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The Return of the Living Dead is an American horror film of the zombie and comedy subgenres. It is the first installment in a series that yields three sequels, beginning with Return of the Living Dead Part II in 1988. The movie was written and directed by Dan O'Bannon and produced by Hemdale Film for Orion Pictures. It is based on a book written by by John Russo. The film was released theatrically in the United States on August 16th, 1985. The Return of the Living Dead stars Clu Gulager and Thom Matthews as Burt and Freddy - two bumbling morgue attendants, who unwittingly open a sealed canister containing the remains of a zombie. As with many such instances, this of course begets a zombie plague that overtakes the town of Louisville, Kentucky. Adding to Burt and Freddy's woes is the presence of a gang of punkers who must contend with the hungry jaws of the brain-eating living dead.
On the movie review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, The Return of the Living Dead holds a Tomatometer score of 91% based on 46 posted critic reviews. It has 42 positive reviews and 4 negative reviews, averaging 7.30 out of 10. Obviously the four shmucks who didn't like it are cursed with the burden of exercising poor judgment. The film has an audience score of 79% based on more than 50,000 verified ratings, averaging 4 out of 5.
On the Internet Movie Database, The Return of the Living Dead has a Starmeter score of 7.3 out of 10 based on 69,000 user votes. In the United States it has an unweighted mean of 7.5 with 26.2% making up the majority with 18,000 votes. 15.8% of the voting pool gave the film a perfect score of 10 with 11,000 votes and 1.1% of the voting pool scored the movie at a 1 with 794 votes. The lesson to be learned here is that there are actually 794 people in the world with crap taste in movies.
One of the most notable elements of The Return of the Living Dead is the introduction of the concept of zombies eating brains. As explained in the film, zombie eat brains because it alleviates the pain of being dead. The notion of zombies as brain-eaters has since become a staple of zombie lore and has been included in dozens of films, comics, video games and even pop songs.
This film marks the directorial debut of Dan O'Bannon. O'Bannon is best known for co-creating and writing the screenplay for the 1979 sci-fi survival horror classic Alien. His only other work as a director is Shatterbrain (also known as The Resurrected) in 1991, which is based on a short story by H.P. Lovecraft.
