Hmmm….. I had been searching for Return of the Living Dead for a while now and upon finding it was extremely excited to pop it up on the television and see how it went.
I got the same feeling when I started watching this as when I saw “Pretty In Pink” or “Saint Elmo’s Fire” or the “Breakfast Club” the extreme ’80’s force is strong with this one. To be honest I was half expecting Molly Ringwald could pop out at any given moment!
Sometimes a movie is just a bunch of stuff that happens and this is that movie. It follows on from the zombie themes created by “Night of the Living Dead”. In fact creator Russo worked with Romero on “Night of the Living Dead” but parted ways sometime after. Why did it take him so long to put out a movie? Who knows?
THE VERDICT ON RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD
Either way this things is just so god damned cheesy its hard to take seriously. Some rather crappy dialogue and awful acting follow making me wonder if the production team were also just a bunch of unpaid zombie interns. The zombies themselves are rather comical and the killings rather uninspired. It’s comical but sometimes tragic as well. Its not funny enough to be a comedy (like Brain Dead or Shaun of the Dead) but not gritty enough to be taken seriously as a zombie movie. One good thing about this movie is that it’s kind of like the zombie film that you can safely watch with your non gore addicted friends (Admit it… you have a few) … Its fairly safe and won’t gross out the non-initiated. Perhaps the type of movie you take to a bad taste 80’s party. Except for the nudity it would be safe for children or even the elderly to watch.
It obviously had an impact on modern TV as the ‘brains’ bit you hear over used on this certainly made its way into modern zombie culture (that Halloween episode of the Simpsons for one)
Some horror movie fans really like this movie. I know its a cult favorate film, and I’m probably in the minority here in thinking this is a classic. Personally I just don’t get it. I might give it another watch at a later date to see if it grabs me the second time around.
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If you are new to zombies I also recommend you check out Night of the living Dead or if you want a laugh Brain Dead
For more great horror movie reviews be sure to check out https://www.gorenography.com