Return of the Living Dead II (1988)


A lot of Saturday afternoons spent with “Return of the Living Dead Part II” (1988), and I’m not sure why. I know. The zombies, the myriad of ways they are dismembered and destroyed, their severed body parts acting on their own, and the brains they pry by their teeth from the heads of humans still alive. This was just a small group of folks in a small town trying to survive the uprising of the dead, emerging from a cemetery when one of those damned canisters filled with trioxin gas (and the Tarman, sliming its way in a cameo appearance, out of the corpse-sized tube) is unleashed by punk kids. Billy (Thor Van Lingen) is the bully and Jesse (Michael Kenworthy) is the kid who offers his Spidey comic to him, I can only guess, as a gesture of kindness, perhaps to not be picked on at school. Jesse doesn’t want to be part of Billy’s gang but is bullied into viewing the canister and keeping its secret…until Jesse can’t allow that knowledge to remain quiet. One of those bullies eventually turns (as do Thom Matthews and James Karen, graverobbers at a mausoleum, plundering for skull heads and jewelry) and pursues Jesse (obviously). Matthews and Karen once again breathe in the gas, worsening in health, and eventually dying, transitioning into zombies and hungry for brains (Karen gets ahold of a soldier while Matthews convinces his trapped girlfriend, played by pretty redhead, Suzanne Snyder, to give him her brains). Snyder, many might remember from “Killer Klowns from Outer Space”, tries to get her man help but he was doomed, while also tiring of whiny Karen who can’t shut up. Karen and Matthews essentially mimic their characters from the previous film, except they end up in a cemetery where they are infected by the gas. Twin Peaks fans might be surprised to know Dana Ashbrook was in this thing, a cable repairman and recent high school graduate who becomes the romantic interest of Jesse’s sister, Lucy (Marsha Dietlein) and hero that must keep Lucy and Jesse safe as they run from one place to another, often in the cherry ’58 Chevy of a town physician (Philip Bruns), who tags along when the zombies ransack his home. So Ashbrook, Dietlein, Bruns, Kenworthy, encounter Snyder, Matthews, and Karen, as all of them hope to find a hospital. Kenworthy’s Jesse wants to get the police involved but their town is overrun by the walking dead, while the doc tends to Karen and Matthews, both now in pain, eventually dead and succumbing to the throes of human brain hunger. With Snyder stealing the car, leaving our young heroes and the doc to fend for themselves, Matthews and Karen find two soldiers at the end of the town keeping all inside from leaving. Karen gnaws away on a soldier’s brains while Mitch Pileggi (of The X-Files & Shocker fame) fires his machine gun…Karen just sits right up because you have to shoot zombies in the head. I think fans of the first film might bite on the bait of the casting of Karen and Matthews, considering their antics in the mausoleum and ongoing turn into zombies (and some of the dialogue will remind the first film’s fans of their characters), but I do think the sequel actually has its own set of fans. You know, this really isn’t too bad for younger audiences. A zombie severed from his waste to the floor as his lower torso and legs remain standing isn’t as shocking now that The Walking Dead has been on television for ten years, and that is probably the goriest moment in the film. It is a showstopper. You do have a talking severed head (cool special effect) stabbed with a screwdriver, a speeding ambulance driving through zombies, a zombie face melted off by pressure gas, the Tarman creeping its way at Jesse just as terrifying as ever, a Michael Jackson Thriller zombie chucking and jiving while being electrocuted, a severed hand giving the heroes the finger, among other gore gags. To tell you the truth, even the profanity is limited so that isn’t much of a problem. I think the walking dead will appeal to 80s zombie fans because it reminds us of the good ole days when makeup and prosthetic artists were put to work, but overall the developments seem to follow the familiar beats. A power plant is used to fry the zombies when our heroes goad them with brains from a meat factory (the use of painted electrical bolts, visual blue pattern light, will more than likely elicit laughter and rolling eyes). Billy and Jesse have their showdown while Lucy and Ashbrook’s Tom kiss in the back of the ambulance while the zombies are electrocuted. Doc sees to the controls that turn on the juice. I remember as a kid really enjoying Bruns as the doc. His wisecracking and expressive face just charmed me. And with everyone but Karen being younger it was fun to have that moment where Bruns notices an old friend trying to get at them for their brains (that zombie was none other than Forrest J Ackerman!), remembering he was dead because they didn’t have his blood at the hospital. Bruns sort of comes along a bit later in the film. Snyder punching a hole in a zombie’s face while pulling the lower face (mouth and chin!) from another are major highlights. The film brings Snyder, Matthews, and Karen together with the other heroes but I think too many together too long was not what director Wiederhorn was interested in. So the middle has this bigger cast of characters trying to stay alive while the beginning and end separates them into two parties until only a small number remains. I admit that I was surprised Bruns survived, actually. Four of them getting out of that wasn’t what I anticipated, but this would fall in line with a PG-13 zombie film as opposed to what the first film very much was…a Rated R zombie film all the way. So I think the argument could be made that this sequel could be shown on television easily with a TV-14 and have very little excised. Do I think this is anything of any great significance? No. But I can’t count on my hands how many times I’ve seen it. And it isn’t hard to watch it, despite the sequel holding only a mild cult following (a lot of us saw it on HBO in the late 80s and early 90s), for me personally. It’s fast paced and doesn’t overstay its welcome. It’s only maybe 80 minutes and has a sense of humor. Still, this might of interest to zombie completists, if just to checkmark it from your list. Did it have any reason to exist? Did it just get made based on the success of a previous film it tries to stay close in spirit to? Yes. 2.5/5













*My first viewings from HBO I don't think came with the narration at the beginning of this particular film version. And I hear that the music was changed, too. I need to see it again as it once was.

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