The return of the living dead

1985 Directed by Dan O’Bannon

Horror Marathon Day 14 Film 20

Night of the Living Dead just got dumped in toxic waste and transported to the 1980s. Told as the "true" story of the classic film- a medical supply depot got the shipment of contaminated bodies from the military. There the metal drums have rotted away, and the buffoon workers have let the gas escape! When the dead bodies start to come to live they even try to shoot them in the head or flambe them in an incinerator. There's a great buildup to this moment as the workers try to get rid of the bodies that have become reanimated. Shoot them in the head! Like in the movies-- this kind of meta humor works at deconstructing the expectations of the zombie genre and creates its own mythos. Why would zombies need brains? Why would something undead care about not having a brain itself? The first zombie they see is pretty silly- and I enjoy seeing pinned butterflies and embalmed figures start to come back to life too.

The surfer punk soundtrack really creates a cheeky "monster mash" campy horror. Toxic gas from the corpses rains on a graveyard where punks have started to party- stripping and drinking beer. The exotic dance is deliciously tasteless- inversing some expectations of what an old 1960s beach movie would be. It's not long before the acid rain starts to wake the whole graveyard too.... mixing up the campy element of punk "you think this is a fucking costume? It's a way of life!" with splatterific displays of zombies nomming brains. There's nothing too serious here- but there are also some real moments of scares and gross deaths. The corpses are basically able to talk and do anything a human could do- calling up for more people to come for them to eat their braaaaainzzzz. Once things go haywire the final act is a bit of a let down - fizzling out into an ending like Romero's The Crazies. So while the plot becomes thin the film is a nice breezy zombie snack fest.