Until “Shaun of the Dead” shambled onto the scene a few years ago, if you’d asked me to name my favorite zombie movie of all time, you’d always have gotten the same answer: “Return of the Living Dead.” I mean, there just wasn’t even a second-place contender.
Why did I enjoy it so much? Well, certainly, Linnea Quigley dancing nude (save for a pair of thigh-high stockings) atop a crypt is always gonna rank pretty high on my list of reasons, but, on the whole, it’s because the film manages to start off feeling like a broad slapstick comedy, then slowly pulls back on the humor while raising the level of tension. By the time the film ends and you think back to what you’ve witnessed, you’ll realize that you aren’t exactly sure when the transition happened. That’s a testament to the abilities of director Dan O’Bannon, who’d already earned a name for himself in Hollywood through his screenplays for “Alien” and “Blue Thunder” but had never helmed a movie ’til this one. Given how successful he was at it, it’s surprising to discover that he’s only directed one other film since then (1992’s “The Resurrected”), but that fact in no way detracts from his successes here.
“Return of the Living Dead” begins in the Uneda Medical Supply warehouse, where Frank (James Karen) is training the company’s new employee, Freddy (Thom Matthews), of the ins and outs of the business before they head out to celebrate the long 4th of July weekend. When Freddy asks Frank the weirdest thing he’s ever seen in his time there, Frank replies by asking Freddy if he’s ever seen the movie “Night of the Living Dead.” Turns out that the events in George A. Romero’s classic zombie flick actually happened, but that the specifics had to be changed up and switched around, and that the basement of the warehouse actually houses some of the (un)dead bodies, which are housed in sealed barrels. (There’s a plot thread which runs throughout the film about how the U.S. Army is still on the lookout for their missing barrels, which pays off handsomely.) Inevitably, Frank feels obliged to show Freddy, and when Frank pounds his fist upon one of the barrels to assure Freddy that they’re sealed up tight, he manages to crack the seal and send 2-4-5 Trioxin gas spewing into the air. The pair pass out, and when they wake up, they realize that the gas has seeped into the warehouse and brought the various cadavers within the building back to life; even worse, it turns out that one of the bits that had been changed in “Night of the Living Dead” is that the zombies can’t actually be killed by a blow to the head! They can, however, be killed by being burned to ashes…but, even then, if the ashes mix with water and seep into the soil of, say, a graveyard, then it’s zombies a go go.
Would it surprise you to learn that that’s exactly what happens? Yeah, I didn’t think it would.
Freddy’s friends are painted in that incredibly over-the-top way that teenagers in ’80s films always tended to be – a punk rocker, a tie-wearing geek, a leather-wearing metalhead, a sexy exhibitionist (paging Leanna Quigley!), and a squeaky-clean cutiepie – but by the end, they all end up being equally scared to death. That’s one of the key things about the film that makes it work: only one person really acts like a complete dumbass, and he ends up being the first killed. After that, everyone else acts just like most everyone else would when confronted by brain-eating zombies: they run around screaming, “We’re going to fucking die!” There are a couple of exceptions, such as Clu Gallagher, who plays Bert, the owner of the warehouse, who spends a considerable amount of time trying to cover his own ass, but even he gradually concedes the point and calls the authorities; his crematorium-owning buddy, Ernie (Don Calfa), starts off trying to be a Luger-wielding bad ass, but in the end, he’s screaming with the rest of them.
MGM / Fox have done a nice job of providing this cult classic with a great Collector’s Edition, offering two commentary tracks, several featurettes, and even zombie subtitles to clarify exactly what was on the mind of the undead during the course of the film. Even if you’ve already bought “Return of the Living Dead” in the past, there’s enough new material here to make it worth purchasing again.
In closing, all I can say is, “Send…more…cops.”
