Review: The Return Of The Living Dead

While social commentary gems like Dawn Of The Dead and gorific pieces of brilliance like Brain Dead get a lot of praise, films like Return Of The Living Dead deserve the same praise. A genre masterpiece, Return is a smartly written, darkly humorous and amazingly exploitative film that is a blast and a half to watch.

Setting itself up as a qusi-sequel to Romero’s Night Of The Living Dead (hence the title), Return gives the explanation that NOTLD was based on a true story where the government had an experiment go wrong, resulting in the events of NOTLD - changed slightly of course so as not to reveal what really happened - and the only remaining evidence is in the basement of a medical facility somewhere in Kentucky. Well, while pissing around, a couple of foremen accidentally unleash a toxic gas that poisons them and reanimated a corpse. Struggling to kill the damn thing they chop it up and use the local mortician to burn the pieces to ash, unfortunately while effective the resulting smoke mixes with a sudden downpour, and the now infectious rain covers a graveyard, resulting in… zombies.

That right there is probably only 15, 20 minutes of the film but it sets things up brilliantly, giving a ridiculous but still believable reason for the outbreak. What follows afterwards is some of the smartest written zombie carnage outside a Romero flick with punk rockers fighting the undead, zombie guerrilla attacks and brains, so many brains.

The characters were the only weak spot in the film but even then what they lacked in characterisation they made up for in enthusiasm and likeability. The punk rockers consisted of Scuz, an angry young man who thinks Punk first, then nothing afterwards, Spider, a role that could’ve been token black dude but he quickly becomes the de-facto leader of the group, willing or not, Tina, a young girl and most unlike the group given the fact that she was… normal, as a result she was unprepared for most of the dark shit that goes on.

There were a couple others that didn’t leave much of an impact, the last member worth noting was Trash played by Scream Queen, Linnea Quigley. Trash’s role is basically the eye-candy, and what eye-candy she is, within 10 minutes on-screen she’s stripping off in a graveyard and spends the next 90% of her time onscreen naked, and I mean full-on, bare-ass naked wearing nothing but thigh-high socks. Props to Miss Quigley for essentially saving on a costume.

Outside the punk rockers were the people responsible for the outbreak, Frank and Freddy, two foremen who poison themselves with gas, and go through unexpected changes as the film goes on, Burt and his friend Ernie - no I’m not making that up - were the main people in charge, Burt was a warehouse owner struggling to contain the secret he held onto regarding the experiments and Ernie was a mortician who’s lifework was essentially coming back to haunt him.

All the actors at least seem to be having fun and most of them are likeable, they’re a good bunch and dive right into the kinetic, punk rock theme of the movie. Most notable the film’s infamous creation, Tarman, a dripping, rotted mess of a creature that out of context looks a little silly but within the film he fits right in whilst also standing out as a highlight for just how much disgusting fun he brings to the film.

Speaking of which that is exactly what makes this movie so much fun, it’s designed to be, the punk theme works wonders because it’s a subgenre that fits perfectly but isn’t explored enough, plus the characters mix well with the aesthetic allowing for some dark themes and kick-ass tunes.

Directed by Dan O’Bannon, most famous for being the brain behind Alien, the film embraces that off-brand, slightly cheesy, punk aesthetic and is all the better for it. You have to appreciate the fact that O’Bannon went all out here, sure it’s not the biggest film ever – only really taking place in the graveyard and a mortuary – but it makes up for that with how strongly it embraces the silliness of it all, beneath the piercings and the leather and the constant rain and talks of death and gratuitous nudity, there’s simply scared people losing their goddamn minds and the film just runs with that.

The whole thing is coated with this pitch-black humour that elevates and work perfectly with it’s fast-paced mayhem, for starters while unexplored, the punk rockers aren’t the smartest bunch - actually no-one in the movie can be called a genius - and the unprepared nature of everyone involved leads to some of the film’s best moments. In a surprising twist, despite spending the whole film looking for brains - this is the first movie to actually use the brains quote for zombies - the undead are the smartest people in the movie, they know how to use tools, they talk, they set up sneak attacks with the ‘Send more paramedics’ line being a standout moment. It’s the complete switch-around about who is the ones with the brains that is a major part of the humour.

One final note on the film are the FX, it never reaches Tom Savini levels of greatness but it’s close and the practical nature of them is always a pleasure to see, from the sickening brilliance of Tarman to the literal brain eating and everything in-between, this film shows us that the practical effects always trump CGI when it comes to Zombies.

Return of the Living Dead is up there with Dawn, Night, Shaun and all the other great ‘Of the dead’ movies as one of the best, certainly one of the most entertaining, the whole film is a blast, setting up a fun but clever time with likeable (and sometimes naked) characters propelled forward by a pace that speeds along like a cheetah on nitro. A definite Halloween viewing if you haven’t seen it yet.

9/10