The Return of the Living Dead

     This is one of my favorite zombie movies ever! Its rotting arms came crawling out of the grave in the late 80s with intensity and surprising originality. This film has absolutely no affiliation with George Romero or his legacy of zombie films (Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, and Land of the Dead). George Romero was informed about it, and asked to be a part of it, but declined, telling its makers that they could use his original movie Night of the Living Dead as a storyline springboard but that was all they were given permission to do, so some major things needed to be changed, but how?  To keep from stepping on George Romero's toes, the idea and the execution of such were radically changed and some view this new interpretation to be much more sinister and scary. To name just a few of the changes: unlike Romero's films, which explained that the brain of the ghoul must be destroyed in order to kill it. In Return of the Living Dead, there is absolutely no way to kill the zombies, only reducing the body to complete ashes proved successful in getting rid of it. In other words, you could chop up a zombie into several pieces, but the pieces will still come after you!  No brain destruction was gonna work here. Also, Romero's zombies were very slow and unsteady. In contrast, these new zombies can actually run and are strong! So add almost complete indestructibility and not being capable of outrunning them, and the result becomes far more frightening!

     The story starts with two employees named Frank and Freddie who work at a medical supply warehouse. Freddie (the trainee) asks Frank what was the weirdest thing he ever saw at the warehouse. Frank explains that in the '60s, several canisters that were intended for a military destination were accidentally sent to the warehouse by mistake and are now residing in the warehouse basement. As Frank explains, the army was developing a chemical substance called Trioxin to spray on marijuana fields or something, and the substance accidentally leaked down into the morgue and made the corpses move around as though they were alive. The army put the corpses in airtight canisters and then accidentally sent them to the wrong place. Why the army wasn't notified of this mistake is anyone's guess, and therefore the canisters have remained at the warehouse ever since. Frank tells Freddie that this is what the original Night of the Living Dead movie was based on, but that its maker (George Romero) was threatened that if he told the actual story of what happened that he would be sued, so he changed all the facts around. Frank and Freddie go down to the basement to check them out, but after bumping into a canister, it cracks and spews chemical gas right into their faces, knocking them unconscious. While unconscious, the gas slips into the ventilation system and brings many dead biological samples back to life, including everything from butterfly displays to ballistics cadavers. 

      Not knowing what else to do after such an intense fuckup, they decide to call Burt, the owner of the warehouse. After some serious bitching about them doing something so completely stupid, he decides that they must destroy all the evidence around the warehouse and keep their traps shut. Burt's friend Ernie (they were named Burt and Ernie on purpose) runs the crematorium across the street. They convince Ernie to let them use his crematorium to get rid of the evidence. He reluctantly agrees. When the smoke from the burning bodies rises up from the chimney, it carries the chemical with it, mixes with a bad storm coming, and produces acid rain that drenches the local cemetery making hundreds of corpses come alive and slither forth from their graves with only one thing on their decaying minds... live brains. 

      A punk rock group of Freddie's friends that are waiting for him to get off work are hanging out in the cemetery across the street from the warehouse to pass the time and are therefore at ground zero when the shit hits the fan. They freak out and try to find Freddie at the warehouse, but have no luck since he's at the crematorium. Instead, they come face to face with a slimy corpse that has obviously just recently emerged from the canister that Frank and Freddie accidentally cracked open. It grabs one of the punks and bites a hole in his head, exclaiming with glee and joy..."BRAINS!" Another freakout ensues and they flee for their lives.

     Eventually, most of them end up boarding themselves into the embalming room where Frank and Freddie are getting really sick, as well as a very stressed-out Burt and Ernie. Swarms of zombies start gathering outside and every attempt by the police and EMTs to help out ends up failing due to being attacked and eaten by zombies before even being able to make it into the building.

      After realizing that Frank and Freddie are not breathing and have no pulse, yet are still very much functional and conscious, it's assumed that they are slowly becoming one of the zombies that are now roaming outside in search of some tasty fresh brains and so the group decides that it's best that they be locked in the chapel for safekeeping. 

      Wanting desperately to figure out what the hell is going on, they capture a zombie (well, the upper half of a zombie) and are surprised to find out that they can hear and also speak. When asked why they eat brains, the zombie explains that it hurts to be dead and that they can feel themselves rotting, and for some unexplained reason eating live brains are the only thing that relieves the pain. 

      After several unsuccessful attempts to escape and the police blockades being overrun, the remaining few survivors see a phone number stenciled on the side of the canister that housed the original Mr. Green and Slimy from the cracked canister. They call the number, and it turns out to be the military who explain that they have been waiting for this call for some time and have a plan devised to deal with it. Unfortunately, the plan is to nuke the entire area (in this case, the entire city of Louisville, Kentucky) thus leaving no margin for the survival of anything. Just before the nuke, we see Frank, who is now among the living dead but has not yet been overcome with a taste for human brain consumption. He commits suicide by throwing himself into the crematorium. This again releases the Trioxin into the atmosphere, turning storm clouds into acid rain and thus starting the cycle all over again. 

    A really great zombie flick with just the right amount of shock, gore, and even some rather unexpected comical scenes. A must-see for any zombie fan that needed something new added to the genre to make it even more scary than any previous zombie flick that came before it.