The Return of the Living Dead- Still hungry for brains after 35 years.

The Return of the Living Dead

1985

Director- Dan O'Bannon

Cast- Clu Gulager, James Karen, Don Calfa, Thom Mathews, Linnea Quigley, Jewel Shepard, Miguel A. Núñez Jr., Beverly Randolph, John Philbin, Brian Peck, Mark Venturini, Jonathan Terry, Cathleen Cordell, Allan Trautman

           

     A gang of punks, looking for a way to kill time, prowl the streets of Louisville Kentucky on 4^th of July weekend. Their personalities are as colorful as their names and attire. Spider (Miguel A. Núñez Jr.) is even tempered and good natured. Chuck (John Phiblin) is a doofus who has the hots for Casey (the eternally lovely Jewel Shepard) but she couldn’t care less about him. Skuzz (Brian Peck) is a mohawked, switchblade carrying punk but a loyal member of the gang. Tina (Beverly Randolph) is a complete square, which makes her a kind of outcast among outcasts. Suicide (Mark Venturini) is the hot tempered Alpha male. Trash (Linnea Quigley in her greatest role) is a nihilistic nympho looking for her next distraction.

           

     Tina’s boyfriend Freddy (Thom Mathews) seems to be the only member of the group responsible enough to hold a job. He works in the Uneeda medical supply warehouse- “You need it—We got it,” He is being shown the ropes by his older co-worker Frank (James Karen). Frank tells Freddy an interesting story about the dead coming to life. As it turns out, Night of the Living Dead was based on a “true story”, but the facts got changed all around to avoid law suits. What really happened was that a chemical defoliant was developed for the Army and a leak contaminated some corpses and made them jump around as though alive.

 To prove the veracity of his story, Frank takes Freddy into the warehouse’s basement where one of the corpses has been stored in a sealed container all these years. The tank ruptures releasing a cloud of toxin that causes a corpse in the freezer (it’s a medical supply warehouse remember) to come to life. But it’s not just jumping  around, it seems energetic and pissed off. Frank calls his boss Bert (Clu Gulager) who gives Frank an ass chewing and then decides the best thing to do is to cover it all up. Bert, Frank, and Freddy chop up the body but it doesn’t die. The pieces are still alive and moving! Bert decides it’s time to take drastic measures and enlists the help of Ernie (Don Calfa), the embalmer at a nearby funeral home. He tells Ernie what happened and asks to use his crematorium to burn up the reanimated pieces. Ernie reluctantly agrees. When the body burns, the smoke seeds the clouds with contamination that rains down into the local cemetery.

The gang of punks just happens to be hanging out in that cemetery killing time including watching Trash strip down and get naked in one of the most memorable scenes in horror movie history. The contaminated rain seeps down into the graveyard and the buried corpses come to life. The punks must seek refuge and team up with the guys at the funeral home to try and fend off an undead horde.

Full disclosure, this is my favorite horror movie ever. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen it, but I’m sure it’s in the triple digits.  I only wished I had been able to see it in the theatre when it came out, but I was only 11 years old so that wasn’t happening. I saw it on VHS when I was 13 and it changed my life (not to mention leaving a permanent impact on my choice of women, thank you very much Linnea Quigley!).

It’s a perfect movie in my opinion. There is absolutely no wasted time. Within the first 10 minutes of the film we know the premise of the film, we know the tone of the film (definitely horror-comedy) and we’ve met all of the characters save one. The humor has perfect timing. The gore and effects look great. The casting was spot on.

The film has an interesting origin. John A. Russo wrote George Romero’s seminal classic Night of the Living Dead. Russo and Romero went their separate ways, both retaining the right to make more films with the Living Dead title. Romero went on to make Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead (which came out the same year as Return of the Living Dead, only a month earlier). Russo had written a new script and it was picked up to become a movie with Tobe Hooper slated to direct it. Hooper dropped out to direct his awesome sexy space vampire movie Lifeforce (which also came out the same year about 2 months earlier- this was a great year for horror!). When Hooper dropped out, Dan O’Bannon was brought in to direct. He agreed on one condition. He didn’t want to step on what George Romero was doing so he opted to make his film a comedy, in contrast with Romero’s very serious films.

Dan was the perfect choice. As a screenwriter he had written Alien, Blue Thunder, segments for Heavy Metal and Hooper’s Lifeforce! He understood the art of movie making having worked on Star Wars and Alien. Return of the Living Dead was his directorial debut but you wouldn’t know it by the finished product.

