I selected last night’s film based on a couple of different criteria, firstly that it was a shorter film, just over 90 minutes, second that it was not too serious nor too funny but something that struck just the right balance for my mood, and thirdly I had not watched this film is quite some time so it was due for a screening.
The Return Of The Living Dead is a small low budget zombie movie that has had one clear and lasting impact on the Zombie genre and that is the incorporation of Brain Eating. Not generally known is that this film is a direct sequel to 1968’s Night of The Living Dead, subject of an earlier Sunday Night Movie here. Romero’s partner and co-screenwriter for that classic and far influencing movie, John Russo, had rights to make a sequel just as George A. Romero. Romero famously went off and created in 1979 Dawn of The Dead the archetypal zombie apocalypse movie, a film copies and referenced today more than 30 years later. Russo first crafted a serious script for his sequel but when Dan O’Bannon was tapped to directed O’Bannon thought it better to avoid directly ‘stepping on romero’s toes’ and to instead make a comedic sequel. Of course, being Dan O’Bannon one of the principle forces responsible for Alien, this was not going to be a friendly feel good comedy. O’Bannon rewrote Russo’s script and crafted a unique movie thought one yet unmistakably stamped with’s its period.
