The Return of the Living Dead (1985)

The film that is generally considered as the true start of the modern zombie movie, Night of the Living Dead, didn't really become a pop culture phenomenon until after repeated television showings in the 1970's. The two writers of that film George A Romero and John A Russo had different visions of what they wanted to do with the now re-invigorated property and parted ways, with Russo retaining the rights to the 'Living Dead' title and Romero free to make his own, ultimately better known series of zombie flicks. Various circumstances kept Russo from making an additional zombie film until 1985 and by that time his vision for the franchise may well have changed. While Romero's films are noted for their subtext of social commentary, Russo's work is decidedly more tongue in cheek.

From the Wikipedia plot description of this movie:

"At a medical supply warehouse in Louisville, Kentucky, a foreman named Frank tries to impress the company's newest employee, Freddy, by showing him military drums that accidentally wound up in the basement of the building. The drum contains the remains of an army experiment gone wrong that inspired the film Night of the Living Dead. Frank accidentally unleashes the toxic gas inside the barrel. Frank and Freddy discover that the body inside the tank has disappeared, believing it to have probably melted. The gas reanimates a corpse inside a meat locker, forcing Frank and Freddy to call upon their boss and warehouse owner Burt Wilson to help them deal with the situation. When the three fail to kill the walking cadaver by damaging its brain and decapitating it, Burt decides to bring the zombie to the nearby mortuary to have its dismembered parts burned in a gambit to destroy it once and for all."

So there you get something of a sense of the movies tone, its a sort of sequel to Night of the Living Dead, only in this film Night of the Living Dead is treated as a heavily fictionalized version of the 'real events' this movie is a true sequel to. While the zombies in Romero's and most subsequent zombie films are relatively easy to kill, you just destroy the brain, Russo's zombies are much more freighting in that they are almost impossible to 'kill', you destroy the brain, you slice them up, they still keep coming at you. These zombies differ from the now generally accepted Romero from in other significant ways, they eat only living human brains rather then all kind of living flesh, they are re-animated corpses in the truest sense not merrily the recently deceased victims of a 'zombie virus', and they are considerably more intelligent, capable of group planning and speech. These latter attributes also make them seem sillier then Romero's zombies.

Despite how terrible and freighting these zombies are, here they are mostly re-animated corpses in various stages of decay from a Louisville cemetery that are brought back to life by the leaked chemical from the medical supply warehouse (though a couple of characters exposed directly to the chemical later join their number, and possibly some of the brain eaten victims as well), this movie is played kind of for laughs. It's a dark comedy, moments of terror intermixed with moments of ridiculousness. In addition to the employees of the medical supply warehouse you have the kind of acerbic director of the neighboring funeral home and a group of 80's style punk rocker youths, the friends of new warehouse employee Freddy. There is also an army colonial based in California who has been charged with eliminating the zombies at all cost should those long missing barrels from the failed army experiment of the 1960's ever show back up. It is because of this latter characters actions that the movies end becomes even more apocalyptic then it might otherwise have been.

One the whole this is an odd but satisfying film, enjoyable for having a take on zombies so different from that of the current norm.  ***