Return of the Living Dead Part 2
Directed by Ken Wiederhorn

I didn’t plan this but it seems to me that this week is going to be the next part of an impromptu retrospective on the Return of the Living Dead series. I’ve already covered the Friday the 13th series, and really enjoyed watching all those movies together, so hopefully, I’ll come out of this with some new reflections on the Return of the Living Dead series. Or not. Anyway, time to cover the next two entries into this series, Parts 2 and 3! Return of the Living Dead is a classic zombie horror-comedy, so hopes are high that the sequels will continue in that tradition, but do they? Read on to find out!

Starting From A Real Low Point.

The short answer is no. Talk about going from a high to a low, Return of the Living Dead Part 2 is, to put it kindly, a steep drop in quality from the original. But before I start ragging too hard on it I will at least describe the plot and point out any positives I can find. Return of the Living Dead Part 2 surprisingly does not pick up where the first film leaves off, starting instead with a group of soldiers transporting barrels of the zombie-causing gas 2-4-5 Trioxin to a secure location. One of the barrels falls out the back of the truck and goes unaccounted for when the driver is too busy listening to loud music and smoking pot, like one does. This barrel is found by a group of local children who pry it open because they are curious little shits. This, of course, releases the trademark gas of the series that causes the corpses in a local cemetery to return to life and terrorize the town, while a young boy who knows what is going on knows what is going on tries to alert the authorities.

Very Similar Set-Up But That Isn’t The Worst.

This is a rather similar set-up to the original film, in which a local fool pops open a government tube that is intensely dangerous looking, leading to a horrific zombie apocalypse that threatens a nearby town. These plots are similar, and up until that beginning bit, I was mostly with the movie. The jokes weren’t as fresh as the first, but this was still wholesome cheesy fun. That is until the zombies show up. In the first sequence where we see the zombies and they rise from their graves, a sequence that was chilling in the first film, the zombies are now doing goofy pratfalls and other bits of slapstick. This was my first warning that things have changed a lot since the original.

Some of This Feels Like They May Have Missed The Point.

Zombies, which were once an apocalyptic threat that required the most serious response, have now been largely reduced to a source of slapstick comedy. In multiple scenes zombies have their faces caved in by a simple punch, get distracted by exercise programs on television, and occasionally are dressed like Michael Jackson A la his Thriller routine. It isn’t that I dislike slapstick comedy or parody, it is that these jokes have no edge to them, and aren’t particularly funny. I could start listing jokes that don’t work but we would be here all night. Suffice it to say the humor doesn’t work.

Without Horror, What’s Left?

That’s a big problem though because once you get rid of the horror elements, there isn’t much else present in the movie. I didn’t hate the characters but they don’t have much to do and typically just run from one set-piece to another while trying to avoid zombies. There’s not much else to talk about except for the ending, which oh boy, does it go against the spirit of the original movie in exceptional ways. Spoilers, the group manages to trap the zombie horde in a power station and electrocute them into either a state of double death or paralysis, it’s unclear. Very different than the deliciously nihilistic ending of Return of the Living Dead.

There Are Some Good Parts Though.

One thing that I will recognize that is great here is the creature effects. Though I don’t think they’re properly utilized, the zombies look awesome and the visual gags are pretty impressive. And even though I tend to be pretty harsh on the movie’s sense of humor there were many jokes that I at least chuckled at. Sure, the ratio wasn’t great but there were sequences I enjoyed, particularly the interactions between three actors who returned, albeit not playing the same characters they were in the original, they had pretty good comedic chemistry even if their plotline was kind of a dud.

You Can Probably Guess My Recommendation.

Even though my review so far seems pretty scathing there is something I want to make abundantly clear, I don’t hate this movie. Sure, I have problems with it, sure, it does not live up to its full potential, but it never made me mad, just disappointed. Even with my waffling, I can’t in good conscience recommend this movie to anyone. The goofy tone never stops feeling at odds with the core conceit of the original film and that makes everything an exercise in frustration. If you wanted to watch something with a closer tone to the original Return of the Living Dead, I’d say Shaun of the Dead is probably the closest movie off-hand that I can think of. If you absolutely have to see it, it is streaming on Hulu.

