Spooktober IV Review 14: Return of the Living Dead

Return of the Living Dead (1987)

Dan O'Bannon

"Brains!"

This is going to surprise you, but when I was 14, I was a stupid idiot. Just a large dumb boy with bad opinions about lots of things. It was during this cursed time when I, already a big fan of the zombie apocalypse universe created by George Romero, that I watched Return of the Living Dead. I remember being dismayed by the level of humor and angry at the zombies who "didn't follow the rules" (as if rules are important for fictional monsters). The ghouls in this film run, talk, don't die when their heads are destroyed, and use coordinated planning and logic to defeat the humans, which is obviously the opposite of the shambling, mostly silent corpses of Romero's universe. It's a shame that I gave up on it after one watch and tucked it in the "harrumph, I hate this" category until last night, because Return of the Living Dead is an absolute masterpiece. 

Yes, it's funny, and yes it changes the rules of the Romero-verse, but those are powerfully good things, especially the way both are achieved in the film. I texted Zach and Ryan last night to point out that it has Shaun of the Dead level comedic payoff built into the script, while still retaining its violent and terrifying edge. It wasn't until the movie started that I realized it was both written and directed by Dan O'Bannon, one of the geniuses behind the immortal Alien, and the quality of talent behind this film really shines through.

The film begins brilliantly, introducing one of our main characters in the context of a new employee orientation at a bizarre medical supply warehouse. As he's learning the ropes, we as an audience are doing the same, meeting characters, understanding our setting, and getting an initial taste of what's going to cause the mayhem we paid to see. This first five minutes or so also sets up about six jokes that will have a delicious payoff at some future point in the film. We also learn that the film Night of the Living Dead exists in this universe, but that it was based on a real incident in Pittsburgh involving a chemical spill, and George Romero made his film to get the secret out (without explicitly saying so, and by changing some of the details). This is when the action kicks off, and during a tour of the basement of this supply company, we are introduced to a barrel filled with 2-4-5 Trioxin and a mummified corpse. Naturally the chemical leaks out, sprays our two hapless employees in the face, and the trouble begins in earnest.

I was already hooked by this point, but the real genius of the film comes when our characters meet the first reanimated corpse and have a frantic discussion about how to kill it. Remembering the Romero rules, they decide to destroy it's brain by pinning it to the ground and driving a pickaxe through its skull. This doesn't work (which causes them to angrily wonder why a movie would lie to them), so they use a hacksaw to cut the head clean off the body. The headless body gets up and runs around the room independent of its brain, so they hack it into chunks. The chunks begin to move on their own, so their brilliant idea is to burn the parts in a crematorium, but this just releases ash into the air (which washes into a graveyard thanks to a rainstorm). You can see where things are heading the whole time, but the journey it takes to get there is so fucking funny, and gross, and just so damn pleasurable to be a part of. You're stifling your screams to the characters and wondering how they haven't seen the Sorcerer's Apprentice segment of Fantasia before.

Most of the teen characters in the films are part of some comically exaggerated punk rock clique of friends who want to hang out in a graveyard, dance naked, and say curse words. Except, of course, the central damsel in distress, who appears to be a clean, demure, girl-next-door goody two shoes, who just happens to hang around crude punk rockers for no other reason than it's convenient to have her as a character being chased by zombies. The two main adult characters are played brilliantly by B-movie superstars Clu Gulager and James Karen, and they vacillate between scenery chewing like they're trapped in a 1950's monster matinee and genuine bloody fear so well. They were cast and directed perfectly. The sequence where they are trying to kill/dismantle the first zombie, James Karen screams, cries, and wails almost incessantly for 5 minutes straight. It's the panicky Barbara role from Night of the Living Dead, only filtered through a white dude in his mid-50's, and it's hysterical.

The dripping and disgusting gore effects are second to none, and when the zombies chomp into a character's head to get to their sweet and juicy brains, the resulting nastiness is revolting. And of course, this was the film that turned zombies from your bog standard flesh eating ghoul into something that loudly and voraciously desires the fresh brains of the living. One of my favorite sequences in the film is when a living character captures a particularly desiccated and incomplete corpse to interrogate her on why they're so desperate to eat brains. Her answer is that brains are the only way to stop the pain of being dead. For some reason 2-4-5 trioxin wakes you up from death, but also leaves you permanently aware of how painful it is to rot away. She reveals this information while strapped down to a metal autopsy table, dripping fluid from her freshly hacked apart spine. You actually start to pity the dead! They didn't ask to be woken up.

This next paragraph contains spoilers about the ending, so if you care, skip it!

I also love the scene just before the climax of the film, where the characters call the "In case of emergency" phone number on the side of the chemical barrel and are put in touch with an Army general (who we met briefly at the beginning of the film with no explanation at the time). We only see the conversation from the perspective of the general asking various questions, and giving his one-sided answers back. He recaps the whole film through questions like, "And then what happened? Oh my. And what did they do? I see. How many? Oh dear. Why didn't you call the number right away? I guess that's understandable." He takes meticulous notes on the conversation, then calmly gets out of bed, goes over to a computer console, and drops a nuclear bomb on the whole city! Such a funny deus ex machina that pulls the rug out from under you.

Since this movie grabbed hold of me so wonderfully, I decided to see if the genius continued with the sequel and made last night into a double feature. Unfortunately, it doesn't really hold up. The best part of the sequel is that James Karen and Thom Mathews (the lead punk/new employee from the first film) are back, but as completely new characters doing essentially the exact same thing they did in the first one. At one point, in the throes of his zombification, Mathews' character screams, "I feel like I've done this before!" But beyond that, eh. A lot of half-cocked ideas and underdeveloped storylines. Overall, it's a lot more generic.

I honestly can't wait to watch this again, and I may do so before this Spooktober ends. It's going to join my collection of Blu-Rays as soon as I can get around to ordering it, and I have no doubt that it will make an appearance at a Five Hours of Terror event in the future. I can't believe it took me so long to come back around to it, but I'm very glad I did. As Emily pointed out last night, this is the reason Spooktober is our favorite. Sometimes you discover something new that excites you, and sometimes you rediscover something lost that changes your mind and blows you away.

Get on this one, folks. You won't regret it.

REVIEW: A whole heaping helping of succulent juicy chess club brains.

HOW I WATCHED IT: Amazon Prime. You don't have an excuse NOT to watch it!

BEVERAGE: I started with a Surly One Man Mosh Pit IPA but was enjoying myself so much, I poured myself a snort of Auchentoshan Three Wood for the third act.