THE RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD
Can I possibly gush enough?
The question is this: how do I write a review of one of my all-time favorite movies without degenerating into simpleminded gushing?
In overall excellence, I'd say that Return Of The Living Dead surpasses even Romero's masterpiece, Dawn Of The Dead. Maybe it's like comparing apples and oranges (satire does not equate to spoof), but they're both zombie flicks, and ROTLD is the best goddamned zombie flick you'll ever see, eating up virtually every other movie in the genre and farting them out with omnipotent disregard for their comparatively puny merits.
What makes ROTLD work is that it functions, throughout the film, as a horror AND a comedy, simultaneously. Some movies can pull that off for a couple of scenes (like Evil Dead 2, or Fright Night) but overall give up one aspect in favor of the other. And some movies (like Scream) vacillate back and forth between the mirth and the terror. But this movie aims to make the viewer laugh, scream, and whiten their knuckles with excitement all at the same time, and for just about the whole length of the movie. If this movie kicked any more ass, you'd need to put on weight just to have more ass for it to kick.
(sorry, I'm distracted - two naked chicks are making out on Springer)
The movie opens with a boastful, Fargo-like claim: "The events portrayed in this film are all true. The names are real names of real people and real organizations." (when you actually read that second sentence a few times, it becomes funny regardless of anything in the movie) Of course, it's fiction, but the movie is based on a premise that what we enjoy as fiction might be based on fact. One character tells another that Night Of The Living Dead was not entirely fiction; that it was based on a real-life zombie incident that the military tried to cover up, and the names, places and events were all changed. As you might imagine, he's not believed until he pulls out the zombie he's got in storage in the basement.
The movie stars James Karen and Thom Mathews (both of whom are hilarious) as Frank and Freddie, a couple of working stiffs at Uneeda Medical Supply Warehouse. ("Man, what a hideous ugly place!" "I like it. It's a statement.") This is the kind of place which stores lots of cadavers for dissecting, prosthetic limbs, and, uh, split dogs. (you figure it out) They accidentally crack open that zombie canister and the whole building gets filled up with zombie preservation gas - causing Frank and Freddie to come down with a remarkably unpleasant series of symptoms (like zero blood pressure and a stiffening of the muscles). It also causes that cadaver in the cooler to frantically smash about, screaming for brains.
So, they call in their boss Burt (Clu Gulager, who's also very funny), and work out a plan of action. In Night Of The Living Dead, the zombies were easy enough to stop (although they shambled about so slowly that all you have to do to escape death is walk past them); just shoot them in the head. So, in a hysterically funny scene, they give this guy a head wound that should drop any zombie, human, or pretty much anything that depends on its own brain to survive. ("The brain! The brain!" "I hit the fucking brain!")
It doesn't work.
That zombie just keeps right on kickin'. They hack it to pieces, and the pieces still want to eat all the brains they can get their, uh, hands on. Just what is done with the pieces spells very bad news for all of them and Ernie the embalmer (Don Calfa, who's wonderful), not to mention the gang of punks partying it up in the graveyard across the street. (swear to God, I didn't notice that "Bert & Ernie" thing until this viewing)
The punks are all stereotypes, but who'd want a gang of punk zombie fodder to be anything else? Linnea Quigley is one of them, who lustily asks one of the others "Do you ever fantasize...about being killed?", describes her fantasy, and of course you know she's gonna get her wish. Also of note is Mark Venturini as Suicide, the most obviously unstable of the punks, who actually goes on a rant about his own rebelliousness ("Whaddya think this is all about? You think this is a fuckin' costume? This is a way of life!"). One wonders, however, just what the clean-cut Tina (Beverly Randolph) is doing hanging out with these guys. When it comes to the human cast, Mathews and Karen are the human center of this movie, and they do a wonderful job with their roles. Their tortured screams (at both their own torment and the horrors they behold) elicit as much sympathy as laughter, and when one of them commits a desperate, honorable suicide, it's actually pretty affecting. Miguel Nunez is also worth noting as the only one of the punks with a good head on his shoulders (although he boasts the worst hairdo I've ever seen on him, and that's saying a lot).
The writing in this movie is as smart and funny as I've ever heard in a horror movie, courtesy of director and Alien co-writer Dan O'Bannon. All the characters are hilarious in their own ways, but none of them are let down by being written as comic relief. They're funny, but they don't KNOW they're trying to be funny (like all the characters in, say, Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things were). The actors all do a splendid job, too - as you can already tell, I can't make up my mind who steals the show the most.
As for the zombie action, it's by far the best zombie action ever lensed. I think this is largely due to the rather rare nature of this movie's zombies; unlike in almost every other zombie movie I've seen, these ones are fast, smart, and talkative. That alone makes them far more threatening than Romero's zombies (let alone Fulci's lethargic shark-bait). That they can't be stopped by anything so simple as a bullet in the head makes them near-invincible. A nigh-invincible enemy is rarely effective in the movies; where's the fun if you know EVERYBODY's doomed and the only surprise is in what order they die? But here, it works; the enemy can be escaped, or even destroyed, if you're willing to risk the consequences.
The zombies are funny too. It's hard to resist their battle cry ("Braaaaains!!!"); take my word for it, you'll be shambling around slurring "Braaaaains!" for days after watching this one. One zombie, when challenged by the gang of punks, only remarks "MORE brains!" before lurching on after them. Another grabs an ambulance radio and tells dispatch to send more paramedics. (best line from a zombie: "I love you...and you've got to let me eat your braaaaaaaaaaains!") (I hope I can work that into my wedding vows some day)
And despite all the goofiness, there's a thick, palatable air of menace throughout the film. That these people are boxed in by the zombies isn't their only problem; every time help comes (and that's quite often), they get eaten! The scenes showing just what becomes of the unlucky bastards are pretty creepy, particularly a couple of scenes centered around that ambulance.
If this movie have flaws, they actually seem to work for the movie. Some of the effects and makeup are kind of hokey, but more "realistic" zombies (like those featured in the much more somber Day Of The Dead) wouldn't have been nearly as much fun as, say, the twisted, limping oil slick of a man who gets its head knocked off with a baseball bat. The prominent punk music shouldn't work, in theory (punk being to my ears stale and boring, yet annoying at the same time); here, it just serves to underscore the chaos of it all. It serves almost like a really good score - at its best, you don't even consciously notice it.
Followed by two sequels. In the first, Karen and Matthews reprise their roles (in an alternate universe, I can only guess), and what follows seems largely like a low-rent, somewhat kiddie-fied version of the same, hampered badly by the introduction of a "silver bullet" method to finally kill those zombies. The second, though, was much better; a thoughtful, extremely gruesome story of love and death, with the extraordinarily hot Mindy Clarke playing a zombie-fied girl who has to come to terms with her undeath. If you don't think body piercing is sexy, you probably will by the end of this movie.
O'Bannon, meanwhile, went on to write some bad Tobe Hooper movies, and only directed one other film (The Resurrected, which I've never seen).
To be viewed, owned, and worshipped as a masterpiece of cinema. Godfather, schmodfather, that's what I say.