Need More Brains!

 

The Tar Zombie looking for delicious brains

She gets turned on by death.

It's that kind of bad night

"She's taking off her clothes again."

The gang before the shit hits the fan

The pickaxe to the brain doesn't work

Zombie in pain, needs brains

Resurrection Cemetery. Bad bad place

Officially, everyone's fucked.

The more brains, the better

Freddy's gone

Cleverly, the film plays off Romero's classic 1968 masterpiece when Frank tells Freddy that "Night of the Living Dead" is a loose retelling of actual events, altered truth with evidence of the Dead held in canisters/drums accidentally sent to Burt's medical facility by the Army. And the Army is worried about locating their "Easter eggs". Of course, one of those eggs "hatch", so a "contingency plan" is applied to supposedly contain the released zombie virus. That the zombies only seek brains for the pain, the feeling of rot and decay that never goes away, can think and talk, pursue what they badly need always, is a great alternative to Romero's own zombies. I think that's important, to differentiate your own film from a classic while still following in its footsteps.

The gang arriving to pick Freddy up is such an eclectic group sort of co-mingling quite a diverse bunch of folks. Obviously a goth punk gal who obsesses with death and gets horny thinking about being savaged by men, a volatile punk leader in a leather jacket driving a junker convertible with graffiti painted all over it, Miguel A. Núñez Jr, as Spider, seems to come right out of "Friday the 13th" as a character named spider, while Tina dresses like Deborah Foreman.

Other characters seem to emerge right out of a punk bar. With Clu Gulagher as the boss of the medical supply company, Don Calfa, a blond coroner whose crematorium causes the ashes of a cadaver that was on the loose to smoke virus into the cloudy sky causing "toxic rain", with James Karen as the warehouse guru training Thom Mathews' wide-eyed, naive freshly hired newbie, the cast is quite a memorable bunch of colorful characters.

And cops and paramedics supply the growing army of the Dead with plenty of brains. Eventually punks like Suicide (Venturi, who died way too young at 35; he was the ax-wielding psycho responsible for Roy's rampage in "Friday the 13th: A New Beginning" (1985)), Trash (Quigley, responsible for the career-defining role that provides an incredible striptease and seductive dance, even sexy as a zombie), and Scuz (Peck) are victims picked off while Burt, Spider, Casey (Jewel Shepherd, Chuck's object of affection), and Chuck (John Philbin, providing the boombox) hope a call to the military will help them escape from the building surrounded by the hungry dead.

The film sure does the job in terms of describing the agony of being animated while the body suffers ongoing rigor mortis with Frank and Freddy gradually dying and zombie-fying. Frank burning himself alive in the oven while Freddy goes after girlfriend Tina always left impressions on me. Calfa splashing Mathews in the eyes with acid, holing up with Randolph's Tina in the attic with nowhere else to go, his gun prepared for suicide, always left a gulp in my throat...the need of brains is really emphasized, as if a junkie needing his fix. And Karen's screams in the oven just rattle me. And the bomb dropped in Louisville, with plans by the President and Army to cover it up, only for the dead to rise in another cemetery is an ironic ending perfect because it doesn't let the government and military off the hook.