The Return of the Living Dead (1985)

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The Return of the Living Dead is an imaginative, funny and timely reinvigoration of the ghoulish concepts George A. Romero pioneered back in 1968 (See Night of the Living Dead).Especially with its accent on comedy, one might expect that director Dan O'Bannon's variation on the theme would fail miserably (admittedly, early reception of this film was fairly negative), but quite to the contrary. This is one amazing horror film, and one that I can (and have!) happily watch over and over again. This film is the perfect blend of humour and horror. It reflects the punk nihilism of the age and the cold war fear of nuclear apocalypse. The film also depicts death in starker terms than many efforts that have come before, and describes with a strong sense of inevitability how  a bad situation can quickly escalate to worse, to tragic, to completely FUBAR. Return surpasses Romero's 1985 film Day of the Dead in terms of its ingenuity, social value and overall entertainment, and consequently it's also one of the best horror films of the decade - have you already guessed I like this film...alot!?

 This film takes the Night of the Living Dead aesthetic and updates it to include the 1980s - the decade of the punk rocker. Punks are nihilists who see no tomorrow, and dwell in a culture of death music and death imagery. Appropriately, Return of the Living Dead focuses on a group of punks with names like Trash, Suicide and Scum. Their very names indicate their lack of respect for the world, and themselves. They see themselves as nothing in a world that doesn't value them, and won't survive an apocalypse. Obsessed with death and murder, these characters actually worship ugliness and urban blight. When facing the wasteland of Uneeda's industrial park, Trash (legendary Scream Queen, Linnea Quigley) notes, "I like it. It's a statement."

Even the dreams these characters have , focus on grim death-oriented details. "Do you ever fantasise about being killed? Ever wonder what would be the most horrible way to die?" Trash asks her friends, almost immediately before going into a nude striptease on top of a grave monument.

The message is clear: Like many such youths from this time, she gets off on the idea of death. Her "most horrible way to die" is oddly sexual too. "A bunch of men eating her alive", she states... You can see where this is going. Sex and death, co-mingling in the culture of the bomb. It's quite a powerful statement, even before the zombies arrive.

It's only a matter of time till the dead do return to life and begin killing the punks, who suddenly find that death isn't so romantic or enjoyable as they might have hoped. O'Bannon adds punk music to the soundtrack (45 Grave's "Party Time", being a favourite of mine!) at critical junctures. This makes the audience aware that, in some sense, the death pop culture is also responsible for the apocalypse. Zombies rise to the tune of "Party Time*", a set piece crafted to resemble a music video - similarities with Michael Jackson's "Thriller" are clear to see. In the sequel, a zombie claws its way out of its grave wearing a suspiciously similar wardrobe to that the king of pop wore in his music video - and overrun the chapel to the ludicrous and amusing song, "The Surfing Dead." The music plays as counterpoint to the action on screen, and underlines the punk ethos of the film.

The punk characters, "stupid fuckers" by their own admission, don't really help each other when they could. Instead, they run around and die. Those who do survive see their chosen philosophy of life proven correct when, in the end, the United States government nukes the city to destroy the living dead. The nuclear apocalypse the punk generation fears has come to pass. And - as many suspected - it's friendly fire, not an example of Communist aggression.

Night of the Living Dead has been viewed through the lens of racial issues in 1960s America. The shopping mall setting in Dawn of the Dead in 1978 is universally read as a statement of rampant consumerism. Return of the Living Dead is the true heir to this legacy, because it absorbs the zeitgeist of Reagan's 1980s, fears of nuclear apocalypse, punk rock and all that business. Romero's Day of the Dead (1985), same year as Return) ends atypically happy, with Sarah having discovered a Caribbean paradise with two friends, far from the plague of the dead destroying America. Before Land of the Dead, it was the only film in the trilogy to end on a semi-upbeat note, rather than a dark one.

Indeed, the end of Day of the Dead suggests that sometimes it's okay to ignore the big issues and run away to bury your head in the sand. That's a valid point of view, but in Return of the Living Dead's hopeless, nihilistic end (which resembles Romero's The Crazies, I might add) makes a far more courageous and uncompromising statement. When disaster strikes, the film suggests that the government is the true enemy. The government and the Army are responsible for creating the zombies in the first place; they stored the zombies (unsafely); and they "solved" the problem with a nuclear missile.

No wonder a generation grew up in fear of Reagan's finger hovering on that big red button. "We start bombing in five minutes" is a joke without a funny punch line and so it's no wonder that a culture obsessed with death grew up in America.

This film is more than just a reflection of nuclear fears and the punk aesthetic. In a logical if horrifying way, it depicts how a manageable situation can deteriorate and become unmanageable. The incident in Uneeda's basement results in a visit to the mortuary to kill the "undead." The corpses are then burned in a fire, but the smoke rises from the crematorium. The chemical then comes back down to earth as rain, and falls into the graveyard - producing more dangers. It's a cycle of life, or death, and this is the first time that a living dead film has explicitly found a message to pass the "disease" in a way other than direct contact (biting).

