The Return of the Living Dead, 1985.
Written and Directed by Dan O’Bannon.
Starring Clu Gulager, James Karen, Don Calfa, Thom Mathes, Beverly Randolph, John Philbin, Jewel Shepard, Miguel Nunez, Brian Peck and Linnea Quigley.
SYNOPSIS:
When two bumbling employees at a medical supply warehouse accidentally release a deadly gas into the air, the vapors cause the dead to rise again as zombies.
1985 was one of those miraculous years when cinema seemed to be firing on all cylinders. Back to the Future, Brazil, The Breakfast Club, The Goonies… each a snapshot of pop culture at its most exuberant. Nestled among them, and far more anarchic than its glossy contemporaries, came The Return of the Living Dead: a punk-rock riot of a film that happily shredded the sacred rules of zombie lore and laughed in the face of George A. Romero’s solemn apocalypse. Four decades later, Arrow Video’s new 4K restoration proves that Dan O’Bannon’s cult classic still thrums with the same mischievous energy, now gleaming with a clarity it never had on VHS.
Written and directed by O’Bannon, best known at that point as the screenwriter of Alien, Return is a delirious blend of comedy, horror and punk attitude. It begins in a medical-supply warehouse where two employees, Frank (James Karen) and Freddy (Thom Mathews), accidentally unleash a military gas that revives the dead. As the fumes spread, a gang of punk teenagers partying in a nearby graveyard find themselves trapped between the infected warehouse and the freshly risen corpses beneath their feet.
From the first frames, O’Bannon makes it clear this isn’t a straight sequel to Night of the Living Dead but a high-spirited hijacking. The film acknowledges Romero’s original as “based on a true story,” then tosses his rules out the window. These zombies don’t shuffle, they sprint, talk, plan and negotiate. They even use radios to demand “Send more paramedics.” The Tarman zombie, dripping with black sludge and sly intelligence, is a masterclass in rubber-suit horror: grotesque, funny, and impossible to forget.
It’s easy to see why Return became such a fixture of midnight screenings. O’Bannon keeps the action lean and relentless. There isn’t a wasted beat in its 91 minutes, as chaos escalates from darkly comic mishaps to apocalyptic despair. The performances walk a perfect tightrope between straight-faced panic and absurdity. Karen and Mathews are particularly brilliant, charting the agonising transformation from hapless workers to conscious corpses with a bizarre pathos. Clu Gulager and Don Calfa ground the film’s hysteria with dry wit, while Linnea Quigley’s punk icon Trash delivers one of horror cinema’s most notorious entrances, stripping in a graveyard before rising again as a fanged, pink-haired corpse.
What makes Return endure is its tonal precision. It’s riotously funny, but also genuinely unsettling. When a captured zombie calmly explains that eating brains “makes the pain go away,” the film taps into something both grotesque and tragic. O’Bannon’s real trick is empathy – his monsters feel pain, and his humans often behave monstrously. Beneath the punk bravado, it’s an oddly humane apocalypse.
Arrow’s new 4K Ultra HD release is, quite simply, the best the film has ever looked. The restoration preserves the grain and texture of the 35 mm stock while bringing out a richness in the colours. Those toxic greens and morgue blues now pulse with new life. Both mono and 5.1 audio tracks deliver superbly; dialogue is crisp, the screams still pierce, and the punk soundtrack (minus The Damned’s “Dead Beat Dance,” sadly lost to rights issues) rips through the speakers.
The extras are as exhaustive as any fan could hope for. Four audio commentaries cover every corner of production, while the feature-length documentary More Brains! is a brutally honest, often hilarious chronicle of chaos behind the camera. There are interviews with O’Bannon, production designer William Stout, make-up maestro Tony Gardner, and a host of cast members, plus archival featurettes on effects, music, and locations.
Arrow’s packaging, complete with reversible artwork, poster, and collector’s booklet, is rocking, treating the film with the respect of a minor classic rather than a grubby cult item.
Revisiting The Return of the Living Dead in 4K is epic. A chance to rediscover its punk spirit intact: brash, bloody, and knowingly ridiculous, but also smart enough to reinvent an entire sub-genre with a smile. For all its decaying flesh and flying limbs, it’s a film that’s very much alive.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Tom Atkinson
