The Return of the Living Dead (1985)
Director: Dan O'Bannon Run Time: 91 min. Rating: R Release Year: 1985
Starring: Clu Gulager, Don Calfa, James Karen, JR, Miguel A. Núñez, Thom Mathews
Country: United States
Language: English
Presented as part of Mammoth Mondays, a new extension of Cult 101.
About the film:
When foreman Frank shows new employee Freddy a secret military experiment in a supply warehouse in Louisville, Kentucky, the two klutzes accidentally release a gas that reanimates corpses into flesh-eating zombies. As the epidemic spreads throughout the town, and the creatures satisfy their hunger in gory and outlandish ways, Frank and Freddy fight to survive with the help of their boss and a mysterious mortician.
“A lurid, blackly comic nightmare that has as many laughs as it does pure scares… Essential, enormous fun.”
—Chris Hewitt for Empire Magazine
About the filmmaker:
The Return of the Living Dead (1985) is the directorial debut of Dan O’Bannon, a sometime collaborator with John Carpenter, and the co-author of the screenplay for Alien (1979). Also an occasional actor – usually in the science fiction and horror genres – O’Bannon also contributed computer animation to Star Wars (1977), and worked on cult classics such as Carpenter’s feature directorial debut Dark Star (1974), Paul Verhoeven’s Total Recall (1990), and the animated feature Heavy Metal (1981). His second and final feature film as director was The Resurrected (1991) based on the writings of H. P. Lovecraft.
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