'THE RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD'......"BRAIIIIIINNNNNNNNSSSSSS!!!"

The Return Of The Living Dead (1985)......we wouldn't even attempt to catalogue the number of zombie apocalypse movies inundating pop culture ever since George Romero started the ball rolling with his quintessential 1968 'Night Of The Living Dead'.

          We came to grow sick and tired of them long before everyone else did.....(that's why horror filmmakers switched from slow, shambling zombies to zombies who sprint like Olympic track runners....)

          But as for this little crazy, riotous zombie-thon, 91 minutes of perpetual hysteria awash in gallons of Grindhouse gore, we'll never tire of it. It's still a gooey, loony gem. 

         Directed at a constant fever pitch by Dan O'Bannon (writer of 'Alien' and 'Lifeforce'), the film takes off like a rocket in its first few minutes and never lets up, never slows down. Once the zombies erupt, they crave only one thing to ease their constant agony of being dead.....brains.

          Or as these zombies put it when they cry out for sustenance....."Braaaaiiiiinnnnssssss!.....(which may be the first thing everyone remembers about the film and today it sounds like the craving plea of Trump voters....)

          Our first two human idiots to touch off calamity are medical supply company manager Frank (the very funny James Karen) and his part time teen helper Freddy (Thom Mathews).  The boobs unleash a barrage of toxic gas from a barrel left over from a military experiment gone horribly awry. 

          And wouldn't you know it, things go horribly oopsy-daisy once again, as the gas (aided by a thunderstorm) re-animates the medical supply cadavers and a crowd of corpses from a neighboring graveyard. 

           Let the brain munching begin. And so it does; the stiffs feast on every poor sucker they can lay their crumbling fingers on, including Freddy's teen friends and a slew of paramedics and cops.

            In keeping with the rampant nihilism inherent in zombie films, Dan O' Bannon and writers John Russo and Russel Streiner come up with a climax that's both spectacular and inevitable. 

            Look, there's no way to dance around rating this movie. You either adore this stuff or you recoil in disgust and repulsion.

            Regular BQ visitors should know by now where we stand when it comes to insanely wild and breathless horror films....

           While 98 per cent of walking dead movies bore us to tears, this one never did, and all these years later, it remains one of our favorite three-ring-circus carnival rides. 

            4 stars (****). For zombie fans who've never seen this....Nirvana awaits.