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/
