15 Greatest Horror Movie Comedies

The Return Of The Living Dead is Dan O’Bannon’s directorial debut and a punky, schlocky take on Romero’s movies, cleverly asking; what if Romero’s movies were based on the truth? That the government captured the zombies from Night Of The Living Dead and are keeping them in top secret military canisters. This is all found out by Freddy who takes a job in a warehouse storing medical supplies – as you can guess one of those canisters is opened and all zombie hell breaks loose.

Whilst this is clearly influenced by the Romero series it also makes some unique changes, the zombies are far more capable and notably they can talk, a point O’Bannon uses well as the zombies have the mental capacity to ask for more paramedics and more cops on the radio after slaughtering the first wave.

O’Bannon has a lot of fun with this and there isn’t a fresh faced teen in sight, instead the focus is on a wilder, punky gang which is representative of the anything goes feel of the movie. Perfectly encapsulated by Linnea Quigley’s naked dancing on a tombstone.