"BRAAAAAINNNS."
We've talked the seminal stuff when it comes to zombie flicks before, but now it's time for a personal favorite of mine. I'm not the hugest zombie person in the world--don't ask me what the fifteenth season of Walking Dead or whatever is all about--but every now and again, you get a shambler-themed showcase that agrees with me. And here's one of them!
Written and directed by Dan O'Bannon, the man who penned Alien no less, the film is a followup...in a very loose sense...to Romero's classic Night of the Living Dead. Here, the opening posits that the latter film was apparently a coverup for a real zombie outbreak, created by, what else, military chemical experiments wrong. A bureaucratic mixup causes both the chemical and sealed zombies to be sent to a medical supply warehouse where, one evening, the supervizor and his jackass young new assistant decide to give the errant containers a look-see for shits and giggles, only to inadvertently release the undead horrors within!
As you can tell, the movie has that dark satirical streak that was also present to a degree in Alien--but unlike a huge portion of other zombie media, it doesn't brain you over the skull with it. Speaking of brains, this also happens to be the very one that invented the notion of zombies trying to eat those--it's a newer idea than you'd think. And there's plenty of brains to be eaten--including another highlight of the movie, the punk gang that gets entangled in the events as they spread to the graveyard adjacent the warehouse. And yes, there is that one infamous scene where one of the lady punks dances in the nude just for the hell of it atop a crypt. It's the eighties, it's a film that doesn't give a shit, what do you expect.
Still, the film continues to stand apart from other undead flicks--for one, it actually has cool and intelligent zombies! Yes, in this one, destroying the brain, as the characters memorably discover while anguishing that the Romero movies lied to them, doesn't stop them. Sever a limb, the limb keeps coming. Burn then? The ash comes down in rain and awakens more zombies! It does make for some scary shamblers, when in others, you have random bands of survivors taking down so many you wonder how the hell they're even meant to threaten society. Not to mention, the zombies here are smart enough to use chains to pull open doors, call for more victims over the radio, and so forth--adding a more interesting twist than just more mindless meatsacks.
The score is also a good amount of fun--you've got eighties punk, and a pretty memorable synth-rock theme. It's all of the time, of course, but it does add a nice little spice to the enjoyment factor, and gives it that flavor which makes the film ideal to show at Halloween parties!
And, it all ends with a twist ending that fires off a Chekov's gun laid earlier in the flick, so it earns what becomes another deadpan jab at the military-industrial complex. All in all, what makes me enjoy this one so much is that right blend of dark humor, gleeful gory fun, and sprinkling of satire--all ingredients that form a flick I aim to see at least one a year alongside the rest of my October viewing.
There's been other zombie films that took a playful and parodical stab at the subgenre--from the good, like Shaun of the Dead, to, erm, the not so good, like The Dead Don't Die. But in a topic inundated with expression of the same old 'humans are like, the real monsters' schtick or something about consumerism, as well as boring and mindless zombies that just line up to be shoot by survival fantasy fulfilling leads...Return stands out as a good piece of fun that tries something slightly different. There were a bunch of sequels nobody cares about, and neither do I--but this one, for me, remains a nice solid cult classic. Just remember to send more paramedics.
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