The Return of the Living Dead (1985) Revisited – Horror Movie Review

1985 gave us one of the most important zombie movies of all time. It was a sequel to the movie that gave us zombies as we know them and probably signaled the end of the world on screen. Day of the Dead you say? As much as I love that slow-paced close-out to George Romero’s original trilogy, I’m talking about something a little different. I’m talking about running zombies that can’t be killed, rabid weasels, Burt and Ernie, partying when it’s party time, and a true return of the living dead. Dan O’Bannon horror comedy expertly walks the line between the two genres with genuine laughs and frightening thrills. It could have been a very different experience for audiences who now know it as a perfect summer horror film and celebrate July 3rd every year. It could have been more like the very obscure book it took its title from and been a 3D mega-flop directed by one of horror’s most respected masters. Thankfully we got the punk rock zombie masterpiece that has way more sequels than it needs. Send more paramedics as we revisit The Return of the Living Dead.

John Russo has nowhere the fame he maybe should have as George Romero had a co-writer on the original Night of the Living Dead. While George was primarily known for his Dead movies, he was at least able to branch out from time to time with classics like Martin, The Crazies, Knightriders, and Creepshow among others. Russo wasn’t so lucky on film. A quick look at his IMDb shows a couple other movies like The Majorettes and Midnight but those are both based on his own novels. Nearly everything else with his name on it is zombie related, especially his recut of Night of the Living Dead that was released in 1999. While the adaptations for The Majorettes and Midnight are relegated to hard-to-find Blu-rays or boutique physical media releases, his novel sequel to Night of the Living Dead became bigger than anyone would have guessed. When George and John split, Night of the Living Dead writers, not The Beatles, Russo was able to keep rights to films ending in Living Dead while Romero was able to make his own sequels using different titles. Return of the Living Dead the book was published in 1977, and the plan was to eventually make the movie around its release.

The movie’s story was developed by Russo himself with help from Rudy Ricci and Russell Streiner. Ricci has virtually nothing else on his resume, but Streiner will forever be immortalized as Johnny from Night of the Living Dead with his famous “They’re coming to get you, Barbara” line. Originally, the film would be a 3D spectacle during the 80s flirtation with bringing the format back and Tobe Hooper was signed on to direct. Delays would force Hooper to exit the project but thankfully we would get beautiful space vampire nonsense Lifeforce out of it. Dan O’Bannon was offered a script rewrite and the chance to direct which would completely change the trajectory and outcome of this beloved film.

The story follows 2 different groups that will eventually intersect. Group one follows Freddy, who is new at his job with a medical supply warehouse, and supervisor Frank going into the basement to look at allegedly the original ghouls from Night of the Living Dead, a story based in fact in this world. One of the canisters the ghouls are stuck in opens and it unleashes 245 Trioxin which is what causes the zombies in the first place. The boss of the warehouse, Burt, shows up and tries to help them deal with the mess they’ve caused which includes a reanimated corpse that won’t die, even when they do what the movies tell them. They chop the body up and take it to Ernie who runs the crematorium at the cemetery next door, and he agrees to burn them which causes acid rain that reanimates the whole cemetery. Waiting for Freddy to get off work is his girlfriend Tina and his group of friends led by Suicide. They deal with the first zombie that came out of the cannister in the first bit of the stories mixing before attempting to get to the mortuary. Frank and Freddy have now become technically dead while the reanimated corpses, who can full on run and talk mind you, start picking off the group even as they are together for the most part. The movie ends when Burt calls a number on the side of one of the cannisters and the military nukes the town and survivors…which of course makes it rain over a larger area and start the cycle anew.

That description doesn’t exactly reinvent the wheel but what’s inside sure did. The movie inside that description executes things so perfectly well and that starts with the cast. There’s no Johnny Depp or Brad Pitt in their first horror roles, but it does have a handful of friends that we’ve grown up watching. Linnea Quigley as Trash with her iconic dance, Miguel Nunez Jr as Spider who that same year made a mistake of having the wrong enchiladas, Thom Mathews as Freddy a year before he took on Jason Voorhees, and Clu Gulager as Burt who would make a career out of fun horror roles. Looking even further, everyone plays their roles perfectly, be it part of the gang that gets humbled quickly by the zombies or a more than quirky mortuary worker that get caught up in things. Even the non-important roles like the paramedics who discover two seemingly dead men to the military colonel that nukes the town all hit. While I find Tina somewhat annoying in her screamy take on all the events, she’s the only character like that and it works fine.

