Return of the Living Dead
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Return of the Living Dead is a series of films that was produced between 1985-93. A fourth and fifth film are currently under production, and will be filmed near the former Chernobyl nuclear power station in Ukraine.
Return of the Living Dead
The first film in the series was written and directed by Dan O'Bannon, the screenwriter on Alien, and loosely based on a novel by John A. Russo, co-writer of Night of the Living Dead. In this film, it is established that Night of the Living Dead was based on a true story, and that a gas exists which re-animates corpses. The gas is first inadvertently used to re-animate corpses at a warehouse, and after the re-animated corpses are destroyed the gas is washed into a graveyard and re-animates the people buried there.
The Zombies differ in this movie, as they are fast, as intelligent as they were in their previous life, and can form words even when they are merely very degraded bodies. Instead of hunting humans for their flesh, they hunt for the humans' brains, stating only that the taste of brains can relinquish their pain for a while. It appears that injuries to their brains do not have effect, and the only way to fully destroy them is to cremate their bodies, although the ensuing smoke speads the gas.
The film was released on August 16th 1985, and in the USA made $14m, almost double what was made by Day Of The Dead, made by Russo's former partner George A. Romero.
IMDb info (http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0089907/combined)
Review for Return of the Living Dead (http://www.badmovies.org/movies/returndead/index.html)
Return of the Living Dead Part II
The second film was written and directed by Ken Wiederhorn. In it, some kids discover a barrel full of the gas used in the first film, and they accidentally release it and cause more corpses to re-animate.
The film was released on January 15th 1988, and in the USA made $9m.
IMDb info (http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0095990/)
Return of the Living Dead III
The third film was produced and directed by Brian Yuzna, noted for making several horror films, including the Re-Animator series. It is more of a "Romeo and Juliet" film than the Horror/Comedy film that the first two were. The story involves the son of a colonel in the US Army, who is experimenting with the re-animation gas. After his girlfriend is killed in a motorcycle accident, he tries to bring her back to life with the gas, but she gradually becomes a zombie.
The film never received a theatrical release in the USA, and went straight to video.
IMDb info (http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0107953/)