The Return of the Living Dead

 "Brains!"
-Zombies


A pair of medical supply warehouse workers accidentally release toxic gas that brings the dead back to life  with an appetite for brains.  The workers are forced to team up with a group of punks and hold up in a mortuary as the nearly indestructible zombies try to break their way inside.


What Works:

The thing I like most about this movie is how competent the three main characters are.  Burt (Clu Gulager), Ernie (Don Calfa), and Spider (Miguel A. Núñez) are all very good at surviving.  Competent characters are one of the most important elements for me for horror movies and to have three guys who make virtually no mistakes makes it easy for me to get invested in the characters and root for their survival.

James Karen and Thom Matthews play the two men who unleash the toxic gas that kicks off the movie.  They actually get poisoned by the gas, which prevents them from doing much in the film, besides lying around.  It turns out they are actually dying and becoming zombies themselves.  They both get surprisingly powerful performances for an otherwise campy movie.  There is a lot anguish in their cries and it's actually horrifying to watch what happens to them.

I love the zombies in this movie.  Headshots don't work on them.  The only way to kill them is to incinerate them completely.  It's basically an impossible threat to defeat, which makes the film very exciting.  Plus they talk and they're pretty funny.  Whenever they call in for more cops and paramedics so they can eat them, I was cracking up.

Finally, there are some very exciting sequences.  All of the zombie chases are intense and I was on the edge of my seat, especially as the numbers dwindled to only my favorite characters.  Burt and Spider's escape from the mortuary is my favorite sequence of the film as we see just how impossible this situation is becoming to survive.


What Sucks:

The movie does take a bit to get going.  We spend half of the first act at the medical supply warehouse, which is fine, but the other half is spent with a group of punks hanging out in a graveyard.  Most of the punks are pretty insufferable and I didn't enjoy the scenes with them.  In fact, the only punk I like is Spider and he doesn't become interesting until the zombies start showing up.

Finally, I didn't really care for the ending.  It's a downer ending, just like in The Night of the Living Dead, but while that was poignant and tragic, this just feels lazy.  I was really excited to see how Burt and company were going to get out of this situation, but instead the military just blows everything up.  I get what they were going for, but it falls flat for me and feels a bit lazy.


Verdict:

The Return of the Living Dead is a really solid zombie movie with competent characters, some surprisingly tragic performances, fun sequences, and top-notch zombies.  The beginning and end could have used some work, but the middle is far more delicious than any brains I've ever eaten and this movie has definitely got it going on.

 8/10: Really Good 


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