Return of the Living Dead 3

Directed by Brian Yuzna

After the disappointment of Return of the Living Dead Part 2, I was hesitant to continue on to Return of the Living Dead 3. But I had heard from some reliable sources (random people on twitter) that this movie was far better than the second film in the series, so I hopped on over to Shudder, held my nose, and started one of the most surprising viewings I’ve ever had. Once I realized that Part 2 was mostly a terrible remake of the original, I was expecting the 3rd to be a decent remake of the original, and that is not at all what Return of the Living Dead 3 is, instead it goes in a completely different direction than I anticipated. So let’s get into what makes Return of the Living Dead 3 such a unique sequel and zombie film that may have just entered my zombie film canon!

The Shockingly Different Story!

Return of the Living Dead focuses on the teenager Curt, whose father works on a military project to find military uses for zombies created by the series mainstay 2-4-5 Trioxin gas. To impress his new girlfriend Julie, Curt swipes his father’s ID so they can sneak in and see what’s happening, only to discover the horrible experiments his father oversees. Eager to escape his father’s influence, Curt and Julie run away together, becoming tragically involved in a motorcycle crash that leaves Curt wounded and Julie dead. Making a possibly hasty decision, Curt schleps Julie’s corpse back to the military test site and uses the Trioxin to try to revive her. The Trioxin revives Julie but has the unfortunate, and entirely foreseeable, side-effect of turning her into a zombie, which once again puts Curt and Julie on the run from Curt’s father and the rest of the military trying to find them before Julie completely transforms into a brain-eating monster.

Ooooh, Characters!

If you couldn’t tell from the above summary, this is a completely different direction than the previous films have gone and I am thrilled to finally have that in this series! The bulk of this movie is not a zombie apocalypse or even the efforts of the military to find the two kids, the main story here features Curt trying to get Julie out of the city and suppress her growing urges as she slowly loses her humanity to the zombification. This is a much more character-driven film than what has come before and part of what makes this story so interesting to me is how the villains of the movie series have changed.

What If Teenagers Are The Real Monsters?

This may have played slightly differently in 1993 than it does today, but there seem to be two ways to interpret Curt’s actions in the context of the movie. The first is that he, cutting himself off from his father and placing all his hopes, dreams, and emotional vulnerability in his girlfriend who tragically dies, resurrects her out of real, but desperate, love. Alternatively, Curt, unable to let go and accept that Julie is gone, uses mad science to doom her to a cursed existence, which he knows about because he’s seen zombies, and then once she is conscious and in constant agony, refuses to allow her to do anything that may ease her pain because it makes him uncomfortable. Sure, there’s maybe a middle ground between those two things, but in my mind, Curt is a villain protagonist and I absolutely love that.

Just The Disgusting Body-Horror I Needed.

That adds such an interesting dimension to all the zombie horror stuff that we see, especially when the illness starts to spread. Every time Curt yells at Julie to stop trying to eat brains or stop trying to self-harm because pain numbs the deafening hunger that is now her existence, there’s a depressing reality to Curt completely ignoring what Julie wants and needs in favor of his own desires. There are still, of course, traditional zombie horrors of brain-eating and body horror, and those are great, but the real meat of what makes this movie memorable effects-wise is the incredible body horror of Julie’s attempts to retain her humanity. I don’t want to get spoilery, but seeing what Julie does to herself is legitimately shocking and uncomfortable, a true marvel of body horror and effects imagery.

Wait, Is This Some Kind of Quality Movie? I Don’t Understand.

Honestly, I think I love this movie. The transgressive nature of the entire production is the trademark of director Brian Yuzna, director of the satirical horror film Society and constant collaborator with many ‘out there’ filmmakers, and what makes everything here work so well. The constant satire involving Curt, the military, Julie’s own horror and disgust at the situation she is in, everything blends so well together with the already established satire of the Return of the Living Dead series. Sure, there is a lot less humor in this installment, but the satirical elements make up for that and I appreciate there not being a lot of jokes in a plot like this. If you’re up for something a little out there, pretty gross, and truly unique, I would strongly recommend Return of the Living Dead 3.