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The Return of the Living Dead

The Return of the Living Dead

List Price: $14.95
Your Price: $13.46
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: NEVER Work Next Door To A Cemetery!
Review: Frank (James Karen) and Freddy (Thom Mathews) work for the UNEEDA medical supply company. Freddy is new, so Frank has fun showing him the skeletons, split-dogs, and the hanging cadaver in the freezer. Frank simply must show Freddy the strange containers in the basement, containing corpses from a chemical spill. He explains that these drums were mistakenly sent to Uneeda by the military. One of the containers springs a leak, causing the noxious gas within to spray out. Frank and Freddy wake up on the floor, next to a now empty container. Thus begins this little tale of terror. Meanwhile, Freddy's gal Tina and her punker friends are heading to Uneeda in Suicide's (Mark Venturini) beat up cadillac. They decide to hang out in the Resurrection Cemetery next door until Freddy gets off work. Back at Uneeda, Frank and Freddy encounter re-animated split-dogs and a screaming cadaver in the freezer, causing them to call their boss Burt (Clu Gulager) for help. Burt arrives and the three chuckleheads try unsuccessfully to "kill" the screeching, running cadaver. They end up having to cut it into several squirming pieces. This leads Burt to ask a favor of his buddy Ernie, next door at the Resurrection funeral home and crematorium. Outside, Trash (Linnea Quigley) decides to tear her clothes off and dance around the graveyard. Inside the crematory, Ernie burns up the body parts, the smoke of which goes up the chimney and into the clouds above, causing rain. Of course, the rain is full of the chemicals, and seeps into the hundreds of graves in the boneyard. Pretty soon the dead are popping out of the mud like nightcrawlers! RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD is a funny, gory, creepy movie. The zombies are great, especially the one that escaped the container at Uneeda. Watch for him as he jerkily shambles along, looking for a quick snack. Listen for the enhanced crunching sounds as the dead bite into living skulls. This movie is a masterpiece of ghoulish goulash! Oh, and did I mention that Linnea Quigley dances around naked? It was gratuitous, but somehow fitting...

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: B-Movie Classic
Review: The acting ain't great, the special effects ain't great, but I still watch Return of the Living Dead. It's a great movie if you take it for what is is, a mindless BRAINLESS (a bit of pun intended) fun!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: The Cover Lies! But its still a AWESOME movie!
Review: If you think this movie is going to be about punk/gothic zombies, your wrong! some of the charachters are punk/goth but most of them die! This movie has a lots of nudity and pretty strong language, but I still think it ROCKS! if you don't mind/or like bad language or lots of female nudity then GET/RENT This movie! especialy if you like these awesome zombie movies!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Dead Can Dance
Review: "Return of the Living Dead" is not meant to be taken seriously as a zombie movie. It is instead a rock and roll comedy that keeps the yuks coming while holding the bloody gore to a relative minimum. Some of the characters may be over-the-top cliches (especially the teenagers), but for the most part the actors do the Leslie Neilson-"The Naked Gun" deadpan well enough to generate laughs. The movie's other strength is the design of the Dead themselves, which were based on real-life mummies and are actually quite chilling to look at. The plot is somewhat silly, of course, but at least it doesn't insult the intelligence. It should also be mention that "ROTLD" originated the famous "Brains!" chant of the zombies that would be so cleverly pariodied on "The Simpsons."

This DVD edition also adds a quite informative "making of" presentation, with latter day interviews with the director and design team that created the movie, along with lots of other goodies for film enthusiasts.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Don't Believe The Hype...
Review: It's NOT a classic, it's NOT funny and it's NOT even scary. What is it? It is a bland, boring, juvenile, mindless, poorly acted piece of bubblegum horror. I am a HUGE zombie fan, but this one really stinks. If you love the original Romero films then do not waste your time on this lame attempt to capitalize on that franchise. The main problem with the comedy in this film is that they TRY too hard to be funny and without the help of any witty lines or dialogue. Running around acting goofy and screaming does not make for good comedy. As for the "scares" or lack of them, the direction is so badly done that you almost always know when the next victim is gonna get it way before it happens. The bright lighting does not help matters any either. One of the best parts about a good horror film is a filmmakers ability to use dark and moody lighting to give us a sense of terror over what might be waiting for us in the shadows, you get none of that here. All in all, Return Of The Living Dead fails on every level by not giving the viewer what it has promised. There is no humor or scares just a bunch of mid 1980's clichéd teenagers in trouble fluff.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Not for those who are true splatter lovers
Review: this movie is not very gory at all. as soon as someone is about to be eaten, the damn movie cuts to another scene, which personally pissed me off considering it was a zombie movie. the only gory scene is where the fat bald guy has his skull bitten open. if you are a true gorehound, this is not your type of movie. any return of the living dead movies are obvious and insulting rip offs of Romero's zombie movies.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Wow, what a zombie flick!
Review: I must say that I didn't even see this film until I purchased this DVD, and I'm happy to say that it's worth EVERY PENNY I spent on it. I really don't want to give any of the plot away, but let's just say it doesn't take much BRAINS to figure out that this film's a winner in the comedy-horror genre. I almost feel ashamed that I didn't catch this one back in the day, but it still has an impact now. If you haven't seen this and are into zombie flicks, this one is totally awesome and worth adding to your collection.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A 7 Course Feast of Brains, with a side-order of Red Sauce!
Review: Flesh-rending and brain-eating has never been so cool since the glory days of "Return of the Living Dead", Dan O'Bannon's first foray into directing (he wrote the script for "Alien" and later helmed the underrated "The Resurrected") and an homage to Romero's classic zombie films that would come close---very close---to surpassing the works of the Master in their ghoulish, brain-chomping goodness.

