|
The Return of the living dead
 Freddy
(Thom Mathews) is just starting his first day of work at UNEEDA Medical
Supply, but it also may be his last. When he asks his uncle Frank,
"
what's the weirdest thing he ever saw?",
his uncle tell him that movie
Night of the Living
Dead was based on a true story. Frank goes on say that
the army accidentally shipped the reanimated corpses back to their
warehouse where they now lie dominate in steel cylinders. Seeing that
Freddy is still a little skeptical, Uncle Frank takes him down to the
cellar to show him the cylinders and they inadvertently release trioxin
245 into the air. You may be asking yourself what is trioxin 245? Well,
its a chemical that the Darrell Chemical Company developed for the army
to spray on marijuana and of course to............bring the dead back to
life.
 The
putrid green vapor seeps up into this warehouse of oddities bringing
back to life anything that was once alive ( i.e. split dogs,
butterflies, etc) and of course, the lone medical school cadavers
hanging in the freezer. As they try to kill the brain, they realize the
movie was a LIE. Instead they decide to chop the corpse into little
pieces and take it next door to the crematorium. But burning the corpse,
only releases trioxin 245 into the air where a passing shower brings it
raining down onto a cemetery.
 Too
bad for Freddy's friends who were waiting for him in the cemetery. The
dead are back and looking for live BRAINS. A lot of great zombie action
here, especially when the zombies attack the cops and give a call in "to
send more cops". The end comes when the army steps in, but as
you can see they screwed up again.
Generation X versus Generation Dead. This 1985 instant classic help to
breath back some life into a the dominant zombie franchise. Followed by
2 lesser sequel, although I found "Part 3" to be quite entertaining.
 Original
Return was to be directed by Tobe
Hooper and produced by George Romero, but Richard Rubinstein of Laurel
Entertainment asked Romero to not get involved, because he didn't want
people to think this film was part of Romero's "Living Dead" series.
Rubinstein even got an injunction trying to stop them from using "Living
Dead" in the title. But the MPAA arbitrators ruled in favor of the
movies producers.
Directed
by Dan O'Bannon who did work on Alien, Star Wars, Lifeforce, Total
Recall and more.
John Russo who helped write the original
Night of
the Living Dead also helped write this
film.
 Return
was shot on a $4 million budget.
Thom
Mathews played Tommy Jarvis is Friday the
13th, Part VI: Jason Lives.
The
inspiration for the zombies came from many sources, the mummies of
Mexico, the Tarman of Wales, civil war vets, etc.
The movie
is currently on moratorium. There is currently no scheduled re-release
at this time. Let's pray there is a video, DVD, and laserdisc in the
future.
 |
