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.
The film opens with a title card informing the audience that all events depicted are real and no person or company;s names have been changed, then the first shot of the movie is the sign for UNEEDA MEDICAL SUPPLY. We meet Freddy, a young man just hired being given the ropes and tour by the old hand at UNEEDA, Frank. This of course includes ghastly tales of how Night Of The Living Dead was based on actual events and the original reanimated corpses are in fact stored, due to military foul-ups, in the basement of UNEEDA. They foolishly tamper with the containers, releasing the agent that reanimated the dead, with a graveyard next door there is no shortage of corpse to reanimate and the plots rolls.
Among zombie genre fans you generally get a debate and discussion between fast zombies, as seen in Zack Snyder’s remake of Dawn Of The Dead, and slow zombies such as in Night Of The Living Dead and the original Dawn of The Dead. O’Bannon here crates both fast zombies, long before Snyder’s remake in 2004, plus intelligence, these zombies have their full faculties, couple with any lack of vulnerable spots — brain hits do no good here — creating zombies that no fans would want to face in their survivalist scenarios.
This film is a delightful mix of horror and comedy, long before Joss Wheadon skipped onto that scene. The cast of interesting characters is only marred by some of the performers not being up to the task. Not the leads mind you, all the leads were well cast and performed with talent, but some of the punks are not so greatly played. Still, it is a fun, funny, and genuinely scary film. One well worth seeing.
