explain their motivation between the tributes to the granddaddy of zombie horrors ("Well, it worked in the movie!" screams James Karen when a pickax to the skull hardly phases a lively cadaver). Not that it really matters amid the gore and gallows humor, but it does add a kick to the cynically sinister climax. --Sean Axmaker
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