THE RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD! The 80's were the best.

RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD is by far one of the greatest zombie movies ever made.  No zombie movie could ever duplicate the unique horror comic book style that this movie has.  As a zombie movie it defies zombie movie rule #1 which is KILL LOTS OF ZOMBIES.  Yet the movie is one of the greatest.  You can't kill these bastards.  Shooting them in the head doesn't work.  They also run and can think and talk.  That is not a good combination for our characters.  In fact there isn't a lot of people that could survive the situation our heroes face in THE RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD.  We would all die too......Well, I wouldn't.  I would be just fine.

This is a film that every person that plans to make horror movies should study.  It is so easy to not understand what makes this movie work.  Just watch THE RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD part 2 for an example of failure to understand.  What a lazy piece of crap.  Yes, ROTLD is a dark comedy but it is not a complete comedy.  The horrors in this film are genuine.  What makes this movie work is the characters.  Particularly the old warehouse keeper and his new employee.  Their antics in the hospital store supply warehouse are so interesting that you could make the whole movie about these two guys and not have any zombies whatsoever.  The horror element is a bonus.  Those two along with the coroner (who is a possible ex-Nazi) and Burt (Clu Gulager) walking around talking about cadavers and all the weird stuff in the warehouse would make a great little indie movie.  The punk teenagers there to die are fun too.  They just basically bitch around, party and look as 80's as possible.  Brings back memories it does.  The whole movie is just a bunch of people trapped in a couple of buildings surrounded by the undead until the army finds out and nukes them.  Of course this just makes things worse.

It is so creepy to have zombies talk.  They essentially are human with an uncontrollable need to eat brains.  (YOU HEAR THAT, NECROPOLIS AND RAVE FROM THE GRAVE!?!  They eat brains not flesh and organs!  Get it right, morons.)    I love the first zombie that rises from the grave.  It's just a complete skeleton with eyeballs.  It looks fake as hell but it adds a slight cartoonish aspect to the film.  This falls in line with the comic book element to the film.  Overall the zombies look different than zombies from other films.  They are a little more colorful.  Some are just completely decomposed with not much skin at all but others are brightly colored blue and yellow.  The naked chick zombie has a monster face with a jaw that hyper extends when it bites the tops of peoples heads.  They run too which hadn't happen (as far as I know) since NIGHTMARE CITY.   But the zombies in NIGHTMARE CITY used machine guns too. (The cheating bastards)  The only way to kill them is to completely burn them to ash.  Cut their heads off and they will still keep coming.  Cut their arms off and their arms will try to kill you.  Its all rather frustrating.  Its like playing Resident Evil 2 with just the knife.  IT SUCKS!

The sequels are all crap.  They suck on so many levels that it would take volumes to explain.  It hurts my face just to try and watch them.  Here we have one of the greatest horror movies ever made with the worst sequels ever made.  Not one single one of them is good but they show just how brilliant director Dan O'Bannon was.  It's not easy to make a zombie movie.  He took a terrible script and reworked it into a fun terrifying zombie movie.  He was one of the greats. 

Jason