The message is an environmental one: toxic chemicals are pumped into the atmosphere and have a toxic effect. Even this is a timely allusion to a fear of the 1980s - acid rain. It also attempts to address specific issues about the process of dying that other living dead films ignored. For instance, exposure to the 245 Trioxin kills the Uneeda employees, but they don't realise this until their bodies begin to suffer from the effects of rigor mortis.

The film explains in detail how rigor mortis begins in the brain and settles in the muscles. As the paramedics arrive to take vital signs in a classic scene, they find no heartbeats, no blood pressure and no pulse. Instead, they locate blood starting to pool, and big purple blotches of blood on the patients' backs. As for the zombies, they eat brains because it hurts to die; there's "the pain of being dead" that apparently only eating brains can help alleviate. "I can feel myself rotting", reveals one zombie. This dark film proves exceedingly grim about not just dying, but the condition of death itself. The humour does however break this at certain points - an example is when a zombie radios for more police to attend the scene after the contents of the first squad car to arrive had been eaten, but rather than doing so for help, it's as if he just ordered more pizzas for his undead friends. "Party time" indeed!

Return of the Living Dead acknowledges the existence of Night of the Living Dead and zombies in film history - one line of dialogue near the start fo this film, suggests that the events of Romero's 1968 classic, actually happened. All characters act on their knowledge of the Romero films, and are disappointed when the truth is different from what they have seen of these films. "You mean the movie lied?" exclaims one surprised victim.

Return of the Living Dead is a film that is held in high regard amongst horror circles, which was refreshing and clever at the same time. It was a well-timed film for the period it was made, and in the current period of horror-comedies and parodies (I'm looking at you Scary Movie franchise!) it seemed to have found the perfect blend to create a hybrid that works.

* "Party Time" was also used a few years ago in an advert for a Call of Duty Black Ops: Call of the Dead download pack, which also starred George A. Romero, Danny Trejo, Robert Englund, Michael Rooker and... umm... Sarah Michelle Gellar (really). Another indication that this film and its track has become synonymous with this particular niche genre.
Click here to watch Call of the Dead trailer

Asylum (1972)

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Hot on the heels of my previous post on horror anthology 'The Monster Club', and seeing as we're celebrating what would be the Centenary year of genre gent, Peter Cushing, I thought Asylum would be a fitting next entry.

The premise for this Amicus anthology - again directed by Roy Ward Baker - is pretty straightforward. A doctor named Martin (Robert Powell) travels to Dunsmoor Asylum for the incurably insane for a 'job interview'. Depending on whether he gets the job or not, he must visit four patients in order to work out which one is the former head psychologist - the very vacancy he is applying for. There are four stories in this anthology, written by author of Psycho - Robert Bloch. From a personal point of view, I enjoyed the first two stories most, but I implore you to watch the entire film.

So, the first story. A chopped-up body attempts to wriggle its way out of a freezer in a basement (as you do!) and as you can appreciate, it is annoying the murderer who put them there in the first place. The strange events begin when the decapitated head appears on the floor  just beyond the basement door. From here, the murderer will soon regret that they chopped the body up into so many pieces, as it exacts its revenge in a way that is funny and scary all at once.

The second story is more an acting set-piece, a confrontation between Peter Cushing and Barry Morse (Of Space: 1999  fame). This story is more suspenseful and involving for the audience, as it builds their sense of anticipation. A strange man named Mr Smith (Cushing) enters a tailor's shop and asks for a suit to be made from a strange reflective material. Not knowing it at the time, the tailor makes a suit that can actually reanimate the dead. In a disagreement over payment, Mr Smith is killed and this segment ends as a possible precursor to another 'horrifying' film - 1987's ahem.. comedy... Mannequin, starring Kim Cattrall.

It is worth noting here, that Cushing had completed all of his filming in only two days. Herbert Lom (segment four) shot his part in a quarter of that time, and the entire film was shot in 24 days.

Segment three stars Britt Ekland and Charlotte Rampling, in the tale I always thought was probably the weakest of the lot. Clearly influenced by Psycho, it is the story of a schizophrenic murderer. The problem I always found here is that the viewer is way ahead of the script in realising the twist, and couldn't be clearer in seeing it coming.

The final story - later remade for Season One of TV anthology Monsters - restores some of what the previous segment lost in the viewer. Surprise and horror are present as a crazy doctor creates a murderous little homunculus. Lom is effective as the psychotic doctor, and though the murderous doll is only a wind-up robot, the horror scenes are strangely effective. It's quite creepy seeing a wind-up toy make its way through an asylum and commit murder.

The wraparound involving Dr Martin are quite well made. Director Roy Ward Baker is careful to include the disturbing artwork on the walls of the asylum - bizarre portraits and caricatures. These artworks suggest that the building itself is evil, which creates a nice link to the supernatural stories we see. When we transition from wraparound to flashback, the camera focuses on a sketch and then spins about. It's almost as if we are descending into the madness of the drawing, at the same time sending the camera 'off its rocker'. A nice touch, seeing as the audience are taken from their normal world and spiralling into that of madness.