There was a lot of other talent on display as well. Cinematography was by Jules Brenner who was the cinematographer for Salem’s Lot. Production design was by legendary fantasy artist William Stout who also worked on Raiders of the Lost Ark, Conan the Barbarian, Conan the Destroyer, Buck Rogers, First Blood, House and a hundred other things.

But the feather in this movie’s cap is the cast. Everyone was perfect for their roles, not a miscast in the bunch. Gulager, Karen, Calfa, and Mathews have perfect comic timing and work off of each other well. James Karen and Thom Mathews especially work well as the movie’s unlucky schmucks. Their chemistry seemed real and added so much to the film’s humorous tone.

Miguel A. Núñez Jr., as Spider, turns in a fine supporting performance as the punk who has to take on the mantle of leadership for his group. Jewel Shepard  makes Casey a kind of mix between a bitchy bad girl and a bored mallrat. Linnea Quigley though provides the image that everyone thinks of when this movie comes to mind. With her bright red hair and mostly naked performance she created a bad ass sexy character that has become an icon of horror.

This film has a real outsider quality that endears it to people who identify with the characters. It doesn’t just have a punk rock look, it has a legit soundtrack with music from The Cramps, 45 Grave, TSOL, The Damned , The Tall Boys and more. These songs are used expertly in the film. They don’t just provide background noise. Each one is used in a precise way to achieve an effect.

Return of the Living Dead spawned several sequels. Of special note is part 3 which returns the franchise to its punk roots. The zombie franchise has been run in the ground a bit over the last 20 years and many people who haven’t seen this film may wonder why they should spend time watching another entry in what is usually a very derivative genre. Return of the Living Dead is not like any other zombie film you’ll see (with the possible exception of Peter Jackson’s Braindead). This movie is sexy and gory but more than that, it’s fun! It’s completely entertaining from beginning to end. I can’t recommend the film enough.

Fun fact- Linnea’s famous nakedness was not quite as naked as we all thought. Originally she was all nude but the studio thought her bush was too obvious so she shaved it. Then the studio execs thought that the shaved bush was somehow even more taboo so a kind of fake vagina covering was made giving her sexless Barbie genitals. It’s not easily apparent and many people (including myself for about 20 years) were fooled into thinking that they had seen the promised land.

Fun fact 2- Dinah Cancer (lead singer for the band 45 Grave that provided the song Partytime for the soundtrack) starred in Fright Night 2 though you wouldn’t recognize her. She wore the monster makeup for when Regine turned into a giant bat-woman.

Fun fact 3- Jewel Shepard met Dan O’Bannon in a strip club where she was working. Jewel and Dan became friends and he offered her the role of Trash. She turned it down because she was tired of taking off her clothes all of the time and she took the role of Casey instead.

Fun fact 4- Return of the Living Dead and Friday the 13^th have a connection. Mark Venturini (Suicide) played Vic in part 5 The New Beginning. Miguel A. Núñez Jr. (Spider) played Demon in the same film (those damn enchiladas!). Thom Mathews (Freddy) had the starring role as Tommy Jarvis in part 6 Jason Lives.

 

Fright Night-Retrospective and Review

Fright Night-Retrospective and Review

Fright Night

1985

Director- Tom Holland

Cast- Chris Sarandon, William Ragsdale, Roddy McDowell, Amanda Bearse, Stephen Geoffreys, Jonathan Stark, Dorothy Fielding, Art Evans

            

     Charlie Brewster (William Ragsdale) is an average teenage boy trying to pass high school and talk his girlfriend Amy (Amanda Bearse) into having sex. His all American adolescence is interrupted by a string of grisly murders in the town.

            

     Charlie gets two new next door neighbors; suave and debonair Jerry Dandridge (Chris Sarandon) and his apparent live in handyman Billy Cole. One night, while being the voyeur, Charlie witnesses Jerry in the act of sucking a beautiful girl’s blood and now Charlie knows the secret- Jerry is a vampire!. What’s worse, Jerry knows that Charlie knows.

            

     Jerry shows up in Charlie’s bedroom the next night and offers Charlie a deal: you forget me and I’ll forget you. Now me personally, I’d take that deal in a heartbeat, but I guess Charlie had something to prove. He attacks Jerry, thus sealing his fate. Jerry vows to return the next night and destroy Charlie.

            

     

    Charlie tells his girlfriend Amy and his best friend Ed (Stephen Geoffreys in a wonderful, memorable performance) that he plans to kill his neighbor. Amy and Ed both assume Charlie has lost his mind and enlist some celebrity aid to keep Charlie from committing murder.

