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Return of the Living Dead
 Director: Dan O'Bannon
Starring: Clu Gulager, James Karen, Thom Mathews, Beverly Hartley, Jewel Shepard, Miguel A. Nunez, Jr., Linnea Quigley, Mark Venturini, Brian Peck.
Released: 16 Aug 1985
Complete with kickass punk soundtrack featuring bands like The Cramps and The Damned, Return of the Living Dead is 87 minutes of raw, sometimes overembellished gore,
morbidly sticky situations, and the lovely Linnea Quigley treating us to the finest ass I've ever seen! A slight spinoff from Night of the Living Dead, Return begins with Freddy,
the new guy at the medical supply, and Frank, who was showing him the ropes, telling him the story beyond the "prequel" to Return, Night of the Living Dead. Apparently
the army got ahold of the zombies originated from Night and accidently shipped them to the medical supply, where Frank takes Freddy down for proof. Inadvertently, Frank
breaks open the tank in which the zombie was put in suspended animation, killing both Freddy and him, only they don't know it quite yet. They wake up later to find
the zombie, halfway melted and dripping, had come back to life, as well as every other dead thing in the medical supply (split dogs, yellow hanging corpse, etc.).
Meanwhile, Freddy's friends are waiting for him to get off work, having their own little party in the cemetary. Trash, played by Linnea Quigley, verbally fantasizes about her
idea of the worst way to die, which within 5 seconds leads to the only strip show that ever made me lust for another woman.
 
Getting back to Frank and Freddy, the boss comes along and makes an attempt to cover up the little accident that happened at the medical supply by chopping up the yellow
corpse and getting his friend, a mortician, to burn it up, first saying the body parts, covered in trash bags, were rabid weasels. When that didn't work, he finally opened
one of the bags, leading to a dismembered arm tearing off the mortician's pantleg. They manage to burn the body parts, but a mix of the smoke coming from the crematory make a combination of disaster when the rain
hits the cemetary grounds and the zombies come from the graves looking for brains. Their first targets are the group of punks and Freddy's girlfriend, a squeaky prep
girl. From then on it's an endless chase, an influx of goofy zombies shouting "BRAINS!", Trash coming back as the sexiest zombie I've ever seen, and a topless...or should I
say..bottomless..zombie in bondage...
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This may make me sound like an asshole, but I don't care how old the movie is, I never tell the ending. I don't care if we're talking about Nosferatu 1922, I never, EVER reveal the ending of any film I review.
I've seen a lot of films, and even though B-movies are not exactly the goldmine of great acting, I have to say Return had some pretty decent acting. I've seen hollywood movies that literally sounded like they were
just reading their lines out loud (ahem, Clones), but this was absolutely not the case in Return. Stereotypes were overexaggerated, but that just adds for camp value. This
movie was responsible for Linnea Quigley's Scream Queen title, inadvertently given up by Jewel Shepard, who turned the role down due to the, ahem, lack of wardrobe.
Graphics were surprisingly astounding, as astounding as 1985 can get. I would not say they were ahead of their time, but they weren't as cheesy as most B-flicks.
In closing I would like to say I found this movie very enjoyable to watch. I have never seen a sexier brain eating zombie before this. Why it's out of print, I have no
fucking clue, but it shouldn't be. Today's horror enthusiasts need to see something like this instead of the shit horror they put out featuring today's hot "teen"
stars! I managed to get a copy at half.com, which seems to be the only place you can find it these days. I say they better fucking reissue this awesome, boner-inducing (Chicks get boners too), goofy zombie flick!!!!!
Rating:
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 Night of the Living Dead
Director: George A. Romero
Starring: Duane Jones, Judith O'Dea, Karl Hardman, Marilyn Eastman, Keith Wayne, Judith Ridley, and Kyra Schon
Released: 1 October 1968
What would I do with my free time if it weren't for this movie? Any respectable horror buff, hell, buff of any genre, should recognize this film. If not, get it.
