Director: Dan O’Bannon
Script: John Russo, Dan O’Bannon
Cast: Clu Gulager, Don Calfa, Linnea Quigley, James Karen, Thom Mathews, Beverley Randolph, Miquel Nunez, Jewel Shephard
Running time: 90 minutes
Year: 1984
Certificate: 18
Two medical supply employees, Frank (James Karen) and Freddy (Thom Mathews), are working the evening shift and Frank tells young Freddy about some mysterious canisters they have in storage, in the basement, which reputedly hold reanimated corpses, due to a military experiment that went awry. Apparently, the canisters got sent to the wrong place and ended up at the medical supply warehouse by mistake. Of course Freddy doesn’t really believe Frank’s weird and wonderful story so the older guy takes him down to the basement to take a peek at the canisters. Unfortunately, for them, one of the canisters has corroded so much that it breaks open when Frank touches it, shooting out a nasty gas that engulfs them, knocking them unconscious.
Later, when they wake up they’re attacked by a reanimated corpse, so they panic and tell the boss of the facility, Burt (Clu Gulager), about what’s happening. His idea is to get help from the neighbouring mortuary owner, who agrees that cremation is probably the best thing to do, in order to eliminate the by now dismembered body. A new problem arises when they burn the body and the smoke fumes are washed into the soil of the nearby graveyard, by torrential rain, thereby reanimating the corpses that lie there. Cue the emergence of lots of additional living dead to give our anti-heroes another headache, and worse.
Suffice to say, things go from bad to worse for the beleaguered warehouse warriors, even when they get some limited help from a bunch of punks who were messing around, partying, at the local graveyard.
Return of the Living Dead is one of the very best horror comedies and is still funny 40 years later. Although it’s set in the 1980s, which dates some of the costumes and cars etc., it still stands up today with its visceral practical effects and likeable characters. None of the punks are out-and-out arseholes; in fact, they’re pretty decent, especially compared with the warehouse owner, who comes across as a bit of a dodgy capitalist.
Gulager and Karen, unsurprisingly, earned themselves plenty of genre roles after starring in this now cult classic, but the rest of the cast do really well too, and none feel two-dimensional at all. Plus, the music score, while of its time, is chock full of memorable punk and alternative songs from the likes of The Cramps, .45 Grave, C.O.C. and Dirty Rotten Imbeciles, to give the likes of sexy, red-haired punkette, Trash (Linnea Quigley), something to dance naked to, in the graveyard, during one of the film’s most memorable scenes.
Dan O’Bannon clearly knew what he was doing when it came to updating Russo’s original Living Dead script, making it less about the creeping undead and more about the wannabe survivors themselves and making them feel very realistic, but also funny, due to the ridiculous situations that they find themselves in. Plus, his innovation of the zombies was to allow them some intelligence, where some can even talk; albeit with a limited vocabulary. The catch-phrases ‘more brains’ and ‘send more paramedics’ have now become the stuff of horror legend because of this modification to undead lore.
There are also some fun little ‘in-jokes’ to keep an eye out for, including the eye sight test sheet in the background of one scene that reads; ‘Burt is a slave driver and a son of a bitch’; Burt being the boss of the warehouse.
In fact, this is one of the best horror films of the 1980s. Not only does it have an engaging storyline, it also delivers on the visceral thrills, amongst the comedic moments that actually work for the horror, not against it. Plus, any film that makes good use of a zombie amputee and features half-dogs that turn into zombie half-dogs is certainly worth seeing, at least twice.
Arrow Video has done an excellent job on bringing this cult classic back into the limelight. Not only do we get a ton of extras that accompany the main feature, we also get a secondary documentary feature called More Brains! on a second disc and that too has another load of extras to accompany it. There’s so much quality material included in this Blu-ray release that I really think that this might be in the top five Blu-ray releases of this year.
Apparently, this limited edition comes with a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Orlando Arocena – which looks stunning; a collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Gary Smart and a preview of the forthcoming sequel comic Revenge of the Living Dead; and a double-sided fold-out poster featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Orlando Arocena. Unfortunately, I just received a screener disc so didn’t see all this packaging stuff for reviewing purposes, but knowing Arrow’s past history of great presentations for its special edition releases I’m sure that this is up to their usual high standards.
One Disc One we obviously get the feature presentation, which is remastered into 4K so looks great and sounds great too with its original lossless mono audio, plus DTS-HD MA 5.1 surround audio. Then the extras are as follows;
Audio commentary by writer-director Dan O’Bannon and production designer William Stout – Dan talks about the weird fact he came across while researching dead paraphernalia, which is in the script, about the main supply of human skeletons, for science and medicine, always coming from India, but the supply dried up suddenly, not so long after his film – that pointed this fact out – was released; coincidence…maybe. Apparently, they used sulphur to get the yellow smoke effect in the basement, but it stank horribly.
Audio commentary by Stout and actors Don Calfa, Brian Peck, Linnea Quigley, Beverly Randolph and Allan Trautman – Another fun commentary, which is, perhaps, a little less formal than O’Bannon’s and Stout’s. The cast have mostly fond memories of the shoot, which lasted for nearly 2 months. They discuss their characters and costumes and interactions with O’Bannon, who apparently was very stressed during the shoot so had an unpredictable temper.
