Return of the Living Dead (1985)

Y'see? Another 1985 flick! But don't worry; this one's an anomaly.

Anyone who knows me knows that, as a rule, I am a firm believer that many, if not all, sequels are unnecessary. At least 89% of them.

Look around; they litter the rental queues, numbers and Roman numerals alike, and make us realize just what classics the originals were. Yes, even Porky's. If they retell the story you saw before, why pay good money to see the same thing again and again - huh, fans of Friday the 13th? Why??

Let's face the fact that as far as a sequel goes, there had better danged well be a really good reason for one -- especially when coming after a superior movie.

Would YOU want to see a sequel to Gone With The Wind? How about Citizen Kane II? Gandhi: The Reckoning, anyone? Up for Kill Bills 4, 5, 6 and 7, now with new and improved CGI David Carradine?

Well, how about a sequel to one of the most well-placed zombie movies ever made? A classic? Something that most any b-movie nerd worth their salt owns and loves?

HISTORY LESSON: In 1968, Night of the Living Dead was unleashed onto an unsuspecting public-at-large and became both a turning point and a landmark achievement for director/co-writer George A. Romero and horror movies in general. Earning money hand-over-rotted fist to this day, Night was the haute cuisine (so to speak) in a world where every other wannabe was just fast food.

Another thing: when it came to the pretenders, any movie purporting to be a sequel to this - the creme de la creme - was pretty much asking for it.

But Dan O'Bannon was no ordinary director, either. Here was the co-writer of John Carpenter's classic entrance bow Dark Star and he also typed furiously to give us the scripts for even more modern-day classics such as 1979 trend-setter Alien, 1981 sleeper Dead and Buried, 1981 group effort Heavy Metal and 1983 Roy Scheider super-helicopter/Jaws callback Blue Thunder.

Then came 1985, a hallowed year rife with badness and foul stench, in which he sallied forth and made his maiden directorial effort with this little self-penned continuance of Romero's classic. Good idea, I guess. Yet it juuuust barely escaped being lumped together with the rest of the gruel and vomit of 1985 since, in its original incarnation, Tobe Hooper was going to direct and it was to be a 3D project. Not exactly two good omens, were they?

But with Return of the Living Dead, O'Bannon gave us what any right-thinking sequel to Night of the Living Dead needed; thick swirling doses of dark humor and a fiery shot of adrenaline. To paraphrase Nigel Tufnel, this is a sequel that goes to eleven.

Guess what? It would appear that the events depicted in Night of the Living Dead really happened. At least that's what jaded Louisville, Kentucky morgue worker Frank (James Karen) tells new night shift worker Freddy (Thom Matthews) as he regales him with horrific stories and shows him barrels in the basement which contain the preserved remains of the zombies in question, along with some displaced tanks of U.S. Government issue "zombie gas". One of the tanks gets nudged, gas spills out, tanks crack, zombies awaken and everything jumps in the first hand basket headed for Hell.

...but in this movie, that's a positive thing.

Throw into the mix a carload of punk teenagers (including a young punked-out Linnea Quigley), people who not only believe but play by the rules that movies lay out and the power of a nuclear bomb, not to mention a nearby graveyard full of dead people (or at least dead for the moment) and there you have it -- instant party!

This could just as easily been one of those cheap-jack flicks that didn't care about the black heart and eroded soul of zombie movies, but it isn't. If anything, Return loves and adores such films to a fault and every blood-soaked moment of this film proves it, from the resurrection of long-dead corpses, split-down-the-middle dog cadavers barking, bags full of rabid zombie weasels to rip your flesh (RZZZZ!) and ingenious flesh-eaters radioing in for more paramedics and more policemen to chow down on.

James Karen is one of the absolute most under-rated actors on the face of the Earth. Anyone who can survive the rigors of starring in Time Walker and go on to the long and varied career he's had in Hollywood sure must have something going for him. And as the self-aware-yet-oblivious Frank, he has some absolute classic lines and no one can express facially the horrors of zombie attacks and the bewilderment of whispered rumors come to life better than he.

You'll also recognize such glorious movie standbys as Don Calfa, Clu Gulager and that ever-lovin' b-movie grand dame Jewel Shepard. As someone who has watched her in anything and everything (including Party Camp, which is another review for another time), all I can say about Jewel is that she certainly does distract from the zombies.

The others in the cast do as good as anyone else in the same situation would. It's not easy to maintain a plausible character when surrounded by the marauding undead, as any actor from Zombie Holocaust or The Beyond will tell you. They do it, though, if by the virtue of either screaming, fighting or succumbing to the threat. And I'll grant you this is one of the few zombie movies in which a zombie explains to you for themselves just exactly why they do what they do. Good stuff to know.

Even if he did base this off of an actual, honest-to-goodness book (by Night veteran John A. Russo) and was helped along with the story by other Night alumni like Rudy Ricci and Russell Streiner, O'Bannon concocted a script from this base material which has ambrosia-like dialogue for the b-movie lover's soul. There are individual lines here worth quoting to your movie-loving pals - that is if they don't quote them to you first.

The gore and blood is gloriously gratuitous as is the nudity of Linnea Quigley, and when a zombie that will forever be known to we in the know as Tarman looks at a room full of teenagers and yells out (without lips, mind you), "MORE brains!!", that is the mark of a film that will never let you down, from first frame to last frame.

I guess the worst thing I can say about Return of the Living Dead is that it's just too darned short. After 91 minutes, I was still wanting more. More excitement, more humor, more braaaains. Apparently so was everyone else, seeing that there were two or three other sequels to this very movie that came out later down the road. Not NIGHT of the Living Dead, mind you, but RETURN. The NIGHT sequels would be coming later on....

You see, though? You see the thing about sequels? Did any of those sequels to Return of the Living Dead do as well or get as much play as this, the very flick they were based on? Surely you jest - how could any of them possibly be as quick and funny as what Dan O'Bannon and company originally conceived? Did we have any actors as worthy of their roles s James Karen or Don Calfa? Did we even get anyone as sexy as Linnea Quigley striping down to her leg warmers?

All in all, it takes a special movie to deliver the goods with $4 million in its budget - and earn back that much plus interest its first weekend alone - and with as much of the imagination and good humor you get with Return of the Living Dead. That's just icing, my friend. Icing on a specially made zombie cake. With extra guts and sprinkles.

If there is anyone out there who really desires to see a sequel that lives up to the promise of its source material, I guess now there are three suggestions for your Netflix queue: Godfather II, Aliens and Return of the Living Dead. Maybe not in that order, necessarily.

I understand that this film's German title is Verdammt, die Zombies Kommen, which can be translated to Oh Crap, the Zombies Are Coming. I think O'Bannon and company missed a bet, American title-wise.