"The events protrayed in this film are all true. The names are real names of real people and real organizations." And thus begins, possibly the GREATEST movie to feature the undead EVER! Well, in my opinion anyway. Sure, some of those with experience limited only to Romero and those who ripped off Romero will probably say that, "Zombies can't run around! They can only hobble and strut drunkenly!" Well kids, kindly shut your damned traps before I are forced to infest your liver with termites! RoLD is the directorial debut of Dan O'Bannon, who some fans will note as being one of the writers behind the cinematic space nightmare ALIEN! Personally, I think he does a Hell of a job with zombies too! Whether you look at it as O'Bannon's parody of the original NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, or as an unofficial sequel, it's still gonna be awesome! Our story begins on July 3rd, 1984 in Louisville, Kentucky at "5:30 PM Eastern Daylight Time"... a little over anal huh? At the Uneeda Medical Supply Warehouse, the owner, Burt, is leaving for the weekend, leaving his faithful employee Frank to do a little training with the new guy, Freddy. Meanwhile, Freddy's gang of '80s punk pals roam the streets looking for a good place to party... wait, there're punks in Kentucky?! Frank, in an effort to show off, takes Freddy into the basement, where he reveals the strangest, most well kept secret of the warehouse: a government holding tank that contains the body of a zombie spawned from a governemtn chemical meant to kill Marijuana (the story that NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD was supposedly based on)! But, when Frank gives the tank a hearty smack to emphasize the quality of American made products, he accidentally breaks the seal, allowinf zombie gas to leak out and poison our dim-witted duo, before it's ventilated throughout the entire warehouse!Nearby, Freddy's gang, along with their pal Suicide (my hero) opt for breaking into a cemetery, figuring that the deadest place in town is the only place to liven things up... I don't know if that was a bad joke, or just an accidental attempt at levity on my part... While they start dancing and drinking, Freddy and Frank come out of their chemical induced haze, stumbling around and coughing up lungs, then freak out when they find that all the previously dead lab specimens stored in the warehouse aren't dead anymore! Especially odd being the split dogs! They do the only thing they can do, call in the boss and hand the problem over to him! While they do that, let's check in with the kids, shall we? Everything seems normal here, everyone's drinking and hanging out, Trash the punkette (Linnea Quigley) is stark assed nekkid and dancing on a tomb... everything seems fine here, so let's go back to the warehouse. Freddy, Frank, and Burt find that one of their freezer fresh cadavers is affected by the gas too, and they need a way to kill it. Do what they did in NoLD and cause major harm to it's head, right? Well, when they stick a pick axe through the thing's head and it does nothing, they find that NoLD was full of shit! So, go with another horror classic (EVIL DEAD) and go with a full dismemberment! After hacking the zombie up, they pack his parts into garbage bags, then go across the street to the crematorium to visit Burt's friend Ernie (probably not a "Sesame Street" referance, but still funny to think about, heh heh) and see if he can use the pyre to get rid of the evidence. Ernie reluctantly agrees, turning the monster to ash. This is a bad idea though, because the resulting smoke billows out into the above rain clouds, seeding them and causing them to rain down chemical presipitation! Now, after the nearby graveyard has been throroughly drenched, there's a whole mob of brain hungry cadavers on the loose! This, of course, leads to the cinematic downfall of our "heroes". Meanwhile, Ernie calls in some paramedics to check on Freddy and Frank, who seem to be badly ill as a result of inhaling that gas, so ill that they're dead to all the paramedics' equipment. If you guessed that they're both on the verge of becoming zombies, then you're right! Meanwhile, the gang is attacked by the hordes of undead, with a few (sadly including Trash) falling to their rotted yet powerful jaws. However, take note, because these corpi aren't your average "Romero" ghouls! Death hasn't slowed them down one bit, meaning they don't shuffle or hobble, they can run just fine! Also, as mentioned before, a shot to the head won't stop them either! Also, even though few of them still have lips, they can talk rather well! Oh, and thanx to a captured one that our heroes get a hold of, we discover that they eat brains, because only brains can numb the pain of rotting. As for Frank and Freddy, it's not long before they become full zombies, Freddy trying to eat his girlfriend, and Frank doing the noble and anti-Christian thing as he burns himself alive. As Burt and Spider (the black gang member) go over to the warehouse to get the phone number off the side of the drum that started this whole mix up, Ernie and Freddy's girlfriend are cornered in the attic by Freddy. When Burt and Spider get to the warehouse and try calling the cops, we learn that the undead plague has spread ALL OVER Louisville, and the riot squad can't do anything but sit around and get eaten! Having no other choice, Burt calls the army and tells them everything. The army then has no choice, but to use their contingency plan, the kind of contingency plan that any "peace keeping" force uses: nuclear weapons! Yep, the military blows up Louisville! And on the 4th of July no less! Truly impressive fireworks display. However, this is not the end of the evil ghouls, because the smoke and pollution caused by the nuke are seeding the rain clouds, and are about to raise a whole new army of the living dead! What an excellent movie! O'Bannon provides us with a new take on the whole concept of the living dead, turning them from an easy-to-kill laughing stock, into a force of nature to be feared once more! THAT is why I liked this better than all the other zombie movies, making the things deadly, though not without humor (for example, zombie midgets!). Also, it's got a lovely and trashy Linnea Quigley strutting around with her tits and muff in the breeze! And the ending, though critisized as ripping off Romero's THE CRAZIES, was a great tragic finish. Finally, if the guy playing Spider looked familiar, he should be, because he's Miguel Nunez, who played Demon (the black dude who was attacked in the outhouse) in FRIDAY THE 13TH PART V: A NEW BEGINNING! THAT is why I am the horror king, because of my keen sense of... uhm... screw it, I'm gonna go watch the "Trash strip dances on the tomb" scene again, heh heh.

Sequels: RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD PART II; RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD III

If You Liked This Flick, Check Out: THE DEAD NEXT DOOR or CLASS OF NUKE 'EM HIGH