Audio commentary by actors Thom Mathews and John Philbin and make-up effects artist Tony Gardner – Probably my favourite out of the commentaries, this is a fun listen, as they talk about how they got involved, and talk a bit about the film in a wider context.
Audio commentary by fans and filmmakers Gary Smart and Chris Griffiths – A more academic commentary from two well respected genre writers. They talk about TROTLD being a very self-aware film, and we learn that Dan was ill when he made the film – due to Crohn’s disease, which later killed him.
The Origins of the Living Dead, an archive interview with author John Russo (15 mins)– The original creator of the ‘living dead’ talks about how the film came about and reveals that it was his idea originally to make zombies ‘flesh-eaters’, to make them scarier.
The FX of the Living Dead, an archive featurette on the special effects (16 mins) – Designer William Stout and VFX gurus Bill Munns, Kenny Myers, Craig Calon and Tony Gardner talk effects and about the hard work behind them. Munns is particularly candid about getting fired from the film as he couldn’t produce what was required for the budget that he had, in the restricted time that he had.
Party Time: The Music of Return of the Living Dead, a featurette on the film’s soundtrack (29.5 mins) – Many of the musical artists from the film, including Dinah Cancer from .45 Grave and Greg Heston from Circle Jerk, talk about how they got involved, about the tracks they contributed to the film and about their own reactions to the film.
Horror’s Hallowed Grounds, an archive tour of the locations by Sean Clark (10.5 mins) – Sean takes us around some of the locations used in the film, although many of them have changed completely. For example, the cemetery used to be an olive grove, but now is a modern housing estate in LA.
The Dead Have Risen, an archive featurette with Calfa, Peck, Quigley, Randolph, Trautman, Clu Gulager and James Karen (20 mins) – A bit of a ‘love-in’ track with the actors generously praising each other, talking about their characters and talking about rehearsals. Linnea Quigley apparently found the night shoots hard, especially, since she had a least attire for most of the time.
Designing the Dead, an archive featurette with O’Bannon and Stout (14 mins) – Dan O’Bannon talks about his career, about trying to steer John Russo’s script away from Romero’s dead saga and about how he wanted his dead to look more like Aztec mummies.
The Decade of Darkness, an archive featurette about 1980s horror classics (23.5 mins) – The likes of Stuart Gordon, John Landis, Joe Dante, Elvira and Tony Timpone talk about how the 80s were a great time for genre fans and filmmakers alike, with films such as Pumpkinhead, Motel Hell, Child’s Play and The Howling getting rolled out.
Deleted scenes from a VHS work-print (33 mins) – not much of interest here but we do get a scene that explains why punk-rocker Suicide ends up driving the gang around and there’s more footage of the guys chaining up the half body.
Theatrical trailers and TV spots – We get four US trailers (from Orion), which use the tagline: ‘They’re mean, they’re hungry and they’re not vegetarians!’ We also get the UK teaser trailer, which is just creepy text and voice-over over a heartbeat sound. And at least ten brief TV spots using the tagline: ‘They were resting in peace until they were rudely interrupted.’
Disc Two – MORE BRAINS! is only available with the limited edition version.
Principally we get a high definition (1080p) Blu-ray presentation of the 2017 feature-length documentary about the making of the film, featuring extensive interviews with cast and crew. This is aptly named More Brains!
The feature length documentary, More Brains! (120 mins) goes into a lot of rich detail about the origins of the film, the pre-production design work, the rehearsals, the production itself and post-production. Plus, it places the film within the echelons of zombie cinema and talks about its initial reception in theatres. It’s a fitting testament to how popular and highly regarded the film has become over the years that such a lot of people were happy to contribute to the doc in such a positive way. We learn about the ongoing legal wrangles between John Russo and George Romero, about one of the cast, Miguel, actually residing in a homeless shelter during the making of the film and also learn about the film’s main investor, Tom Fox, who was an investment banker from Chicago.
A Conversation with Dan O’Bannon: The Final Interview (28.5 mins) – A very candid and interesting interview with a frail-looking O’Bannon. This is great stuff as he admits to mistakes he made and gives a good idea of what elements he was pleased with and which he wasn’t so happy with. He talks about issues on set and being scared of actor Clu, and being pleasantly surprised that his audience was half female at the premiere.
Deleted scenes from the documentary (15.21 mins) – These include snippets from the interviews that just probably weren’t seen as important enough to include such as Linnea talking about her red wig, the production designer talking about some disturbing facts that came out of his crematorium research, including that they sometimes burn multiple bodies and then divide the cold ashes up later; plus, multiple instances of mortuary assistants telling him, privately, that some of the other staff actually fucked the corpses after hours.
Return of the Living Dead in 3 Minutes (3.04 mins) – This has the different actors doing quotes from the film in the order they are spoken in the movie. Quigley is probably the best at this impromptu stuff.
Resurrected Settings: The Filming Locations Today (10 mins) – Another mini featurette looking at the locations as they are today, but with Beverley and Brian, aka Tina and Scuz from the film. We learn that some of the locations were not in the best area of town. Brian ends up going to a VFX workshop where he finds the mould for the ‘Trashman’ zombie, which is cool.
