The Return of the Living Dead (1985)

Bit of a letdown, really; I'd wanted to see this for so long, but finally viewing it felt a little anticlimactic, I guess. At any rate, I don't see where all the labels "spoof" and "comedy" are coming from -- aside from a couple isolated instances (the split dogs; "Send more paramedics!"; Freddy's declaration of love), this was treated as a fairly straight-faced (credited) redux of Night of the Living Dead. Maybe the spoof label comes from wishful thinking; I mean, it's pretty pathetic how slavishly this film imitates the structure of Romero's classic. What it doesn't imitate is characterization; instead of Romero's well-observed characters, we get one-note caricatures. However, this does have the "Dead" trilogy beat in one respect: keeping in tune with its punk characters, this is one of the most bleak and nihilistic zombie films I've ever seen. Killing the zombies in this ain't a matter of "one in the head, you know they're dead", no sir. The only thing that'll stop these guys is complete and total immolation. And that even has its downside, as we see in the film. It's still well-made on most counts, and it's a nice try. It just falls a little short in my book.

Grade: C+