Jason Wallach
Tue, 09.29.09
12:23 pm What can I possibly say about The Return of the Living Dead that wouldn’t go on and on until someone finally breaks down and tells me to shut the hell up because I’m digging too deep? I can say plenty about this film and it can still say more than plenty about itself. I think this film is one of the best films ever made let alone one of the very best zombie films ever made. I know, I know – Romero is Obi Wan but this film has a certain joi de vivre that you simply cannot ignore no matter how much you convince yourself, and others, that Romero is the one and only. Enthusiastically I have to say that this film is fucking amazing!
I remember it well, 1985 – the summer my zombie night terrors consumed me as a child filling me with both fear and fascination. On one hand there was the nihilistic and super angry “Day of the Dead” which in its own right is a masterpiece. On the other hand you had an elaborate over-the-top and gleefully twisted “Return of the Living Dead”. I love both films dearly and in Romero’s vein Day is the sacred cow to me. However, Return is hysterically irreverent, disgusting, uber eerie, and somehow endearing that way that Sesame Street was endearing to us as children. There’s no possible way I could be making this up. There were two amazing films in one summer and so drastically different and they were widely released zombie films. It just doesn’t get done that way anymore though I digress…
I’ll try and sum up more of its charm in one paragraph right here. It is genuinely frightening and nihilistic yet it’s extremely tongue-in-cheek. The film is highly aware of itself whereas it is grounded in medical fact and yet refuses to take itself too seriously. The film is quite over-the-top and yet incredibly intimate. It is trashy, disgusting, loveable and personifies glee as you’re unlikely to ever see the true meaning of that word personified again. It is manic and yet somehow controlled and posed, for the very first time, the threat of zombies who didn’t move slowly. And even better than that is the fact that they never shut up either! By now, if you’re a horror film buff, you’ve at least heard someone chant, “Braaaaiiiiins!” The zombies are full of personality and so quirkily deadpan that you laugh at how incidental and yet how intentional this chaos is. The film also has a deliciously punk rock and roll soundtrack which simply adds to its left of center and broad appeal. I mean this soundtrack introduced me to The Cramps. This film is an intricately woven, well directed, well acted, well designed, well crafted splatter gift from God.
The cast is phenomenal consisting of its lead actors, seasoned veterans of the craft such as Don Calfa, Clu Gulager and James Karen (yeah, the guy from the Pathmark commercials). These three actors read this script and knew exactly what to do with it. The remainder of the cast was mostly comprised of newbies and first timers; and the seasoned actors fuck with them so hard it’s completely unintentionally and hysterically funny. There’s plenty of snappy dialog and played straight in this rabid cartoon come to life. The actors modified their own characters for the film and gave them a life beyond its own time. The film is still way ahead of its time… a true work of art crafted and lived by artists for the world to experience. Scream Queen Linnea Quigley, Brian Peck (The Last American Virgin), Thom Matthews (Friday the 13th part IV), Miguel Nunez Jr., it’s hard not to love a film when the characters are all so stand-out and unique unto themselves and the shit they get themselves into is so seriously ridiculous and the means by which they try to deal with it seems even more ridiculous. And yet the film is pretty screwed in the head too. It’s a JOY to watch this film over and over again.
The synopsis is as such; Freddy (Thom Matthews) and Frank (James Karen) are working late at the Uneeda Medical Supply warehouse. In the graveyard next to the warehouse Freddy’s friends are hanging out and waiting for him to get off of work including his preppy girlfriend Tina. Being curious Freddy asks Frank, “What’s the weirdest thing you’ve seen in here?” That question elicits one of the most brilliantly delivered monologues I’ve ever seen in which Frank explains how Night of the Living Dead was based on a true case. Apparently the army had crossed orders and sent several canisters containing dead bodies and a contaminant (called 2-4-5 Trioxin) to the supply warehouse and were stored secretly in the basement for years. In a moment of foolish pride Frank cracks one of the tanks spraying Trioxin everywhere alluding to what can only be described as nothing less than Murphy’s Law. The dead come back to life (won’t tell you how) screaming for “brains!” And from there on it’s kind of like that old nursery rhyme “I Knew An Old Lady That Swallowed A Fly.” This is just a film you’d simply need to sit down and watch a few dozen times and you still don’t take everything in. This film is a whirling dervish with a case of the bleeding trots! It’s wonderfully adult while being devilishly juvenile… it begs for your love while it works extremely hard to earn it and win it over.
The dvd contains two commentaries: the first being director Dan O’Bannon (responsible for the screenplay for the sci-fi masterpiece Alien) and designer William Stout. The zombies were fashioned after mummified Mexicans, the oven in the crematorium was fashioned after the ovens from Auschwitz and the original fx artist Bill Munns was fired dangerously close to shooting time because his work was terrible. The latter of those last remarks was only brushe upon lightly… I just happen to know that was the case.
The second commentary is with William Stout and cast members and you’ll learn that when William Stout and O’Bannon were visiting morgues for inspiration there was always one person who would run out and secretly tell them that the employees were having sex with the dead bodies. Yeah, it’s worth listening to! That’s all I’m going to say about that.
Designing the Dead: interviews with Dan O’Bannon and William Stout highlighting his artwork for the films design… beautiful stuff. All of the zombies were hybrids between EC Comics ghouls and Mexican mummies. That’s just incredible to me!
The interviews with cast and crew are a blast too featuring Don Calfa, James Karen and Clu Gulager with Brian Peck, Linnea Quigley, Beverly Randolph, Alan Troutman, William Stout. Clu Gulager just proves how intelligent and cool he is… you’ll see. All of the interviews are wonderful and it’s great to see how much these guys still love the film.
There’s also a documentary regarding horror films in the 80’s featuring clips from TROTLD. Trailers, etc… it’s a great disc and it deserves a permanent place in your collection because it’s just that frigging cool. Even I know I need to cut myself off here! | 