           

     Peter Vincent (Roddy McDowell) is a former horror icon in the vein of Hammer films. His acting career is over and now he works as a local late night TV horror host of a show called (you guessed it), Fright Night. It just so happens that Charlie is a big Peter Vincent fan so they hope that Peter can convince Charlie that he is wrong.

            

     Peter, Charlie, Amy and Ed all show up at Jerry’s house. Jerry is immediately enamored with Amy, who reminds him of a long lost love. Things don’t go as planned when Peter begins to suspect that Charlie is right and Jerry is a vampire.  After they leave his home, Jerry stalks them, turning Ed and Amy into vampires. If Charlie wants his girlfriend back, he and Peter will have to go back and face the undead on their home turf.

            

     This was an incredibly clever film. It had the perfect blend of horror and comedy. It had a smart script with witty dialogue. This was Tom Holland’s directorial debut but he showed himself to be a natural horror director. He went on to direct several other horror films including Child’s Play.

          

   

     The real genius of this film is in the casting. As already stated, Stephen Geoffreys as “Evil” Ed created an immediate fan favorite character. He was offered a spot in the sequel but turned it down for the lead role in 976-EVIL ( A bad move in my opinion. 976-EVIL was good, but was a much lower profile film and not nearly as entertaining as Fright Night 2).

Most people probably know Amanda Bearse as the bitchy Marcy D'Arcy from Married With Children. In Fright Night she is the perfect all American nice girl, that is, until she gets turned and then she becomes a smoking hot succubus.

Chris Sarandon is the perfect sexy vampire. Most people don’t think of Sarandon when listing the pantheon of Scream Kings but he has an impressive list or genre credits. In addition to Fright Night and Child’s Play, He starred in the Satanic thriller The Sentinel, the Lovecraft adaptation, The Resurrected, the horror-comedy Bordello of Blood not to mention he was the voice of Jack Skelington in Nightmare Before Christmas.

The real feather in the casting cap though is Roddy McDowell. I think it was his best role and Roddy had a lot of great roles. He’s charismatic, endearing, and funny. His character was named for Peter Cushing and Vincent Price and Roddy conjures up the coolness Cushing and the camp of Price wonderfully.

This is one of the best vampire films ever made, one of the best movies of the 1980s and (in my opinion) one of the best horror movies ever. In short, I think this belongs in every movie library.

Fright Night 2

1988

Director- Tommy Lee Wallace

Cast- Julie Carmen, William Ragsdale, Roddy McDowell, Brian Thompson, Traci Lind, Jon Gries, Russell Clark, Merritt Butrick, Ernie Sabella

            This sequel picks up three years after the first film. In part 1, Charlie was the one trying to convince everyone that vampires were real. In part 2 he has become the unbeliever. Three years of therapy (and a healthy dose of denial) have convinced him that Jerry Dandridge wasn’t a vampire but a serial killer that used tricks and mass hypnosis to convince Charlie and Peter of his vampiric nature.

            

     Charlie and Amy have gone their separate ways (Amanda Bearse was busy shooting Married With Children) and Charlie has a new girlfriend, Alex (Traci Lind). Charlie has avoided contact with Peter Vincent who still very much believes in vampires.

           

     Charlie is in college now and life seems to be good until a chance encounter with a glamorous woman, Regine. Unbeknownst to Charlie, not only is she a vampire, but she’s Jerry Dandridge’s brother. She has sought out Charlie and Peter for revenge. She plans to just kill Peter but for Charlie she has a more sinister plan. She will enslave him, turn him into an immortal vampire, and then torture him for all eternity (Hell hath no fury as they say).

            

     

     Regine bites Charlie and begins the slow turning process but he doesn’t realize it, believing his memories of the event to be a dream. He slowly begins to see the truth and has to enlist Peter’s help.  In a twist from the first movie, instead of Charlie and Peter rescuing Charlie’s girlfriend, this time around Peter has to recruit Alex to help him save Charlie from the vampire’s lair.

But this won’t be as simple as the first movie. Regine has an entourage of supernatural hangers on. Belle (Russel Clark) is an androgynous glam rocker vampire. Louie (Uncle Rico himself, Jon Gries ) is a jovial werewolf. Bozworth is her insect eating chauffer but he’s no deranged Renfield. Rather he is played by the hulking, menacing Brian Thompson (The Terminator, X-Files, Cobra).

