“Send more paramedics…”
Well, I have reviewed all of George Romero’s zombie movies. But that does not mean I’m done with George Romeo and zombies. His series sparked tangents, parallel universe, alternate possibilities galore. The first tangent series I will review is John Russo’s Return series.
John Russo with George Romero came up with the original story for Night of the Living Dead together and Russo had a novelization of the movie published. After Night, they went their separate ways. Russo envisioned the series differently than Romero and in 1985, the same year Day of the Dead came out, Russo released his version of what happened, called Return of the Living Dead. The reason it is called Return is that it goes back to the origins of Night of the Living Dead. As you will have probably noticed, after Night, all of Romero’s movies dropped the Living from the title and went to “of the dead” rather than “of the living dead”. Reasoning? In my opinion, it has something to do with Russo publishing his book with the Living Dead in the title and since Romero and Russo were friends in the business, Romero did not want to step on Russo’s toes.
Return of the Living Dead ss in fact a sequel to the 1968 version of Night of the Living Dead. However, in Return, it happened in ’69. In Return, the movie Night of the Living Dead exists but it was based of true events caused by the chemical 245 Trioxin bringing bodies back to life when it leaked into a morgue.
The whole series is very, very 80s. You thought the 80s were 80s? You thought the 80s were bad. The Return series is like 80s crack, LSD, and pot all at once. I’m serious. Even the sequels that take place and were written twenty years later are still 80s. Return takes place in a universe where the 80s is an unstoppable beast that cannot die and eats the other decades following it. In the later films, you will think the 80s went into a coma but it just took on characteristics of the 90s as well—the bad characterizes—the ones similar to the 80’s.
As a side note, speaking of the 80s…listen to the Return of the Living Dead theme song: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8Q0cVQBlA4) and then listen to the original version of a very world famous song that was also very 80’s Tears for Fears: Mad World: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gFl2OXySs8). Compare the horns in the background of each…notice any similarity? Mad World predates Return by about three years. It would be an appropriate song for a zombie apocalypse movie. For those of you who like chaos theory and the butterfly effect you probably love little tidbits like this: In a trailer for the remake of The Crazies, a more common version of Mad World (Gary Jules) is played (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mepo50RuhdM). The significance? Well, the original The Crazies is a George Romero movie (he only produced the remake. See? Everything relates back to good old George!
But, what about the movie itself? I have not gotten into that yet. Well the movie follows a group of super 80s teens whose friend just got a job in a medical supplies warehouse. It would seem that the writers knew nothing about the 80’s, went to a high school, looked at all the kids hanging around outside before school started and said “I want our characters to look like this one, that one, that one, this one” because it doesn’t make sense why these kids are friends with each other. They are all from different clicks. Now I am not an advocate of clicks but the 80’s certainly were. Just look at the Breakfast Club! Anyway, these kids want to meet up with their friend after he gets out of work. The problem is he is running late. Reason? Well it turns up a “typical military fuck-up” occurred years ago in which barrels of Trioxin rich bodies were accidentally shipped to the warehouse. The manager and the kid get a face full of gas after looking at the canister and it gets into the vents bringing to life the cadaver in storage as well as anything else in there that was once alive.
The teens do not have to be worry about being bored because conveniently enough there is a cemetery right by the warehouse, which is also right by a funeral home/morgue. (Can you say plot devices?) I really do not want to give this away but since this series was never meant to be taken seriously (expect for R.o.t.L.D 3 arguably the best out of the five) it is okay to have spoilers. Apparently, Night of the Living Dead lied about how to dispose of zombies: destroying the brain, decapitation, etc. will not stop these zombies. Regardless of the fact that in our own universe physics is having a fit about this movie being inaccurate, there are ways you can explain this: So if you chop up these zombies, the individual parts still move, are alive, and seem to have independent thought from the rest of the body. One could argue that 245 Trioxin not only reanimates dead cells similar to what the T-Virus does, but that it also gives sentience to each and every cell, meaning in order to kill these things you can either: A) burn every last part, B) electrocute until crispy, C) blow up, or D) freeze them to put them in a paralytic state.
Guess what these guys do to the corpse? Burn it across the street at the crematorium (again…plot device). When they do this, the chemical, seemingly indestructible, turns back into a gas and escapes as part of the smoke from the body. Now this causes atmospheric disturbance, which causes rain. The rain now containing 245 Trioxin, rains down on our 80’s clichés and the graveyard (COULD YOUR PLOT DEVICES BE ANY MORE OBVIOUS!?). The rain then drips down into the graves and somehow reanimates every corpse regardless of the amount of brain rot and also gives these atrophies fellows the ability to dig thru 6 feet of dirt. Don’t ask…even I can’t figure out this one. Our friends are split up and most end up in the Funeral Home and the rest in the med supply warehouse. Oh, and I forgot to mention, once again regardless of how much rot, decay or damage to the brain, all these zombies can talk, reason, and plan. Yep. Does this make sense to anyone out there? If so, please explain it to me. All I can come up with is my theory of sentient cells. Maybe it causes brains to regenerate? I don’t know.
The Return of the Living Dead series is famous for something however. You probably didn’t even know this but this is where the stereotype of zombies wanting brains comes from, and is the only real time in cinema history that zombies do this rather than having no preference over type of flesh consumed. Yep. These are the zombies that moan for brains. Want to know the reason? SPOILER ALERT! This I can actually half accept (the first half): If ones nervous system was still functional along with one’s brain after one had died, it would be extremely painful, organs shutting down, rigor mortis setting in, blood pooling and coagulating, etc. In order to stave off the pain there is only one painkiller in the world strong enough…no, not morphine: Brains! Yep. Brains alleviate the pain of death. So there you have it, ladies and gentlemen.
I just want to note, in the same way the 80’s took too many drugs, got hungry, mutated, and ate everything else (as the 80’s are depicted in this series), The cemetery is the same way. It has no recognizable order and appears to be alive meaning it can grow and has a mind of its own. This cemetery—never—ends!
Also, just so you know, the number to contact on the barrel? It’s a real number—no 555 here, And if you are a film buff, cinema snob, or flick freak, you know the unwritten rule that if a real phone number appears in a movie, you have to call it! I’ll do the work for you. Here is the number: 1-800-454-8000. An internet search consensus reports it is a sex hotline and was once a factory’s number. Well it’s an 800 and as far as I know, one typically has to pay for sex hotlines and so I had my people call the number and here is what it is. The phone number is for those that don’t want to to go out and meet people so you call this number it gives you another and says how you can meet single people and stuff. So it’s a singles hotline, not a sex hotline and it isn’t even the actual number…it redirects you to another number!
Speaking of talking zombies, the one that they catch and explains this all to the living people, is so rotted, she has no lips. However, she talks perfectly fine as if she did have lips.
Ok, so what do I think of this movie? Well it is certainly not the worst in the series. In fact, they are not really bad films at all. Again, as I said in my Land of the Dead review, I have seen and know of plenty of truly terrible zombie movies. I could use a different scale to rate the Return movies, meaning a 3 out of 5 for a Return is less that a 3 out of 5 for a Romero. These movies were clearly never meant to be taken seriously and in all honesty are not that bad. The only things wrong with Return of the Living Dead are, the effects are somewhat silly, the acting is sometimes bad, and the plot barely makes any sense. However, the Return movies are not going for serious, disturbing, scary or politically significant; they are going for fun, camp, and gore. My point is you cannot really compare a Romero to a Return. (However, I judge all zombie movies based on Romero movies). Therefore, in the end, I give Return of the Living Dead a fun, entertaining, silly way to kill an hour and ½, 3 out of 5 stars.
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