dan o’bannon – Horror Ghouls

The Return of the Living Dead (1985)

Posted on October 26, 2026 by HorrorGhouls

It’s the fourth of July, the year is 1984, and it’s time to get horny.

But before we get loose and festive, here are some important facts to know: because did you know that The Night of the Living Dead (1968), yes the George A. Romero classic, was actually based on a true case? Frank can tell. We’re at a medical supply warehouse somewhere in Louisville, Kentucky, where the two workers, Frank (James Karen) and the new, younger employee, Freddy (Thom Matthews) are about to get done for the day. Frank is supposed to be 45 years old, which has to be the most brutal 45 years I’ve ever seen. Bearing the guilt of being responsible for building houses on an unmarked cemetery maybe does that to you. Anyway: It all starts when Freddy asks Frank what’s the weirdest thing he’s ever seen in the warehouse. Oh, he’s surely seen some things, but nothing weirder than the Trioxin gas conspiracy. Because the true story is that in 1969 this chemical got leaked into a hospital in Pittsburgh, leaked down to the morgue and woke up the dead bodies into zombies. The Trioxin was originally developed for the Army, and if it was ever exposed in the movie, Romero and co would have their asses sued.

And given that this film is actually co-written by John A. Russo, who also co-wrote TNOTLD, the truth is finally coming out. Anyway, the Army sent all the contaminated bodies out, and some of them are in the basement, yes, in this building, with a can of the Trioxin. You wanna see? Of course you do.

The pompous dork that Frank is, takes a quick slam at the canister to show how strong and secure it is. Instead, the gas oozes out that eventually reeks out of the crematorium pipe and up in the air that makes the rain toxic enough to resurrect the dead at the local cemetery. And they want braaaaains! Why exactly brains though? You’ll see.

While Frank and Freddy get more and more sick after inhaling the gas, we meet a charming group of punks who just wanna party. And what could be a better spot to celebrate the fourth of July than in a cemetery? They all stick out in their own ways, but the one we would focus most on, is the redhead Trash (Linnea Quigley). Because when the sun has gone down, and it’s partytime, Trash gets aroused and horny with her own filthy sadomasochistic fantasies of being killed in all kinds of different ways by a bunch of men. Be careful what you wish for, hon. She rips off her clothes and dances on a gravestone, buck naked, which alone made the entire legacy of Linnea Quigley. Not bad. And she runs around naked for the rest of the movie. Quigley already had a background as a nude model, so that explains something.

Fun trivia time: The grave dance scene was as groundbreaking and controversial in American cinema as it was to show a toilet in Psycho (1960). This scene was shot two times. The second time was when they realized that they couldn’t show pubic hair without getting an X-rating. And an X-rating at that time meant zero advertisement other than a small black & white logo of the film’s title hidden in the newspaper. It wasn’t just enough to shave it, no no, she had to wear a prosthetic of her crotch to make her less exposed and make her more doll-like. The funny thing is that the actors had never seen a shaved pussy before, because this was after all the 1980s, and they were more confused about what they were watching. Pretty vacant, like Johnny Rotten would say.

According to the making-of-documentary More Brains! A Return to the Living Dead from 2011, the film was a brutal shoot, a war zone, someone even calls it. A lot of spontaneous rehearsal tapes ended in the final cut, which was usually unheard of. There’s a great chaotic atmosphere here, lots of raw punk rock vibes energy (yeah duh), and much is also due to the director Dan O’Bannon, who according to the actors, was a total punk himself who pushed the actors to the breaking point. Everything that could go wrong, could go seriously wrong and ruin the whole production. In this case, however, it seemed to make the film better. More chaos, more fun. Art by many accidents, or just having a relatively clear vision may help a lot. Even though this was Lloyd Kaufman, I mean Dan O’Bannon’s first time directing, he was the one who wrote Alien (1979), so he wasn’t exactly a nobody.

More fun trivia: One of the actresses had a very awkward meeting with Bannon over a script reading at his house, where he had guns all over his desk and hardcore porn showing on the TV. That’s Hollywood, baby, to quote R. Zegler. The best part of the documentary can be found in the deleted scenes section called “Researching the Dead“. The iconic movie poster was illustrated by Carl Ramsey (1946-2014). He also made the posters for Motel Hell (1980) and Beetlejuice (1988).

The soundtrack has a fitting playlist of some local punk bands such as The Cramps, The Damned, The Flesh Eaters and more. The most memorable will always be Party Time by 45 Grave, and the pop song Tonight We’ll Make Love Until We Die by SSQ is catchy as hell. The good ole’ 1980s. It also has to be said that this is far from a gore fest like Re Animator, which came out the same year as this. You have two scenes where skulls get eaten, more bloody than the other. The satire and the chaotic absurdity is what drives the film, with lots of memorable moments like the restrained zombie who explains why they need to eat brains, the first encounter with Tarman, “send more paramedics“, and the overall pure ’80s atmosphere.

