The first R-rated movie I saw in theaters by myself was "The Return of the Living Dead" back in good old 1985. I saw it at the now defunct Cinema City 5 theaters in Fresh Meadows, NY and I must say it was exciting to see an R-rated movie, let alone an R-rated horror flick (Today, aside from a few curse words, this movie would probably be rated PG-13). The lights went down and I was introduced to a whole new world of punk music, punk characters, a couple of chemical facility workers in their mid-50's, and rampaging zombies who ran and lunged themselves at victims (this is the first zombie flick to feature running zombies). Oh, yes, and the commonplace sight in TV and film screens in the 1980's, a nuclear explosion.
"The Return of the Living Dead" felt like a nuclear explosion, and it still is. It is chaotic from the first frame to the last with no end in sight of its unrelenting chaos and complete anarchy. The director Dan O'Bannon (his directorial debut) was influenced by director Howard Hawks' own chaos in his early screwball comedies. The movie begins with what we would now associate with Quentin Tarantino in terms of dialogue featuring meta associations with previous movies - James Karen (truly memorable) as a Darrow Chemical employee tells a new recruit (Thom Andrews) about how their basement has mistakenly delivered metal drums from the Army containing dead bodies. These bodies were the inspiration behind George Romero's "Night of the Living Dead" movie ("Did you know it was based on a true case?"). When Karen shows the incredulous kid these supposedly airtight drums, a green gaseous vapor shoots out and turns them, slowly but surely, into zombies.
Clu Gulager (I love that he made this movie - he and James Karen give it an ounce of integrity) is the boss at Darrow Chemical Plant who investigates the chaos of reanimated corpses thanks to that green gas. More chaos ensues when Gulager and company try to convince the local moratorium's owner (bug-eyed Dan Calfa) to burn the reanimated corpse they chopped up (at first, Gulager tells Calfa they are "rabid weasels"). This creates more problems when the fumes start to resurrect the dead at the Resurrection Cemetery, which happens to be occupied by a punk party group who just want to party! The standout is Linnea Quigley as Trash, a girl who is fascinated and turned on by death. Quigley, true to form, does full frontal nudity dancing on top of a gravestone. The rest of the kids are distinctive enough in their look though not the most memorable, except for the punkish, leather-jacketed, chain-pierced rebel named Suicide (Mark Venturini) who is trying to make a statement with his look and supposedly has no interest in having sex with Trash!
The zombies in this movie have ravenous appetites that includes mostly eating brains ("It takes away the pain of being dead," exclaims one limbless zombie). Oh, yeah, the zombies talk and always scream, "Brains!" For more intellectual types, this movie might be disposable B-movie trash. For me, there is terrifically timed black humor, solid performances, a tongue-in-cheek attitude, Linnea Quigley dancing naked, split dog specimens, and an explosive ending. I wouldn't call the ending uncompromising but it is unexpected. For a teen kid in the 1980's, this was a great R-rated movie. Now, it is simply a great horror comedy.
