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yendiReturn of the Living Dead 2
As sequels go, Return of the Living Dead 2 isn't. It's closer to a remake, actually, taking the same premise the first movie used and moving in a largely different direction. Alas, the creative forces behind this one aren't nearly as talented as those behind the first movie, and the resulting horror comedy errs too often on the comedy side of things.
We start the movie with the same exposition we received in the first Return of the Living Dead: a nerve gas called Trioxin caused bad things (zombies, to be specific) to happen. We see barrels of Trioxin in an open-bedded army truck driving along as the driver smokes pot and listens to his tunes. Naturally, as the truck goes over some bumpy roads, the barrels get loose, and one of them ends up in a river, where it floats away. This is exactly why I always transport my hazardous waste in a sealed truck.
Our opening sequences introduce us to most of the main characters. In one of the sequences, we meet a little kid named Jesse, who has just moved to a still-under-construction subdivision with his older sister (their parents are away during the events of the movie). Jesse trades away a comic book to join a "gang" (featuring only two other members), and even as he realizes that his two slightly older friends are bullies, they've dragged him out to the local river, where they all find that missing barrel of Trioxin. Jesse tries to run away at this point, but the older kids, assuming he's going to report their discovery, chase him down in the cemetery and lock him inside a mausoleum.
Meanwhile, we meet Ed, Joey, and Brenda. Ed is a veteran grave robber, and Joey is his new apprentice. Brenda is Joey's whiny girlfriend, who doesn't like what he's doing, but likes the money that they'll get. Ed and Joey head to the cemetery while Brenda stays at the van. They head to the mausoleum in which Jesse is trapped, and when they break in, the kid escapes. Jesse gets home, only to be chewed out by his sister and sent to his room.
Shortly thereafter, Jesse's sister Lucy, an aerobics-obsessed airhead, answers the door for the cable guy, only to find that the cable guy looks like C. Thomas Howell! The good news is that the horror doesn't begin this early, and the guy at the door is actually played by Dana Ashbrook (who has already been mentioned in my review of Waxwork), and he's not overtanning in an attempt to sneak into Harvard. He is a former schoolmate of Lucy's named Tom. While she shows him where the TV is, Jesse sneaks out of the house.
Back at the river, the two lovable bullies open the canister, only to get mouthfuls of gas. The gas floats over the cemetery, and even leaks into the mausoleum. Joey and Ed, who happen to be played by Thom Matthews and James Karen, the same two folks who inhale the gas in the first film, are in the middle of some recycled banter* when the gas leaks into the mausoleum as well. They inhale a bit, but it's a bit more dissipated than the dose the kids got, so they don't get sick immediately.
Needless to say, chaos ensues, as bodies come alive and attack Brenda out in the cemetery and the grave robbers back at the mausoleum. We get comic chase scenes as they run from the zombies and as the zombies themselves do things like step on the faces of other zombies trying to crawl out of the dirt. After running past each other, the three of them manage to calm down enough to stick together as a group.
The next few scenes show the head bully at home sick, Jesse (aware of the threat, but unable to convince his sister) locked in his room, and the cable guy who isn't C. Thomas Howell putting the moves on Lucy. Eventually, the graverobbers (including Brenda) end up in town and steal the cable guy's van, only to end up crashing when attacked by zombies. A man (the father of the bully, it turns out) comes out to check on things, and gets eaten by the zombies. The graverobbers and the cable guy run back inside the house, and we then get a set piece as the head that Ed, for some reason, tossed into a sack back at the graveyard comes to life. The eventually stab it, leading the head to chastise them to "get that damn screwdriver out of my head." A perfectly reasonable request, all things considered.
For those who skipped the first movie or my review of it, I'll note that zombies in the RotLDverse are a lot more intelligent than typical zombies, and can talk, operate basic machines, and read The Da Vinci Code.
Anyway, when the zombies attack the house and nearly kill Jesse, everyone runs down the block to the house of the old drunk doctor, who is eventually convinced there's something going on when they're attacked by a zombie mob that includes some of his ex-patients. The crew (using the doctor's old car) make their way to the hospital as the zombies continue to take over the town (we see the bully kill his mother). At the hospital, we get some more standard attacks, as the lush of a doctor attempts to find a cure for Ed and Joey, who are starting to look really bad by now.
Eventually, while the others deal with zombie attacks, Brenda drives off with Joey and Ed (who make comments about how familiar this situation appears). They find a few military folks (including TV's Mitch Pileggi), who explain that the town is closed off. Ed stumbles out of the car, now a full zombie from the gas he inhaled, and attacks a soldier. The other soldiers run, and Brenda drives off with her rapidly-zombifying boyfriend. Eventually, he turns completely, and the zombified Joey chases Brenda into a church, where he uses the oh-so-convincing argument that he loves her, so she should let him eat her brains. Brenda tries telling him that she's not into dead guys, but when that argument doesn't work, she lets him have his way, thus spelling the end of our graverobbers.
