The Return of the Living Dead
Louisville, Kentucky, a town where nothing happens and the kids are bored, Tina, Spider, Trash, Chuck, Casey, Scuz and Suicide looking for something to kill time until new starter Freddy finishes his shift at the Uneeda Medical Supply Warehouse, shown around by Frank as owner Burt clocks off for the 4th of July festivities, they hanging around the nearby Resurrection Cemetery as he descends into the basement.
A tall tale told by Frank, that the legendary horror film Night of the Living Dead was in fact based on truth, that the agent which prompted the recently deceased to rise and consume the flesh of the living was a chemical spill, he jokes that the barrels of 245-Trioxin were accidentally shipped to them fourteen years before, but when the toxic gas leaks out, incapacitating them, Freddy learns that some horrors are rooted in truth.
Directed by Dan O’Bannon, the man whose resume included Alien, Heavy Metal, Blue Thunder, LifeForce, Invaders from Mars and Total Recall, while Return of the Living Dead of 1985 pays direct homage to George A Romero’s 1968 classic, in tone it is a strange blend, madcap siege scenes more akin to Evil Dead but also an eerie urban sparseness which recalls the early films of John Carpenter with whom O’Bannon collaborated on Dark Star.
Loosely based on John Russo’s novel of the same name and satirising the side effects of the notorious chemical warfare herbicide Agent Orange, while ostensibly a cheap knock-off intended to cash-in on an established name, The Return of the Living Dead is actually very much its own wild creature, a satire of corporate irresponsibility in the name of profit and the ineffectiveness of the police and military, overwhelmed as the situation escalates.
Burt, Frank and Freddy (The Initiation‘s Clu Gulager, Poltergeist‘s James Karen and Never Hike Alone‘s Thom Matthews) enlisting the aid of mortician Ernie (Weekend at Bernie’s‘ Don Calfa), it is many way his character who sells the situation, unphased by dead bodies, pouring coffee with bloody gloves while draining and embalming a corpse yet freaked out by the animated severed limbs the trio bring to him for disposal in the crematorium furnace.
The rogue chemical not destroyed but instead released into the atmosphere where it is brought down by rain, the angels weeping into the cemetery grounds where the bodies awaken and claw their way through the mud to the surface, the surprisingly mixed bunch of eccentric acquaintances who are first witness flee in terror as they are attacked, taking shelter in the mortuary and Uneeda, source of the infection.
The living dead fast, hungry and not easily killed by the traditional method of destroying the brains, they are also surprisingly conversational, expressing the pain of being dead and rationalising their urge for fresh brains as the only thing which brings them relief, the zombies effectively created in their varied states of decomposition for the modest budget, drawing on a variety of inspirations and with personalities as distinct as their victims.
Restored from the original camera negative for Arrow, their new two-disc edition of The Return of the Living Dead is supported by the 2017 feature-length documentary on the film, four separate commentary tracks featuring O’Bannon, production designer William Stout, actors Matthews, John Philbin, Don Calfa, Brian Peck, Linnea Quigley, Beverly Randolph and Allan Trautman amongst others, deleted scenes pulled from a VHS workprint, interviews and new and archive featurettes on the locations, effects, soundtrack and more.
The Return of the Living Dead will be available on 4K UHD and Blu-ray from Arrow Films from Monday 13th October
