What the hell really happened to Return of the Living Dead Part II? It’s a movie that was made, that we at least can say for sure. But it’s certainly not a sequel, nor a prequel. I saw Part 2 on TV (on the Norwegian Broadcast channel, of all places) years before I saw the first film, and can say I got a little confused when I finally got to see it, even though it should have been the other way around. On the surface, this is more or less the same film all over again, a rerun, where Thom Matthews and James Karen reprise their roles in what we might call an alternate universe… something like that. A more fitting title would be Return of the Living Déjà vu.
Dan O’Bannon was not interested in making the sequel as he was moving on to developing his own project, that was The Resurrected. In comes Ken Wiederhorn, a frustrated and struggling director who was notoriously known for hating horror movies since he entered the business in 1977 with his nazi/zombie flick Shock Waves. He also made the sleazy drive-in thriller Eyes of a Stranger (1981) and was only seen as a schlocky horror movie director. He was so desperate to make this as his ultimate segway out of the horror genre that he took a writing class, so he finally could make real movies like William Friedkin and Martin Scorsese. The irony is that the result more or less ended up like a watered-down copy-and-paste version of the original, without the spicy satire. Wiederhorn originally wrote a stand-alone comedy horror which producer Tom Fox saw the big-dollar opportunity to slam Return of the Living Dead Part II on, or “The Police Academy of Horror Movies“, as Wiederhorn proudly called it. Fucking Christ, he should be forever glad that social media didn’t exist back then.
Tom Fox brought back Thom Matthews and James Karen to make some shallow connections to the first film, while the child actors would appeal to the younger audiences. Don Calfa, who played the mortician in the first film, auditioned to play the goofy doctor, but got rejected. The funny thing is that the production was such a miserable experience that Tom Matthews and James Karen told Don Calfa on the phone that he was lucky to not be a part of it.
And against all odds, the film was better than it had any right to be. Even Ken Wiederhorn was taken back of how well received it was. He never got the big break he wanted, though, and only directed some TV series in the early ’90s. His last film was the obscure romance/thriller A House in the Hills (1993), which is the one and only film he’s proud of.
The plot is as basic as it can get, where some canisters of the Trioxin gas/liquid falls off a military truck and into a river that finds its way into a drainpipe near a suburb. And that’s just fantastic, since drainpipes are an exciting place for kids to explore, especially in the 1980s. And speaking of kids, meet the twelve-year-old Jesse and the two bullies, Billy and Johnny, stumble upon the canister, tampering with it until they see a dead cadaver through its glass panel (hello, Tarman) and runs away. As the gas has already started to ooze, because of those damn kids, the damage is done, and it’s just a matter of time before it reaches the local cemetery, and it’s partytime once again (just without the punks and naked gravedancing).
There are several positives about Part 2, though. It’s a great-looking ’80s movie with some tasty atmospheric foggy night scenes and interesting-looking zombies. The dumb comedy really kicks in during the zombie resurrection scene where zombie aunt puts on her glasses, zombie uncle fixes his tie, while others gets stomped on. And if you’re watching this for the first time on DVD you’d go bruh? What’s this? Return of the Living Disco Zombies? The cheese really reeks hard at this cemetery. Even director Wiederhorn says in the commentary track that there’s something wrong with this music, but has no answer to why. Other sources say that there were some copyright disputes and a new score had to be added to the 2004 DVD release. The funny thing is that the original score is still on the French and Italian language track. I also read many years ago somewhere on the internet that the DVD was transferred from a Russian version. Another unsolved mystery is who actually made that awesome movie poster. Rumors says it’s by Peter Mueller who also did the very similar poster for Fright Night (1985) , but nothing has been confirmed.
Well, anyway…James Karen goes full force with the tiresome overacting. Some of the “highlights“ is where he holds a zombie head and let the indexfinger on his other arm get bitten. Just because. Hilarious (sarcasm). While we have lots of zombies shuffling around, there’s actually even less blood here than in the first film. It’s lighthearted, silly and pretty much on the level of gateway horror. And despite the turmoil behind the scenes, and a director that had no idea what made the first one so special, they at the very least managed to be professional and give us a false impression that the actors had fun on set. The slick and polished cinematography by Robert Elswit, is also a big plus, who later did Boogie Nights, There Will Be Blood and Nightcrawler, to mention some. I also like the ending/climax with the sparkling, jiggling zombies where we have a quick cameo from none other than Michael Jackson. Aow!
Writer and director: Ken Wiederhorn
Country & year: USA, 1988
Actors: Michael Kenworthy, Thor Van Lingen, Jason Hogan, James Karen, Thom Mathews, Suzanne Snyder, Marsha Dietlein, Hanala Sagal, Jonathan Terry, Philip Bruns, Allan Trautman
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095990/
