Return of the Living Dead (1985)

Excellent horror-comedy that spoofs Romero’s “Dead” trilogy though is never at times disrespectful. Director Dan O’Bannon stated that since Romero was making these excellent zombie films with some very serious social undertones to them, he wanted to lighten things up a bit, while still retaining the ability to shock and scare the audience. And this he most certainly accomplished. Acting as if “Night of the Living Dead” actually took place, the film opens up with two warehouses workers accidentally releasing some fumes from a barrel storing one of the corpses from the living dead fiasco of Romero’s “NOTLD”. We learn that the army basically pulled a “Roswell” over the event of that film and shipped some of the remaining zombies, now sealed and all, to various locations for storage. Even though the corpse is truly dead, the fumes released from the canister are sent up into the air where they gather in a nearby storm cloud that just happens, of course, to rain down upon a nearby graveyard. Can you say…“uh oh?” What’s cool here is that in most zombie movies they just sorta shuffle around, and are basically fairly slow of foot. Not here partners! These undead could run a marathon and win, and what’s even cooler, they frigging talk! Now you tell me what would be scarier, put yourself in this situation. Walking through a graveyard and stumbling into your typical zombie that your grandma could outrun, or one that can sprint after you all the while screaming, “Brains… need more brains!” It’s a no-brainer folks. The comedy is sick and dead on, the actors all deliver nice performances, and plenty of the red stuff gets splashed around. You can’t go wrong with that! Good stuff.