The Return of the Living Dead (1985) Revisited

*** This review may contain grave dancing spoilers *** A group of teenage punks and business owners deal with the accidental release of a horde of brain-hungry zombies. The late Dan O’Bannon writes and directs this novel zombie film. No stranger to horror, he’s notable for collaborating with John Carpenter and co-writing the screenplay for Alien. With its foggy graveyard, crematorium, chapel of rest, dimly lit factory basement, and empty wet streets, O’Bannon creates plenty of atmosphere. Return of the Living Dead, while not a sequel to George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968), amusingly connects to it through Frank (wonderfully played by James Karen), who convinces his bumbling sidekick Freddy (Thom Matthews) that Romero’s film was based on real events. Both actors return for the sequel. It’s more comical than Romero’s films, with morbid humour, eccentric dialogue, and some slapstick comedy. While it may lack Romero’s political satire, O’Bannon weaves in a subtext of mortality and what it means to be dead. As the loud characters attempt to destroy the zombies, flee in panic, and occasionally become zombies themselves, there’s plenty of entertainment to be had. Clu Gulager plays up his straight-laced typecasting as Burt, who’ll do anything to save his business. Don Calfa is excellent as Ernie the mortician, stealing every scene with a Peter Lorre kookiness. The group of teenagers are on fine form, capturing an array of ’80s stereotypes with their fashion, music tastes, and attitudes, akin to Lamberto Bava’s Demons (1985) of the same year. The film boasts a great ’80s soundtrack, along with some significant nudity—most infamously Linnea Quigley dancing on a grave. In addition, Quigley’s Trash, once turned zombie, is menacingly eerie. With some great effects, the superbly icky Tarman zombie is performed by actor and puppeteer Allan Trautman. It’s a satisfying zombie movie, with some genuinely creepy and amusing scenes—notably where Ernie deals with rigor mortis, pieces of a cadaver wriggle in black bags, Frank and Freddy are pronounced dead, the attack on paramedics unfolds, and a cut-in-half rotting female explains why the undead want to eat the living. Memorably, after a horde of zombies devours a police unit, one of the ghouls gets on the radio and asks dispatch to “send more cops.” Amongst the cinematic zombie tropes of barricaded entrances, danger from within, and near-total character mortality, you know you’re in for a scary ride as Tarman might pop up at any moment. In retrospect, O’Bannon’s unchained offering is a little rough around the edges (notably recycling the grave and skeleton footage prior to the end credits), but it has a certain timeless ’80s charm thanks to its setting, grisly practical effects, reanimated cross-sections of lab-specimen dogs, severed limbs, and dried-out zombies, to name a few. The grim but admirable nihilistic ending is the icing on the cake, and to O’Bannon’s credit, Return of the Living Dead popularised, for the first time, zombies eating specifically for “Braaiinnsss!” Overall, it’s good, gritty zombie cult fun.