“Watch your tongue if you like this job!”
It’s hard to imagine if you weren’t there, but there was a time in the early ’80s when zombie movies were few and far between. Sure, Romero’s Dawn of the Dead awoke some quality shambling putrefaction from the Italian horror auteurs, but suburban video store shelves were slacking when it came to the ol’ walking dead.
Well, until Michael Jackson’s Making of Thriller made them the ghoulest monsters around in 1984.
The following year, the zombie apocalypse arrived with a vengeance with Re-Animator, Lifeforce, Romero’s Day of the Dead, and its mirror-universe counterpart: the inimitable Return of the Living Dead.
Aside from a clutch of cultish theater skulkers, the 80s zombie craze died down after Savini’s excellent but poorly received Night of the Living Dead remake in 1990. Dead that is, until the post-nine-eleven tension got ’em up and running again with Resident Evil in ’02. For a few years, we were brains-deep in reanimated corpses.
And it was awesome. Until it wasn’t.
Now, I love me my Romero zombies – I watch Night-Dawn-Day-Land pretty much perennially – but Dan O’Bannon’s Russo-produced Return was something special. I can’t even try to be objective about it. The film sucker-punched every one of my buttons. The music, the cast, the effects… did I already mention the music? The whole thing just sprang to life with pure punk nihilism and cheeky EC Comics stylings that made it the default zombie flick for a few years.
It became a way of life, really.
If you want to party with Freddy, Spider, and Trash, stick your dirty old VHS tape in the deck and witness the end of Kentucky as we know it.
It’s a real blast. -Pop
The Return of the Living Dead arrived on Home Video this week in 1986, after an August 16, 1985 theatrical release.