Back with the surviving heroes, we get a few more set pieces (zombies show that they can also drive; Lucy turns out to be an expert with guns; zombies attack at various points). They try to leave town over the one bridge, but the army shoots at them (fortunately, this is the same army that features pot-smoking truck drivers, so all the shots miss). As they drive around, they knock a zombie into a fusebox, and discover that electricity will kill these zombies, even though nothing else will. And our heroes come up with a cunning plan:
They'll lure the zombies to the power plant, seed the ground with wires, and electrocute them all!
They head to the local brain factory**, then toss cow brains behind the moving truck to lure the zombies behind them. The close the gates to the plant and set everything up, but the kid bully zombie climbs the fence and opens it for the other zombies. The storm the place before the electricity can be turned on, and the heroes are forced to hide in the truck. Little Jesse, eventually, is able to climb through a tiny hole, get to the cab, and drive the truck to the plant's operation center, where he goes in to turn the power on. He's attacked by the bully zombie, who he throws over a ledge before turning the power on. The zombies outside fry for about ten minutes, and one of them even convulses like Michael Jackson. Bully zombie makes one last appearance (since he was out of harm's way), taunting Jesse until the drunken doctor makes the save, and our heroes are finally rescued by the army. As we fade to black, we see one last zombie head taunting the soldiers and getting burnt to a crisp by a flamethrower.
If I seem less enthused about RotLD2 than I did about the original, it's because I am. It sacrifices gore and horror for utter silliness, with no real winning payoff. There are still some jokes that work (including the Michael Jackson one), but there's no sense of danger mixed with the humor, as was the case in the first movie, and this change of gears removes all the tension. There's no element of social satrire at work here, but not enough slapstick or goofiness to make the humor stand on its own, either. Writer-director Ken Wiederhorn is best known for Meatballs, Part 2, which probably says more about his relative lack of talent than anything else I could come up with. The cast isn't untalented per se, but even seasoned genre vets like Matthews and Karen seem to have been told to just overact and not even try to hit character notes.
Overall, RotLD2 is worth watching at least once for fans of zombie films, as there are enough nifty undead twists and in-jokes to keep things interesting for an hour or two. But there's not much here for folks who don't care about the genre, and certainly not for anyone looking for a movie that stands up well to repeated viewings.
*Seriously. There's an entire back-and-forth sequence straight from the first movie, which is either a good joke or a good way to save money.
**Well, a meat-processing plant that has lots of cow brains.
As sequels go, Return of the Living Dead 2 isn't. It's closer to a remake, actually, taking the same premise the first movie used and moving in a largely different direction. Alas, the creative forces behind this one aren't nearly as talented as those behind the first movie, and the resulting horror comedy errs too often on the comedy side of things.
We start the movie with the same exposition we received in the first Return of the Living Dead: a nerve gas called Trioxin caused bad things (zombies, to be specific) to happen. We see barrels of Trioxin in an open-bedded army truck driving along as the driver smokes pot and listens to his tunes. Naturally, as the truck goes over some bumpy roads, the barrels get loose, and one of them ends up in a river, where it floats away. This is exactly why I always transport my hazardous waste in a sealed truck.
Our opening sequences introduce us to most of the main characters. In one of the sequences, we meet a little kid named Jesse, who has just moved to a still-under-construction subdivision with his older sister (their parents are away during the events of the movie). Jesse trades away a comic book to join a "gang" (featuring only two other members), and even as he realizes that his two slightly older friends are bullies, they've dragged him out to the local river, where they all find that missing barrel of Trioxin. Jesse tries to run away at this point, but the older kids, assuming he's going to report their discovery, chase him down in the cemetery and lock him inside a mausoleum.
Meanwhile, we meet Ed, Joey, and Brenda. Ed is a veteran grave robber, and Joey is his new apprentice. Brenda is Joey's whiny girlfriend, who doesn't like what he's doing, but likes the money that they'll get. Ed and Joey head to the cemetery while Brenda stays at the van. They head to the mausoleum in which Jesse is trapped, and when they break in, the kid escapes. Jesse gets home, only to be chewed out by his sister and sent to his room.
Shortly thereafter, Jesse's sister Lucy, an aerobics-obsessed airhead, answers the door for the cable guy, only to find that the cable guy looks like C. Thomas Howell! The good news is that the horror doesn't begin this early, and the guy at the door is actually played by Dana Ashbrook (who has already been mentioned in my review of Waxwork), and he's not overtanning in an attempt to sneak into Harvard. He is a former schoolmate of Lucy's named Tom. While she shows him where the TV is, Jesse sneaks out of the house.
Back at the river, the two lovable bullies open the canister, only to get mouthfuls of gas. The gas floats over the cemetery, and even leaks into the mausoleum. Joey and Ed, who happen to be played by Thom Matthews and James Karen, the same two folks who inhale the gas in the first film, are in the middle of some recycled banter* when the gas leaks into the mausoleum as well. They inhale a bit, but it's a bit more dissipated than the dose the kids got, so they don't get sick immediately.
