Exploring the Sequels

#5 The Return Of The Living Dead

And the RISE of the zom com!

The Return of the Living Dead (ROTLD) made its debut forty years ago in 1985 two months after George A. Romero’s third Dead film, Day of the Dead. Culturally we were close to twenty years removed since Romero took his mysteriously reanimated ghouls and redefined the way our culture thinks of zombies. No longer hypnotized victims under the spell of voodoo magic compelled to commit revenge for a jilted lover, these new, actual corpses rose from their graves, slow and shuffling, with a relentless and all consuming appetite for human flesh. The only way to stop them from making you their next meal was blunt force trauma to their heads and then burn the bodies.

Romero created the template for what we now take for granted as tropes and cliches but also masterfully weaved socio-political metaphors with these newly transformed monsters starting in 1968 with the siege narrative meets backlash towards human civil rights in Night, then the interrogation of rising consumer culture and environmental excess in Dawn, and the distrust of the US military complex and what it means to be human in Day. By the time Romero had completed Day of the Dead the zombie genre had become steeped in a bleak seriousness showcasing the “humans are the real monsters” subtext with the maniacal Captain Rhodes (Joseph Pirato) juxtaposed with the empathetic and childlike zombie “Bub” ( Sherman Howard) held in captivity and slowly relearning his humanity.

The Living Dead series came to fruition from Romero’s co-writer John A. Russo after a disagreement he and Romero had on the direction those films should take. Eventually an agreement to split up was made and Romero would keep the rights to the future titles of “Dead” and Russo’s new series would take the moniker of the “Living Dead”. There were further deviations Russo would make as well. In his world, Night of the Living Dead was a movie but also secretly based on real events that were covered up by the US government. There is no real way to truly stop them (shots to the head don’t work), and his zombies specifically desire one body part to devour…you know it….BRAINS!!!

ROTLD may also be the first zombie movie that features undead who not only walk but run, and automatically think and speak somewhat intelligently with a tonal shift that defied the more dramatic horror of Romero and Fulci adding human and creature comedy throughout. After director Tobe Hooper (Salem’s Lot) eventually left the project, his writing partner on Lifeforce, Dan O’Bannon (writer of Alien, cowriter on Dark Star) was brought on to pen a new script and direct (his first film) adding slapstick with a punk rock ascetic and antiestablishment spirit.

ROTLD takes place in Louisville, KY (my home state) at the Uneeda Medical Supply Company. There is no one or two main characters as we are introduced to the first of two separate ensembles we will follow throughout the movie until all parties climatically meet in the third act. Newly hired Freddy (Thom Matthews) is learning the ropes from his manger Frank (James Karen) and we quickly learn that this warehouse holds many corpses, cadavers, and even animals such as dissected dogs used for science classes. To impress him, Frank tells Freddy the truth about what really happened with Night of the Living Dead and proceeds to show him the hidden canisters accidentally sent there for storage by the US Army that originally caused the outbreak. One of the drums is accidentally broken releasing the toxic gas called Trioxin and contaminates both Freddy and Frank.

During this, our second group consisting of a mix of 80’s punk and New Wave twenty something’s, who are also friends with Freddy, decide to stop driving around aimlessly and party in the cemetery next to Uneeda Medical Supply. Not long after, they start drinking and dancing, including an infamous scene of pink haired Trash (Scream Queen Leana Quigley) stripping down to dance nude (and stay that way for most of the movie) on a gravestone while her friends cheer her on with names like Scuz (Brian Peck), Suicide (Mark Venturini), and my favorite Spider, played by future Juwanna Man himself Miguel A Nunez Jr.

Freddy’s girlfriend Tina (Beverly Rudolph) takes off to Uneeda Medical to find him and all hell breaks loose as the corpses in the building reanimate (including those little dogs) setting their sites on our cast of characters. Frank and Freddy call the owner Burt (Clu Gulager) back in and must fight off a cadaver from a freezer. After realizing they can’t kill what’s already dead and each undead body part can survive independently they flee to the neighboring mortuary owned by Ernie (Don Calfa), a mortician and old friend of Burt, to burn the body. This causes the Trioxin to escape into the atmosphere like acid rain contaminating the neighboring cemetery (no civil engineer could see this coming).

Eventually our group at the mortuary and the surviving punks from the cemetery merge and must spend the remainder of the night fighting off the undead and relying on only themselves until the Army is eventually called and Colonel Glover (Jonathan Terry) ensures them a help is on the way.

The Return of the Living Dead boasts the best zombie makeup and prosthetics at that point in time outside of Fulci’s Zombie 2. Make up effects artists Tony Gardner, William Munns, Kenny Myers, and Craig Caton-Largnet created one of the most cult iconic zombies in TarMan, played by Jim Henson puppeteer Allan Trautman, as a wide eyed, cartoonishly gooey yet still scary zombie who was in one of the canisters and escaped.

Along with Romero’s similar take on our military, ROTLD also contains moments of serious pathos as well. My favorite scene involves Ernie and Spider taking a female zombie, who is only a head and torso, and strapping her to an operating table to interrogate her. This scene is played 100% dramatically and we learn, along with the terrified survivors, from her strained, sad, and painful dialogue that her kind craves brains because eating them “makes the pain go away”. You see, these zombies are in a state of constant, physical torture and can even feel themselves rotting in real time. It’s a new, complex facet to this zombie mythology and asks the audience to empathize with these monsters in a different way than Bub in Day of the Dead.

The soundtrack is also full of absolute killer 80’s punk rock tracks from bands like The Cramps, 45 Grave, The Flesh Eaters, The Damned, and SSQ making this one of the best horror movie soundtracks ever and a must listen during Halloween season giving The Lost Boys (and the saxophone guy) a run for their money.

Any fan of horror and more specifically horror comedies, know that combining these two genres is a tough cake to bake. Finding the perfect balance of making a horror film that is scary but also successfully contain moments of levity to underscore and extenuate the darker side of the story is rarely done right. In most cases a horror comedy’s tone is off balance and likely is a comedy film that has been made with some moments of horror that are undermined by the overwhelmingly lighter side of the story.

Much like perfect horror comedies An American Werewolf in London, Evil Dead 2, and Fright Night (also 1985), ROTLD finds equilibrium blending comic relief throughout to only compliment the truly horrific scenes of characters with real stakes fighting against odds that are less and less in their favor as the movie barrels through to its ultra bleak and hopeless conclusion. The comedy is there and it’s funny. But never at the cost of undermining the horror. And the ultimate horror in this means that in the end the ones we place our greatest trust in to save us are the ones who betray us even faster than a horde of zombies can catch us.

But as dark as ROTLD becomes, by the credits I was reminded of that punk philosophy that rolls through the movie like a gaseous fog through the cemetery best encapsulated by the phrase on the back of Freddy’s sports jacket…

“Fuck You”.

The Return of the Living Dead is like one of those zombie heads rolling around through the chaos of the movie. Winking at us with one eye while scaring us with the slimy empty socket in the other.

A horrible way to go in one Horrorble movie!

This is a classic of the zombie genre and horror movies in general. If you have not seen this please check it out as it could be one you’ll RETURN to again and again.

We’ll see you next time with Return of the Living Dead 2!

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Here are my Top 5 Zombie Movies.

Lets hear yours while you’re here if you got a sec.

1.) Night of the Living Dead

2.) Dawn of the Dead

3.) Return of the Living Dead

4.) Shaun of the Dead

5.) Day of the Dead