Asylum is a well-made horror anthology (remember, 24 days!) and seems to capture that great era of the horror anthology which is a world away from modern anthologies, so probably won't appeal to younger fans of the genre. The stories are rather short and underdeveloped compared to others of the time, such as Tales From The Crypt, Monsters and Tales From The Darkside. However, there is something about the era in which this film was made, which will always appeal to the older generation. Still, younger audiences have modern anthologies such as Tales from the Hood and Creepshow 3, so... you know.

The Monster Club (1981)

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'The Monster Club' is another film I watched early on as a youngster which made a big impact and contributed towards my love for the Horror genre. The opening sequence where we see horrific busts of monsters displayed in the dingy shop window had me hooked instantly.

This is a weird little film which is essentially an old-fashioned anthology, presided over by two of the genre's iconic elder statesmen - John Carradine and Vincent Price, no less. Despite these two genre heavyweights, the film itself is a strong, yet funny film which makes clever points about human nature. Essentially, the message is "Can't we all just get along?" The 'Species diagram' displayed proudly within the Monster Club itself, charts the not-always pleasant integration of humans and monster, and is thus a metaphor for race relations.

The film itself begins with a suspiciously homoerotic encounter in a dark alley at night, next to the shop previously mentioned. Horror novelist R. Chetwynd-Hayes (Carradine) is standing at the shop window admiring a display of his latest novel and photo portrait, when he is quite literally reached out to by the famished vampire, Erasmus (Price). Erasmus asks the stranger for a rather intimate favour - to drink his blood. The writer agrees to help the vampire however he can, and after quenching his thirst, a new friendship is forged. Erasmus recognises that he has just drank the blood of one of his favourite horror authors, and in gratitude he offers to take him to a place "not too far from here" to show him a world where he could gather ideas for his future horror novels. Even at the young age I was when first viewing this film, I always wondered why Erasmus did not take the short trip to the club in the first place if he were that famished, for an ice-cold drink of blood, rather than drink from a stranger in a dark alley. Then again, this wouldn't have made much of a film!

At the Monster Club, Erasmus begins to tell the tales of men and monsters and their difficult history together.

The first story tells the tales of a lonely Shadmock who is exploited by two crooks, one being a beautiful woman named Angela. "You have no idea what meeting you has meant to me", the tragic ghoul tells Angela, unaware of her treacherous plan. She ultimately finds out the hard way that a Shadmock's special ability to whistle often results in a slow and painful death. Throughout this story, the Monster is portrayed sympathetically, which can't be helped as we see him weeping from a broken heart.

The second story is a reversal of the conventional vampire tale - again showing the monster in a sympathetic light. This is essentially a family drama. A young boy is horrified to find out that his father - a vampire- is being hunted by a ruthless vampire killer (played here by another horror great, Donald Pleasance). This vampire family, immigrants from 'the old country', are simply trying to get on with their existence in a new world, but the vampire hunter is a bad, bad man who will not rest till he rids the world of one more blood sucker. He dresses in black - initially approaching the unsuspecting boy disguised as a vicar - and carries a violin case, and generally looks like a classic Mafia mobster, only the violin case does not contain a machine gun. Instead, it houses a stake and hammer.

This story cements the theme that monsters are a misunderstood and non-aggressive minority in society. The young boy's vampire father's motto is, "Feed without greed", which suggests that although some unpleasantness has to take place in order for their survival, the vampire is not a lethal predator, as portrayed in other genre films. Fortunately for this family, the climax to the story ends happily for them. The father was smart enough to wear a stake-proof vest (I shit you not!) and the boy grows up to become a vampire film producer.

The third story of this film involves a humgoo - the result of cross-breeding between a human and a ghoul. This is an interracial monster that although primarily still human, has picked up the genetic make-up from the ghoulish side of the family tree and feeds on the dead. An unlucky horror film director is scouting for locations for his next film when he comes across a remote village which looks perfect for filming. Unfortunately for him, this village is populated entirely by ghouls. I always felt as a child that this was by far the most frightening of the stories within this anthology, and I still stand by that today. The village has a misty gateway separating it from the outside world, leading to a gloomy, frightening place with no telephones... but plenty of monsters! The director is there to exploit the locals for his film, but ultimately, the tables get turned on him.

After the final story plays out, the action settles down inside the Monster Club where Erasmus proposes Chetwynd-Hayes be allowed to join as a full member of the club. The chairman of the club - a bespectacled werewolf - protests, "But, he's a human!" Erasmus then launches into a monologue of how humans and monster do have some common ground. He suggests that humans are probably the best of monsters, stating that in the past sixty years they have destroyed millions of their own kind. When questioned what special abilities a human has, seeing as they do not have fangs or claws... or a deadly whistle(!) Erasmus explains that the human has invented guns, tanks, extermination camps and atomic bombs. This logic is accepted by the rest of the monsters and so the first human is admitted as full member to The Monster Club.

To celebrate this, we are treated to Carradine and Price 'getting down' on the dance floor as yet another monstrous band (each story within the film is separated by a band playing live on stage in the club) plays on into the night.

The 1970s was probably the great age of British horror anthologies, with films such as 'Tales from the Crypt' (1971) and 'Asylum' (1972) amongst others, but 'The Monster Club' makes a good showing for  the 1980s... rubber-masked disco-dancing monsters, and all!