|
Whoa, hold it there crazy people.
While we all have our movie favourites, the original Return of the Living Dead crackled with dry (and slapstick) humour, outrageous nods to Romero's Dead series (take note on how NOT to come across a smug know-all git, Mr. Craven), some splendid latex gore (check out 'Tarman'... "MORE brains!"), memorable characters (Thom Matthews, Clu Gulager, James Karen & Linnea Quigley in particular) and dedicated, lively writing and direction from the excellent Dan O' Bannon.
Compare this to the lacklustre and bland 90 minutes of Ken Wiederhorn's Part 2, featuring - horror of horrors - a young mouthy blond kid as the main protagonist, a lot of running about and falling over outside (eliminating the claustrophobic atmosphere of the original and Romero's movies), and some shockingly bad attempts at gore effects (nifty 'half-zombie' scene excepted) such as the cruddy bits-of-liver-hanging-out-of-the-mouths attempts to convey zombie cannibalism and those ghastly animated blue electricity bolts.
ROTLD is a punk rock gorefest with plenty of quality splatter and nudity - Part 2 is simply... well, a shit movie - as a sequel or a standalone zombie effort. Instead, watch Wiederhorn's eerie Shock Waves or nasty Eyes of a Stranger.
Part 3 criticised for not being funny? It's a fucking masterpiece tragic love story with some fantastic rubbery gore (USA viewers note; lots of this was cut in your country - surprisingly released uncut in the UK) - why downbeat themes and endings are seen as a turnoff to some people is a mystery... total misunderstanding of horror films from the word go, perhaps ?
|