I also like the concept of Frank and Freddy slowly dying while they’re still alive after they inhaled the Trioxin. Having to go through rigor mortis before death is a horror movie in itself. And there you have the irony of zombies running, which you’ll see later on. So no, Zack Snyder was far from the first. My favorite character here is the mortician with the big bulging eyes, Ernie (Don Calfa), who has some of the best reactions as he plays it all straight and rational, which is moons apart from all of the rest. The ending is what it is, because Bannon had no clue how to, well, end it.

Director: Dan O’Bannon
Writers: Rudy Ricci, John A. Russo, Russell Streiner
Country & year: USA, 1985
Actors: Clu Gulager, James Karen, Don Calfa, Thom Mathews, Beverly Randolph, John Philbin, Jewel Shepard, Miguel A. Núñez Jr., Brian Peck, Linnea Quigley, Mark Venturini,
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089907/

The Resurrected (1991)

Posted on January 30, 2024August 23, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

Charles Dexter Ward is showing increasingly bizarre behaviour, and his wife Claire hires a private investigator to look into his strange affairs. The investigator, John March, starts peeking around the isolated farmhouse which Charles recently started using after uncovering his family history and discovering that this abandoned farmhouse belonged to his ancestor. Said ancestor’s name was Joseph Curwen, to whom Charles bears an uncanny resemblance. John notices that there are numerous deliveries made to the place, and upon asking Charles himself, he explains that he is undertaking some chemical tests where he uses animal cadavers. While certainly showing off eccentric behaviour, there’s nothing John can use here to offer any explanations to the worried wife. Then, after a man in a neighboring house ends up brutally murdered, where his remains have been attacked and eaten as if by a crazed animal, John starts to believe it’s not a coincidence. He brings Claire with him to the farm in order to confront Charles, but find him in a state where he ends up committed to a hospital. The doctors find that his metabolism is inexplicably high, which causes him to become extremely hungry, and his cravings are for blood and raw meat. John decides he must uncover the secrets of the old farmhouse and what Charles was doing at the place.

The Resurrected (aka The Ancestor and Shatterbrain) is a 1991 horror film directed by Dan O`Bannon, and it’s an adaption of the H.P. Lovecraft novella The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. The screenwriter, Brent V. Friedman, had developed a version of the script which was titled Shatterbrain, while O`Bannon wrote his own ideas and had imagined the title to be The Ancestor. Friedman’s script was mainly used, but O`Bannon also incorporated some of his own ideas into the movie. Interstar Releasing planned for a wide theatrical release in 1991, but they went bankrupt before it could happen and thus it ended up straight to video in 1992. This movie was O`Bannon’s second and final movie as a director, after his directorial debut in 1985 with The Return of the Living Dead.

The Resurrected is not the first film to be based on Lovecraft’s The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. In 1963, Roger Corman made a film called The Haunted Palace, starring Vincent Price, which also provides a take on this story but very loosely and mixed with the Edgar Allan Poe’s story by the same name as the film. I haven’t yet seen this one, so can make no comparisons here. I have read the Lovecraft novella, and while it should go without saying that movie adaptions rarely manages to capture the essence of horror and wonder in Lovecraft’s stories (there are, of course, exceptions), this movie actually does follow the original story for the most part, just setting it in more modern times. Many Lovecraft adaptions tend to change so much that the original story is barely recognizable, and some just doesn’t really do the original stories justice. However, this is something I’ve come to terms with a long time ago, I don’t expect any Lovecraft adaption to be on par with the source material. I just want to be entertained. And some of the movie adaptions (both the decent and the bad ones) often manages to do exactly that, so I’m not gonna complain.

Now, most horror movie fans are well aware of O`Bannon’s The Return of the Living Dead, and have most likely witnessed some of his screenplay work in several of the movies in the Alien franchise, and other horror films like Lifeforce. Just like the original Lovecraft story, it starts in a mental asylum where Charles is incarcerated, and then the story moves backwards in order tell what happened. It’s set up a bit like a detective mystery, with a pretty blonde wife begging the investigator for help and all. Set in the modern times, which were the 90’s when the movie was made, works well enough. The opening scene which includes a bit of blood and gore before getting a scene where the investigator starts retelling his experience, helps fuel the story as the next parts are, unfortunately, a little bit too slow before it finally picks up the pace and delivers.

While there were some issues with the pacing, the viewing experience was upheld by a constant feeling of mystery. You keep wondering what Charles has been doing at the farmhouse, but it takes a little too much time to actually get there. Once secrets are revealed we get some really nice shots of monstrous creatures and a hellish underground basement lab. While apparently trying to veer away from your typical B-Horror cheeseflick with a more serious approach, there’s no doubt that once the blood, guts, and otherworldly creatures fill the screen we get to see that this movie doesn’t stray too far away from the B-movie range. And I mean that in a positive way, of course. Originally, O`Bannon actually planned for the movie to have more humor, but it was re-edited and re-cut which removed this, much to his disapproval.

