The Return of the Living Dead Part II

This sequel to Dan O'Bannon's 1985 film The Return of the Living Dead (which was in itself a darkly comic indirect sequel to George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead) is a bit too obviously jokey. Writer-director Ken Wiederhorn tries to have fun with the shambling, brain-eating zombies (who are revived by a chemical called 245 Trioxin and have an insatiable hunger for brains), but his idea of comedy is pretty infantile: zombies getting their heads stepped on by other zombies as they emerge from their graves, a decapitated head cracking jokes in an inane voice, a severed hand that is tossed around like a hot potato. (It throws us the finger in a close-up shot.) Not exactly subtle. And many of the characters spend the entire film screaming at the top of their lungs and repeating words multiple times. This is another sign of a feeble attempt to be clever and funny.

What's worse is the offensively inept music score, which was replaced by a better, more competent one in theaters (and on VHS), but for some reason was retained for the DVD. It's a cheesy, poorly synthesized score that makes the movie feel like The Muppets Living Dead, only it's not as clever as the Muppets. (You can access the better music score on the DVD if you switch to the French audio. So all the French speaking ROTLD 2 fans really lucked out.)

The cast includes two from the original, James Karen and Thom Matthews, sort of reprising their roles. But the magic is gone. With Dana Ashbrook, Suzanne Snyder, Marsha Dietlein, Michael Kenworthy, and Philip Bruns. 89 mins. 1988. ★★

The Return of the Living Dead

In The Return of the Living Dead (1985), writer-director Dan O’Bannon treats us to a garishly funny and violent zombie spoof that seems like a strange mix of 1950’s science fiction and 1980’s punk. The production design often makes us feel like we're watching an expanded version of Michael Jackson's "Thriller" music video. The exuberant comic-book-feel of the horror is in that kind of vein, and the humor is in-your-face, as it should be with this kind of material.

Referencing George Romero’s 1968 cult classic Night of the Living Dead early on (partly to dispel confusion that this was a sequel to that movie), Return purports to tell us the "true" story of the living dead, and how it was all the Army's fault.

The disheveled corpses, sleeping peacefully in a dilapidated cemetery, are inadvertently revived when a military-developed chemical leaks into the atmosphere and over their graves. To the horror of some unsuspecting punk teenagers (with nicknames like “Trash” and “Suicide”) who unwittingly picked the graveyard as a place to party the night away, these zombies are hungry for brains and can run—fast. They can also talk, a gimmick that allows for at least two good jokes involving police radios. Despite all the problems in store for the adolescent characters, the adults apparently have much more at stake than their safety. Clu Gulager, as the owner of a nearby medical supplies warehouse, recognizes his culpability in hiding the lost military canisters that unleashed the troublesome gas into the air (infecting two of his employees—James Karen and Thom Matthews—in the process).

Return of the Living Dead is as much a part of its time as Night of the Living Dead was a time capsule of the 1960s, and yet both films seem to be telling us something very disturbing about our culture, then and now. Instead of the Bomb coming from the Russians, it comes from within our own borders, a rather chilling concept that endures even now.

Better than most of the walking dead movies, Return of the Living Dead spews gore and humor in equal doses. Despite its deviations from Romero’s “form,” zombie fans have embraced this as a minor classic with an ending as ironic as that of Night. With Don Calfa, Beverly Randolph, Miguel Nunez, Linnea Quigley, Brian Peck, Jewel Shepard, John Philbin, and Mark Venturini. ★★★½