150 Words About . . .THE RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD (1985)

by James Newman

While admittedly dated thanks to its gang of punk protagonists, Return of the Living Dead ranks high on my list of my favorite movies.  One thing I’ve always loved about this particular zombie flick is that we get to see what causes the plague in the first place before we watch it spread.  Seems there was a chemical the government created to spray on marijuana crops . . . but Trioxin-245 can also raise the dead.

Oops.  Somebody’s gonna lose their job over this.

Believe it or not, for such a bleak movie (there’s no happy ending here!) Return is as funny as it is scary, thanks to a sublime script by director Dan O’Bannon (who also wrote a lil’ film called Alien).  Consider this exchange between the two medical-warehouse employees who inadvertently bring about the apocalypse:  “I hit the brain!”/”Well, it worked in the movie!”/”You mean the movie lied?!”