Return of the Living Dead Part II (1988)

 This is the sequel to 1985's 'Return of the Living Dead', which it's self was an early example of a meta-sequel, in this case to 1968's 'Night of the Living Dead'. The comic chemistry between James Karen and Thom Matthew's was a great strength of the first film, but those characters die there in, so the actors are brought back as different characters with the same dynamic.

The first films A plot is largley replicated in the B plot here, but the first films B plot is replaced by a very different A plot; so the movie does a good job of staying true to what worked in the original, without being too much of remake/rehash, a problem with many an 80s/90s sequel. Still this isn't on the level of the 85 film, though I found it mostly enjoyable all the same. **

Slam Dance (1987)

 'Slam Dance": Hong Kong born American indie director Wayne Wang working from a script by Charlie McFadden from the Criters movies.  Amadeus himself Tom Hulce is a Far Side-esquse newspaper cartoonist who seems to enjoy his job, but chiefly uses it to finance his passion for painting. He has a young daughter who he loves, played the ill fated Judith Barsi, he's married to but separated from her mother Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, whose also an artist. 

The couple is separated largely because of Tom's tendency to sleep around. One of the women he's been sleeping with is Virgina Madson. When Virginia Madson is found dead, Tom is a chief suspect. Detective Harry Dean Stanton is on the case, he quickly determines that Hulce is not the killer, but that Virginia's death is related to a sex scandal involving powerful congressional representative Bobby Nye and corruption inside his own police department.

'Slam Dance' starts out as mostly a character study, but then slowly develops into a murder mystery, with Virgina Madson not turning up dead until roughly a half hour in. I thought the movies change in emphasis worked for it, because their is really not enough here for either a 100 minute character study or a 100 minute mystery, but plenty for a hybrid of the two. The film has one very good twist in it, though the denouncement is only so-so. ***