The movie is thematically and stylistically very similar to the first film. Although it is an original film that stands on its own merits, it doesn’t feel like a rehash but nor is it so different that it feels unfamiliar. Part of this is due to the return of  Brad Fiedel providing a musical score. In addition to the two Fright Night films, he also provided the musical scores for The Terminator, Terminator 2, Serpent and the Rainbow, Johnny Mnemonic and many other films. Herb Jaffe was producer for both films (he  produced Nightflyers in between the two installments).

Tom Holland didn’t return as director (probably because he was busy shooting Child’s Play) but they got a very capable horror director to replace him. Tommy Lee Wallace had previously directed the excellent Halloween 3: Season of the Witch. Besides directing he had worked with the master John Carpenter on The Fog, Halloween, and Big Trouble in Little China. He later went on to direct the It TV miniseries with Tim Curry.

But like the first film, this film’s greatest strength is its cast. Ragsdale and McDowell returning was a must and the film wouldn’t have worked without that chemistry. Brian Thompson and Jon Gries play off each other as Regine’s quarreling henchmen (the year before Jon played a different werewolf in The Monster Squad). Also of note is Merritt Butrick as Charlie’s friend who also gets turned. Merritt had a sadly shortened career , dying from AIDS the next year. He is best known as playing James Kirk’s son in Star Trek II and III.

Julie Carmen, though, as Regine steals the show. She is mysterious, demure and glamorous, every bit as seductive as Chris Sarandon was in the first film. Julie was not originally interested in the role but later, after reading the script, became very interested. She watched the original many times and studied Chris Sarandon’s performance. It shows in a few scenes where her mannerisms and vocal inflection are very similar to his. This was not Julie’s last horror role. She later starred opposite of Sam Neil in John Carpenter’s ode to Lovecraft, In the Mouth ofMadness.

Fright Night 2 is a true sequel. It would be confusing, and probably unenjoyable to anyone who hadn’t seen the first film. It’s not as good as the first film, but that’s not a detractor. The first is one of the pillars of the vampire genre. Hard to compare with that! Fans of the first film will find a faithful and very enjoyable sequel.

Legacy

The 1980s was the decade that changed the vampire genre. The whole genre had been living in the shadow of Bela Lugosi for 50 years. Almost every vampire from the 1930s through the 1970s was just a variation of the Lugosi character. Even Hammer Studios, who tried to be more creative with their vampires in the 1970s, was still giving us aristocrats living in gothic castles. Even in films that took place in modern times (Dracula 1972 AD, Blacula or some of the Paul Naschy films) we just got old world vampires transported to the modern era.

The 1980s gave us truly modern vampires that looked and acted like members of the 20^th century but still retained all of the coolness of their forbearers. The Hunger, Vamp, Lost Boys and Near Dark gave us cool outsiders with a rock star chic. Fright Night acts as a bridge between the old and the new. Jerry and Regine would both have been at home in a Hammer film facing off against Peter Cushing, but they also seem at home in our world, with no sense of anachronism.

A third film was planned but tragedy worse than any horror film kept that from happening. Roddy McDowell and Tom Holland had talked with Hollywood mogul Jose Menendez about making a third film. However, before this could be pursued, Menendez and his wife were murdered by their children Eric and Lyle in what became one of the most sensational murder cases of the decade. This also interfered with the distribution of Fright Night 2 resulting in a limited theatrical release. Fright Night 2 bombed (by Hollywood standards) and that effectively ended any chance of a third film.

A remake was made in 2011. It wasn’t a bad film, but didn’t really offer anything new and failed to rekindle any of the magic of the original. That remake spawned a sequel that was also just a remake of the first film albeit in a European locale.

Fun facts!

–It was Chris Sarandon’s idea to have his character eating apples throughout the movie. It was also his idea to have Amy resemble his long lost love.

 -Charlie Sheen tried out for the part of Charlie Brewster but Tom Holland wanted someone who seemed more average looking so he went with William Ragsdale.

-The giant vampire mouth that Amy has toward the film’s ending was created by Randall William Cook. The film was almost out of time and money and Cook made the whole thing from scratch over a weekend.

-Charlie’s Mustang was actually Tom Holland’s personal car.

- Heidi Sorenson, who plays the hooker that Charlie sees going into Jerry’s house was Playboy Playmate of the Month in July, 1981. Prior to shooting her scene, Holland asked wardrobe to rub some ice on her nipples to make her extra perky!

-Russell Clark, who played the androgynous Belle in part 2 was a respected dancer and choreographer and had worked with David Bowie and Grace Jones. He choreographed Regine’s dance number.