Return of the Living Dead Series

The Zombie Prom was this past Saturday.  I'll get into it a little more in my next post, but I'll say this here: it was a lot of fun.  Around 150 kids showed up, which far exceeded our expectations.  The place looked great, and there were some fantastic outfits.  I'll post some pictures in the next post.

I watched the entire Return of the Living Dead series on the day before and day of the Zombie Prom.  That is an awful lot of Return of the Living Dead in a short period of time.  So these will probably be very short reviews.

Return of the Living Dead

This is about the only movie I've ever seen that actually references other zombie movies (or previous knowledge of zombies).  The story goes that the events that happened in Night of the Living Dead actually happened.  The bodies that were taken were actually sent to a medical supply warehouse on accident, which is where this movie is set.  Of course, one of the barrels breaks open, unleashing the plague upon the workers at the warehouse...as well as the dead bodies in the warehouse.  One of the bodies comes to life and attacks the workers.  But, unlike most zombie movies, a shot to the head doesn't kill them.  In fact, nothing seems to kill them.  They eventually cremate the body, which kills the zombie...but the ashes end up causing acid rain that reanimate all the corpses in the adjoining cemetery.  Of course, all hell breaks loose.
I love this movie.  It's funny and crazy and a little strange.  It's a little different from your typical zombie movie, but it fully embraces that.

Rating: 5 stars

Return of the Living Dead Part II

Some kids are playing around in the woods at the beginning of this movie, and they find a barrel with a body inside.  Like the first movie, it's opened, people get infected, and the dead are reanimated.  Not much more to say, except for the fact that two of the main characters from the fist movie reprise their roles in this movie...even though they died in the first movie.  Of course, they don't have the names, and they even make mention of it during the course of the movie ("All of this seems like it has happened before,").
There's not much to it...it's a pretty standard zombie movie.  But it's a very good zombie movie.

Rating: 4 stars

Return of the Living Dead 3

There are a couple teenagers in love at the beginning of this movie.  The father of the boy in love works for the government in a program where they try to reanimate corpses and control them for use in wars (through the help of an exoskeleton and a gun that freezes their brains (which stops them, and allows them to be stored for future use).  Of course, this doesn't work.  The young couple sees this experiment.  They decide to start a new life for themselves, and they ride off on his motorcycle.
Of course, they get in a wreck, and the girl dies.  The boy heads back to the lab to reanimate his girlfriend.  He does.  She starts eating people.
But she's a little different.  She doesn't try to eat him (something about their deep connection).  She is somehow able to curb her hunger by inflicting pain on herself...so she jabs nails through her hands, and spikes all over her body.  It's a little strange.
It goes on like this.  They have to fight a small gang (who she bites and turns).
It's good, but not great.

Rating: 4 stars

Return of the Living Dead IV: Necropolis

A group of kids are messing around on their dirt bikes.  One falls off and is knocked unconscious.  He goes to the hospital...but he is taken out of the hospital, and to a government laboratory that experiments with (you guessed it) the undead.  The kids devise a plan to break in and free their friend, which they do...but they also free a bunch of other undead, including a couple that have been fitted for war.  The kids fight the zombies.
Some odd things happened in this movie.  For one, when a living person has been infected, they just start acting like jerks.  In previous movies, they just act sick.  So I don't know where that started.
Even stranger, in this movie, a shot to the head can kill the undead.  In 1-3, nothing (short of burning the body completely) can kill the zombies.  But a bullet to the head can now kill them, and they never explain why.
It's an enjoyable movie.  Not the greatest in the series, but it was fun.

Rating: 3 stars

Return of the Living Dead 5: Rave to the Grave

The survivors from Necropolis are now in college.  Somehow the stuff that reanimates the dead gets put into pill form, and is sold as a kind of Ecstasy (instead of "E" it's called "Z", because it puts the user in a zombie-like state for a short period of time).  The only problem is that it's not just a short period of time...it eventually will turn anyone who uses it into zombies.
The big scene at the end of this movie involves a rave, where most of the people have been taking Z.  So they all turn into zombies, and it gets a little out of hand.  Again, head shots can kill the zombies, so the humans begin killing the zombies, but there are too many of them.  Cops come, and missiles are fired.  Big fun.

I'll put this one on the same level as Necropolis.  Not great, but an enjoyable movie.

Rating: 3 stars