Return of the Living Dead is now and always will be patently the most explodingly brilliant survival horror comedy since I can’t recall, largely because when I’m thinking about this movie all other silly comedy splatter spoofs looks like cheap plastic replicas.
ROTLD takes viciously wild punches at most all of the standard clichéd tools used in horrific monster movies, especially those featuring flimsy teen characters prone to vice. Those wacky teenagers, an endlessly excitable bunch prone to poor decisions and quick retribution. Meanwhile every character in Return of the Living Dead lacks all motivation outside the single goal of self satisfaction — sex, drugs, violence — shortly followed by self preservation. One exception: a particularly strange punk rocker played by Thom Mathews (Freddy). Pretty much the youthful protagonist of Dan O’Bannon‘s undead melodrama — the suddenly sympathetic Fred has to deal with a world of occult flesh eaters, government cover-ups and the desires of his recent girlfriend…all this on his first day at work.
Freddy still reveals himself as slightly dumber than a box of hammers, or maybe a bowl of screwdrivers. Whatever simple machine in a container, our friend Freddy ain’t smart and neither is his friendly superior (Frank) played by Clu Gulager. Their combined stupidity is exponential and ever-expanding, especially with the introduction of Frank’s boss (Burt) a selfish dick played by the always intimidating James Karen.
Half of the movie involves these stooges try their best to maintain composure while every piece of death flesh around them comes back to life, a distracting challenge when you work in a medical supply warehouse, next to a morgue…outside a cemetery.
Our friend Freddy is persecuted, not only by his punk pals, each of them pained by reality’s lack of chaos and sententious pleasures. Even though they’re technically protagonists, you pretty much delight when the punks get attacked by the viral zombie contagion, brewed by our rather incompetent military.
Consider this — our primary fear in the 20th century…you know it. Total nuclear oblivion. The final end of human life, the trigger pulled by a willing human hand. Grab your book, El, because the zombie weapon of self destruct was inspired by plagues…AIDS, small pox, Ebola virus, etc. Something about rapid decay. Our nightmare monster shrunk from the size of King Kong to the nanometer scale. In ROTLD our antagonist originates in a spray of weaponized gas created by the corrupt military industrial complex for which we, the uneducated voting public, are responsible. The best part of all this biting commentary is that the audience sees no heavy hand, just solid comedy and gore.
THE DEAD is a slow-as-honey zombie flick that takes place well after the zombie apocalypse has occurred. Shot in scenic Ghana, the movie takes a survivalist focus, which is appropriate considering that the Ford Brothers and crew had to survive illness and robbery at gunpoint throughout the production process.
The movie contains nothing truly new to the zombie genre, aside from exotic rural terrain rarely seen on film. My favorite moment involves one of the main characters comically inching around a nearly immobilized zombie, hoping on broken legs. Seems laughable until the severely broken corpses crawls its way to your death. Best to live in the country, rural, outback, boonies. THE DEAD presents a spacious and endlessly hazardous world of the cannibal undead.
The trailer seems to insinuate some kind of racial bias like the poorly considered character aesthetics of Resident Evil 5, thankfully skin color doesn’t play an idiotic roll in the story. Neither does believable acting or compelling action sequences. Not without effort, THE DEAD flops like a dying fish on the stinky boat dock of movie horror. Rent it.
I saw this one during a Fantastic Fest 2010 pre-show at the Alamo Drafthouse. Simple stop-motion is sometimes so perfect. Z-props to the meticulous artist David King who did it one frame at a time (sexy) in the minimalist short animation ZZZZOMBIES.
Like whoa! Some talented nerd(s) used the software render engine from the video game Left 4 Dead and built out a complete level using my favorite movie theater as a playable map. Even the neighborhood karaoke bar Highball gets rendered in 3D, although I’m not sure how one plays bowling or skeeball with gun drawn.
If you don’t know, let me inform you. The Alamo Drafthouse is the best thing that ever happened to a movie nerd living in Austin, Texas. They schedule the rarest horror flicks with crazy pre-shows and intros from some of the most knowledgeable film experts on the block (which is really saying something in Austin). Obviously, the Alamo is run by true exploitation film fanatics, which is why every year the Alamo Drafthouse puts on the best damn film festival I’ve ever attended — an all genre movie explosion called Fantastic Fest. Nothing but gore, nudity and tantalizingly offensive cinema.
SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD is Romero’s latest art installation of his alpha z-mythology, what’s under the umbrella of “del muerte.”
Mr. Romero begins with a philosophical query into the nature of human behavior under stress, as I perceive it, his dead films follow through on questions of human response to disaster & duress. His observation in cinema form fits the model of modern cable news cycles. Think about the ubiquitous distant spotlight on news anchors knee-deep in the fire, flood, terror, tragedy. Slowburn zombies are the stars today, and despite the occasionally mediocre elements,
SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD could absolutely play in black & white, as an old time 1950s creature feature. Something new and something old, that’s exactly what I crave for modern horror. Romero continues legit academic scholarship in the field of the literature of the living dead. 3/5 cannibals in cowboy hats.