It begins one summer evening in a graveyard conveniently placed in the middle of nowhere, Barbra and Johnny are placing flowers near Dad's grave, when for some reason Johnny decides to reenact dear childhood
memories which included tormenting his sister in the graveyard ("They're coming to get you, Barbra"), pointing out a stumbling old guy, who turns out to be the first
zombie of the movie, who kills Johnny by barely bonking his head on the point of a graveyard. Hey, gotta die somehow.
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So Barbra runs throughout the graveyard barefoot (ouch) to her car which conveniently does not start, so the zombie, who may have been a mime in a past life, has somewhat of an advantage until she rolls back the car
and finds herself in an abandoned house, where she meets our hero, Ben. From then on we meet a very unhappily married couple in which the man is an authoritative jackass, who pisses off Ben so much he
shoots him. Mucho zombies and instead of brains, they eat the whole body. Nice of them, not to leave anything to waste.
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For being 1967 (think in terms of making this film), and on a shoestring budget, Night was very avant-garde. Nothing cheesy, very serious, cinematography is fantastic. I think they used pig guts for the zombie feast.
Quick bit of trivia. The blood? It's Bosco chocolate syrup. YUM! Most of the acting was just Ben giving orders, Barbra freaking out and acting like a total retard
throughout the movie (after the graveyard scene), The jackass and his sarcastic wife, and a couple who were only there a short time before they got in the car seconds
before it blew up. However, it wasn't just READING!!! I have a big problem with movies in which the so called actors just READ their fucking lines!!! I guess being near
20 years old, I can't be easily scared from horror movies. Grossed out, but not scared. There wasn't much camp value, but what this movie was lacking in camp value it
more than made up for in quality filming on a pimply faced Burger King employee's part-time salary.
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Though not as goofy and camptastic as Return, this movie scores points for being a total uber-classic. Without this film, we wouldn't even fathom kids awake at night
freaking out over zombies in their closet. We wouldn't have Return of the Living Dead!! However, this was also one of the movies responsible for parental ratings (G, PG-13, R, etc), but it wasn't Romero's fault.
Rating:
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Last House on the Left
 Director: Wes Craven (when he was underground)
Starring: Sandra Cassel-Peabody, Lucy Grantham, David Hess, Fred J. Lincoln, Jeramie Rain, Marc Sheffler, Gaylord St. James, and Cynthia Carr
Released: 30 August 1972
I don't know how to start this. I really don't know how I feel right now. Let me just start at the beginning shall we?
Mari, our star, turns seventeen today and is supposed to go to a concert with her best friend Phyllis, a sassy streetsmart girl. Before the concert they go looking for
pot and find trouble with Krug Stillo and his son Junior, Sadie (wink), and Weasle Podowski. They basically use Mari and Phyllis as their sex slaves until the next morning,
where the girls are taken to a forest, very close to Mari's house. Over there they're forced to take off their clothes and piss their pants, not in that order. Phyllis tries to
make a run for it, and gets killed at the near end of her attempt. Mari gets raped and killed, and the criminals clean themselves up and look for a place to crash.
Inadvertently, they find Mari's parents, who have been sick worrying and waiting for their daughter to come home. It's not until after dinner in which the parents find
out the truth, and they get their revenge, OH how they get their revenge!
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David Hess is an excellent, talented person. He does the original music, and plays a believable Krug Stillo, who just freaks me out. Fred Lincoln, who plays Weasle, has put
his weasle to use soon after this film, and is credited in several porn films that he has directed. Not much happened with Jeramie Rain aka Jeramie Dreyfuss/Susan
Davis after this movie. The same can be said for Sandra Cassell-Peabody and Lucy Grantham, which is kind of a shame, I would have liked to see them in more films.
The characters were well played out...too well, I might say.