A good cast can’t do much without a good script and that’s another thing that works flawlessly within Return of the Living Dead. I don’t mind horror movies with some gallows humor or even a comedy that has one or two horrifying scenes in it as the two styles are remarkably similar in their emotional outlook, but horror comedies typically fall flat. Things like Tremors or An American Werewolf in London seem to be the outlier but Return of the Living Dead is the benchmark which all other can be measured. The humor is great from James Karens facial acting to exchanges like “watch your tongue boy if you like this job.” “Like this job?!” Spider warning everyone that Trash is taking off her clothes again and zombies requesting more cops and paramedics all hit just as good today as they did 40 years ago. Even non-spoken things like Frank and Freddy getting their vitals checked and the paramedics exchanging first instruments and then patients works as well as an Abbott and Costello bit.

On the other side of that is the horror presented on screen. Through all the comedic moments are absolutely horrifying events that are sometimes subtle and other times in your face. Watching Freddy and Frank slowly become the living dead is heartbreaking as it is terrifying and their endings match that. Frank is convulsing but uses the very last of his humanity to put himself through Ernie’s cremator and Freddy dies but as soon as he does, clicks over to wanting brains. His cravings and willingness to destroy his own body to get what he wants to show you how miserable an existence the zombies have, and this is punctuated by the half a body zombies explaining that eating brains makes the pain go away, at least temporarily. Freddy’s eyes getting burned away and then explaining that he shattered his body to get to Tina and Ernie in the attic is heartbreaking in its horror.

Before this movie I never thought of a zombie’s moan as anything but a device to let you know they are there even when you can’t see them on screen. Now? All I think about is the pain that they are going through in their journey to get brains. The final horror of the movie that I want to point out is kind of a piggyback at the end of the film. Burt, along with Spider and a few of the gang are holed up in the warehouse while Ernie and Tina are hiding in the attic of the mortuary. Burt calls the cops and hears them get wiped out, exasperated he holds the phone up so the others can hear, and Ernie is seconds away from shooting Tina and presumably himself as to avoid Freddy eating them. As bleak as that is, Burt calls the government to ask for help and they decide to nuke the whole town. It’s a bleak ending for sure that ends on some dark comedy as we see the rejuvenating rainfall that will surely bring about more living dead.

Even though I mentioned the story doesn’t reinvent the wheel, there are some things that Return of the Living Dead brought to the zombie table that we hadn’t seen and that would be adopted by future movies. Zombies had never spoken on screen before and while they were known as “Shamblers” or the “Walking Dead” before these undead psychos could RUN. It is shocking and I’m not sure what my reaction would be seeing a screaming running corpse come at me. To make matters worse, and another new introduction, is that these ghouls can’t be killed, at least the way we had seen it happen before. You have to completely burn them or nuke them like the military does at the end and destroy every part. Maybe my favorite thing from the whole movie is the subversion of the zombie lore that comes out of Return of the Living Dead. It’s also funny to see that a movie that came out of an idea as a sequel to the original movie where the zombies could die, gave us a whole new set of rules.

The final piece that ties everything together is the look and feel of the movie. I attribute this success to the FX and the music. The music stands out whether it’s the iconic score that plays over the intro credits or the perfectly picked songs that accompany the gang running for their lives or the audience being asked if it wants to party as the dead crawl out of their graves. The FX do their job in spades, but we almost didn’t get what was seen on screen or rather we got a preview of it. The now infamous yellow zombie is a part of the old guard special effects team that were completely changed after it was seen as sub-par. What we got after is now legendary with the “Tarman” zombie or half woman mentioned. The blood spray from bites and the look of the undead all stand out as unique and a great time. While I don’t love how super zombie Trash looks after her transformation, it’s still a bang-up job with the makeup. Even the poster which mixes the theme and villains together has become iconic and one of the defining posters of the vaunted 80’s decade.

About the only questionable part of Return‘s contribution to horror is its legacy. While the first entry is great and continues to be celebrated with 4K treatment and special features, its sequels are the very definition of the law of diminishing returns. Part 2 is a bonkers comedy, 3 is a horror love story, and 4 and 5 shouldn’t have been made at all. A new entry is supposed to arrive in 2025 but to say I don’t have high hopes is an understatement. Even the original novel pales in comparison and it should be noted that Russo also wrote the novelization of the movie which chose to change nearly everything about his original story. Regardless of what came after, Return of the Living Dead is a masterpiece of the zombie genre and still holds up 40 years after its release. This year instead of being afraid to go into the water during the summer, send more paramedics and cozy up to a 4K viewing of Return of the Living Dead. Do you wanna party? It’s party time!

Two previous episodes of Revisited can be seen below. To see more of our shows, head over to the JoBlo Horror Originals channel – and subscribe while you’re at it!

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