Despite a few flaws, The Resurrected is a decent horror film with an ominous mystery-fueled atmosphere, great creature-effects by Todd Masters, and a fitting music score by Richard Band.

Director: Dan O’Bannon
Writer: Brent V. Friedman
Country & year: US, 1991
Actors: John Terry, Jane Sibbett, Chris Sarandon, Robert Romanus, Laurie Briscoe, Ken Camroux-Taylor, Patrick P. Pon, Bernard Cuffling, J.B. Bivens, Robert Sidley, Des Smiley, Eric Newton
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105242/

Lifeforce (1985)

Posted on September 15, 2023August 16, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

A space crew is on a mission to explore the coma of Haley’s Comet, a comet that’s visible from Earth and to the naked eye every 75 years. Something else that’s naked are three humanoid creatures in suspended animation within coffin-shaped glass containers, which the captain Tom Carlsen (Steve Railsback) and his crew find as soon as they float onto the comet. Two of them being young males and a young brunette (credited as Space Girl in the 18 year old flesh of Mathilda May). They bring the containers back to the spaceship and head back to Earth. But something goes wrong as they enter the atmosphere. The crew gets burned alive and the only sign of life when the ship lands on Earth are the three humanoids, still sleeping in their coffins. An inventive little nod to the sailing ship Demeter, if you will.

We’re now in London where the containers with the space humanoids are transported to the European Space Research Centre, and the fun is about to begin. The naked Space Girl suddenly opens her eyes as she lies ready for her autopsy, stands up buck naked and sucks the life out of him (yes, from the mouth, sorry to say). She escapes as she just wanders out of the facility like a catwalk model while she flashes her tits and buttcheeks. We then learn from one of the doctors who also had an episode with the Space Girl that she’s able to seduce her victims with intense supernatural powers and french-kisses them completely empty of lifeforce, and … how can anyone say this with a straight and dry face: they then infect the victims with a virus that transforms them to rabid zombie vampires. It’s time to call Dr. Peter Cushing Van Helsing. Ha-ha, had it only been that easy…

A traumatized Dr. Carlsen, the only survivor of the space crew we saw earlier, heads over to London from Texas to join forces with the agent SAS agent Colin Caine (Peter Firth) to track down the space creature.

Lifeforce was supposed to be Tobe Hooper’s next big step after the mega success of the Steven Spielberg production Poltergeist (1982), which still asks the question who really directed that film. What the hell really happened to Tobe Hooper is also a good question. But what we know is that his destructive and downward spiral of drug use didn’t do any favors to the continuous fall of his career. He was fired from several film projects during the 1980s until he was picked up by Cannon Films which he signed a three-movie deal with: Lifeforce, Invaders from Mars and Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.

Even though Lifeforce was doomed from the beginning by starting the shooting with an unfinished script, the film has its many moments. The set-design of the comet is pretty inventive with an entrance that looks like a giant butthole. The effects are as 80’s as they can get which goes from being pretty spectacular to crispy cheese dinner. Then we have eye-rolling dialogues mixed with a hysteric over-the top performance by Steve Railsback. When he’s not overacting to the Razzie Award, he sits with a blank stare and just says his lines, while the rest tries to take this as seriously as they can. An enthusiastic Patrick Stewart has a short screentime where he got the great honor to mouth kiss Railsback in one of the more absurd scenes.

The rubber animatronics are comical, cartoonish and just delightfully cheesy that would fit far more in a film like The Return of the Living Dead. Dan O’Bannon co-wrote the script so that maybe explains a thing or two. There was no complete script of Lifeforce, as mentioned, and it shows, especially after the second half which slides further into a weird unfocused epic mess. Miniature buildings of London burn up in flames, there’s big explosions in the street and full pandemonium of rabid zombie vampires running around. Only thing missing is cats and dogs living together and we’d had double mass hysteria!

The studio also cut out 20 minutes for its theatrical release and the film was set up to be a blockbuster in the summer of 1985, but instead became the biggest flop of the year, barely earning half of its budget back. It was mocked and panned by most of the critics and Colin Wilson, the author of the novel The Space Vampires, which the film is based on, wasn’t much impressed either. Gene Siskel, on the other hand, gave it 3 out of 4 stars and called the film a guilty pleasure. And it’s not hard to agree on that. Lifeforce is available on a Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack from Scream Factory.

Director: Tobe Hooper
Writers: Dan O’Bannon, Don Jakoby
Also known as: Space Vampires
Country & year: UK, 1985
Actors: Steve Railsback, Peter Firth, Frank Finlay, Mathilda May, Patrick Stewart, Michael Gothard, Nicholas Ball, Aubrey Morris, Nancy Paul, John Hallam, John Keegan
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt0089489/