Needless to say, chaos ensues, as bodies come alive and attack Brenda out in the cemetery and the grave robbers back at the mausoleum. We get comic chase scenes as they run from the zombies and as the zombies themselves do things like step on the faces of other zombies trying to crawl out of the dirt. After running past each other, the three of them manage to calm down enough to stick together as a group.
The next few scenes show the head bully at home sick, Jesse (aware of the threat, but unable to convince his sister) locked in his room, and the cable guy who isn't C. Thomas Howell putting the moves on Lucy. Eventually, the graverobbers (including Brenda) end up in town and steal the cable guy's van, only to end up crashing when attacked by zombies. A man (the father of the bully, it turns out) comes out to check on things, and gets eaten by the zombies. The graverobbers and the cable guy run back inside the house, and we then get a set piece as the head that Ed, for some reason, tossed into a sack back at the graveyard comes to life. The eventually stab it, leading the head to chastise them to "get that damn screwdriver out of my head." A perfectly reasonable request, all things considered.
For those who skipped the first movie or my review of it, I'll note that zombies in the RotLDverse are a lot more intelligent than typical zombies, and can talk, operate basic machines, and read The Da Vinci Code.
Anyway, when the zombies attack the house and nearly kill Jesse, everyone runs down the block to the house of the old drunk doctor, who is eventually convinced there's something going on when they're attacked by a zombie mob that includes some of his ex-patients. The crew (using the doctor's old car) make their way to the hospital as the zombies continue to take over the town (we see the bully kill his mother). At the hospital, we get some more standard attacks, as the lush of a doctor attempts to find a cure for Ed and Joey, who are starting to look really bad by now.
Eventually, while the others deal with zombie attacks, Brenda drives off with Joey and Ed (who make comments about how familiar this situation appears). They find a few military folks (including TV's Mitch Pileggi), who explain that the town is closed off. Ed stumbles out of the car, now a full zombie from the gas he inhaled, and attacks a soldier. The other soldiers run, and Brenda drives off with her rapidly-zombifying boyfriend. Eventually, he turns completely, and the zombified Joey chases Brenda into a church, where he uses the oh-so-convincing argument that he loves her, so she should let him eat her brains. Brenda tries telling him that she's not into dead guys, but when that argument doesn't work, she lets him have his way, thus spelling the end of our graverobbers.
Back with the surviving heroes, we get a few more set pieces (zombies show that they can also drive; Lucy turns out to be an expert with guns; zombies attack at various points). They try to leave town over the one bridge, but the army shoots at them (fortunately, this is the same army that features pot-smoking truck drivers, so all the shots miss). As they drive around, they knock a zombie into a fusebox, and discover that electricity will kill these zombies, even though nothing else will. And our heroes come up with a cunning plan:
They'll lure the zombies to the power plant, seed the ground with wires, and electrocute them all!
They head to the local brain factory**, then toss cow brains behind the moving truck to lure the zombies behind them. The close the gates to the plant and set everything up, but the kid bully zombie climbs the fence and opens it for the other zombies. The storm the place before the electricity can be turned on, and the heroes are forced to hide in the truck. Little Jesse, eventually, is able to climb through a tiny hole, get to the cab, and drive the truck to the plant's operation center, where he goes in to turn the power on. He's attacked by the bully zombie, who he throws over a ledge before turning the power on. The zombies outside fry for about ten minutes, and one of them even convulses like Michael Jackson. Bully zombie makes one last appearance (since he was out of harm's way), taunting Jesse until the drunken doctor makes the save, and our heroes are finally rescued by the army. As we fade to black, we see one last zombie head taunting the soldiers and getting burnt to a crisp by a flamethrower.
If I seem less enthused about RotLD2 than I did about the original, it's because I am. It sacrifices gore and horror for utter silliness, with no real winning payoff. There are still some jokes that work (including the Michael Jackson one), but there's no sense of danger mixed with the humor, as was the case in the first movie, and this change of gears removes all the tension. There's no element of social satrire at work here, but not enough slapstick or goofiness to make the humor stand on its own, either. Writer-director Ken Wiederhorn is best known for Meatballs, Part 2, which probably says more about his relative lack of talent than anything else I could come up with. The cast isn't untalented per se, but even seasoned genre vets like Matthews and Karen seem to have been told to just overact and not even try to hit character notes.
Overall, RotLD2 is worth watching at least once for fans of zombie films, as there are enough nifty undead twists and in-jokes to keep things interesting for an hour or two. But there's not much here for folks who don't care about the genre, and certainly not for anyone looking for a movie that stands up well to repeated viewings.
*Seriously. There's an entire back-and-forth sequence straight from the first movie, which is either a good joke or a good way to save money.
**Well, a meat-processing plant that has lots of cow brains.