Remember that movie they made, years ago, about the living dead wandering about rural Pennsylvania, hungry for human flesh? Well, turns out that's a true story---but according to medical device factory supervisor Frank (played by the immortal James Karen, who sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for being in every cool film ever made), They (you know, the Army, the Pentagon, the CIA, the Scientists, the Guys in Charge) made the filmmakers change names and places around a little. As it turns out, Frank confides in rookie co-worker Freddy (played to the hilt by then-newcomer Thom Mathews), the army transported some of the zombies to a little medical products plant in Louisville, Kentucky---why, the very medical products plant our two heroes are sitting in. The zombies, of course, are downstairs in special sealed containment barrels.

Could you resist? Frank and Freddy can't, and head downstairs for a little face time with the safely entombed zombie. Turns out those old Army Corps of Engineering barrels weren't nearly as fail-safe as Frank thought, and a nasty, greenish, zombifying gas pours out---and it has very specific, re-animating qualities. Seeing as the gas spreads quickly through a building stocked to the gills with cadavers and split-dogs (just see for yourself), this is a very bad thing.

Add to this Frank and Freddy's decision with the help of an eccentric mortician Ernie (was that a Horst Wessel tune playing on his headphones while he was embalming that corpse?) to burn the zombified evidence (smoke spreads the pollutants, guys...to the local cemetery), throw in a pack of punkers who decide to 'hang out' in the aforementioned cemetery, and you have the makings of what I consider to be one of the very best zombie movies *ever* made.

"Return of the Living Dead" is sick, funny, benefits from a great eighties punker score (including songs from The Cramps and SSQ), well-paced, beautifully shot and rippingly directed by O'Bannon: not content to rest on its hysterically funny laurels, the movie ups the ante by really try to scare the bewhooskers out of you. Yes, the "Wee Chapel of the Dawn" is a whimsical and truly funny touch, as is the eviscerated woman's corpse, strapped to a gurney in the mortuary, that howls "brains...brains...BRAINS"---but the gallows humor is tied to the horror, and "Return of the Living Dead", even all these years later, is a terrifying film. The dead here don't amble or lurch, they run---and they talk, yell, taunt and scream, as well ("I love you Tina...and that's why you need to let me EAT YOUR BRAINS").

The special edition DVD is sorely needed, and restores "Return" to all its brain chewing glory. The extras, including a wry and amusing commentary by O'Bannon and conceptual art of the undead, are worth the price of admission alone.

Make sure you've secured all the doors and windows, don that spiked dog-collar, put a cassette of The Cramps in the hopper, and remember to shoot those zombies in the head---and then sit back and enjoy "Return of the Living Dead", one of the finest zombie flicks ever made.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: This is to Romero's trilogy what HOT SHOTS is to TOP GUN!
Review: Upon hearing the title, RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD, the first thought most people probably have is that RETURN is a sequel to George Romero's beloved classic, NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. While it's easy to see why one would assume such a thing that is not the case. RETURN is, instead, a sort of spoof on the zombie genre that came about when the creators of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (George Romero and John Russo) parted ways. You see both men agreed that they could each use the LIVING DEAD titles as they wished. Romero, as most zombie enthusiasts already know, went on to create his zombie trilogy (including DAY OF THE DEAD and DAWN OF THE DEAD), while Russo went on to create this and it's sequel, RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD PART II. So what does that make RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD?

RETURN OF EH LIVING DEAD is a gory comedy that will entertain you from start to finish. It'll make you laugh and, at the same time, terrified to go outside for the fear of zombies charging at you from out of the darkness. Admittedly a huge fan of the zombie genre, (and not as big of fan of Romero's final two films in the dead trilogy as the majority of zombie lovers), I think RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD is a fun horror comedy equipped with corny dialogue, black humor, a fair amount of gore, and the most gratuitous nudity I've ever seen in a film. While the RETURN films have understandably been endlessly compared to Romero's films, I think they are really both two totally separate groups of solid zombie films. You see, Romero's films are all about mood and gore and even some drama while RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD is a fast paced joke of a movie and I mean that as a compliment. While both Romero's films and the ROTD films feature zombies, Romero uses them for scares and to conjure up human emotions while ROTD (this one and the second one) uses them to eat the brains of punk rockers and to make us laugh.

All in all, RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD, is the perfect movie to sit around and watch with your friends and a case of beer (maybe even a bottle of Jagermeister?).

B-

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Garage Band Rockabilly Death Punk
Review: I have to admit, I bought this album when I was in 7th Grade just for the song Party Time featured in the movie trailers. But every song on the album is awesome, and a great introduction to the bands featured on the album. What a great mix -- the Cramps' rockabilly punk, SSQ's gothic dance, and the Flesheaters' Screaming Death Rock. They are all fantastic.

My one complaint is that the recording level on the CD is too low. You really have to turn up your stereo, and even then the highs and lows seemed diminished (just be sure to turn it down before your CD changer puts in the next album). The CD's poor recording quality is evidenced by the cover itself which is obviously just a copy of some other piece of art.

In any event, I give this album a thumb's up and request that they reissue a remastered edition.

I'm also waiting for ROTLD 2 soundtrack to be released -- my casette wore out.

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