See, I love horror, I live for horror films (among other things), but this is the type of horror that very well can happen to someone like me. I am a 19 year old female
college student. Albeit I live in a small town, this kind of shit can happen anywhere and everywhere. The thought of being outside of my dorm at night after watching
something like this...uh-uh, no way. It's the type of horror that can hit very close to home. If I leave my room, it's very unlikely that some half melted old man with a razor
glove is going to come and slash me in the stomach. You see what I mean?
Cinematography was bordering on last-known photograph. Meaning almost every frame of the movie looked like someone's last known photograph. There's a part of the movie where you don't see anything, just
sound. They could have shot that better.
So yeah, great movie, but it probably would have been better had I been an older guy. This is one of those acquired taste films. But hey, at the near end, there's a chainsaw.
Rating:
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The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
 Director: Tobe Hooper
Starring: Marylin Burns, Allen Danziger, Paul Partain, William Vail, Teri McMinn, Edwin Neal, Jim Siedow, Gunnar Hansen
Here you have it, kids! The movie inspired by Ed Gein and some other serial killers I'm sure. Mainly Ed Gein. This is also the movie that inspired Texas Dildo Masquerade, but let's
not think of that right now.
It's a summer afternoon in Texas in which five teens are out looking for our heroine Sally's grandparent's house. Sometime before that a news broadcast played on about
bodies being taken from their graves and some entrails used for macabre statues in the graveyard.
Soon after in the midst of traveling, the dumbfucks pick up the hitchhiker, played by Edwin Neal, who would actually be really fucking hot if it weren't for the birthmark
(and the age progression from then to 30 years later). He slits his hand and then takes a picture and sets it on fire, gets kicked out of the bus after that and slitting Sally's
brother's arm. That'll teach them to pick up random strangers. I mean, shit. They head to the old house Sally was talking about and go upstairs while her invalid brother
throws a shit fit downstairs. Two teens go scouting for a swimming hole which no longer exists, and find themselves at the infamous old house where the chainsaw fucks live. White Boy Afro guy gets killed, Nearly
Topless chick gets caught by Leatherface, our hero, and meets her end with a meathook to the back. Ouch. The other guy, think his name was Jerry (hard to catch names
in this film), went to go look for them, and guess what happened to him? Yep.
It's night time, and Sally and her brother are worried. They go out looking for him, find Leatherface, who slashes her brother into two. Sally then goes on a
half-hour (felt like it) screaming trail whilst running away from Leatherface. You know, if she wasn't screaming, she'd probably get away from him. But if she got away
from him, there wouldn't have been such a cool ending. Eventually she gets caught traveling to the macabre madhouse and many a painful, hammering, screaming shenanigan took place.
I watched this movie with a friend, who likes to shit on absolutely everything in existence, except his angst-ridden Rammstein shit. I don't hang out with him much
anymore. His input? "If they practiced more..." YOU FUCKING IDIOT!! It's not fucking Hollywood where you don't have to think to enjoy the film. "The ending could
have been better..." Yeah? So where's YOUR film, bitch?
This movie launched the B-movie career of Marilyn Burns, who played Sally. She was the scream queen of the 70s from that role. Of course, the majority of any of the
dialogue was her screaming, so I really can't say much of the acting. If you haven't figured it out yet, I only have one criteria for acting It can't be just READING!!! I have a
BIG PROBLEM when people make films and don't take the time to make the acting at least efficient. The creepy goofiness of the chainsaw family (You think of a better
name) was camp at best. They could have left out about 9/10ths of the chainsaw sounds, which I found rather annoying. Otherwise, very fun to watch with the volume up living in a dorm. People are stupid.
Added Note: How many times can you remake a film until you remake it to death?
This is what the horror industry is going to. It wasn't enough the filmmakers steal original ideas and remake them into films with your Favorite Teen Stars! NO! It's
come to a point where now they just blatantly rip off classic films like this and throw in the hip young actors. I'd rather see Jessica Biel hanging off the meathook, but that's just me.
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Comments? Email Switchblade Sadie.
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