Review: More Brains! A Return to the Living Dead

2011
Directed by:  Bill Philputt
Category: Documentary

Not since 2010's Never Sleep Again on the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise have I been so completely consumed by a film franchise with such a riveting documentary. The second I heard this was getting released late last year, I pre-ordered mine without thinking twice. Many thanks to the great horror site Eat the deaD for keeping me updated on the status of this release and also to the great horror and VHS site Ghoulbasement.com for first turning me onto the fact that this thing even existed.

If you're a fan of Dan O'Bannon's 1985 opus The Return of the Living Dead or even any of it's lackluster sequels, you need to see this documentary. It's just brilliant and touches on everything you've always wanted to know and all of the things you didn't know that were going on behind he scenes. I had no idea how much of a troubled shoot this thing was. For me, it seemed to come out at a time when there was a lull in the quality of horror movies coming out. Sure there were some bright spots, like George Romero's Day of the Dead that same year and Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter the year before, but not many that really stood out. Then Dan O'Bannon did something unheard of and pretty damn brave. He made a full on zombie film, but infused it with some dark comedy elements (which work amazingly well and never going too far overboard), a frequently nude Linnea Quigley  and an in your face punk soundtrack that added an extra layer of awesomeness to an already awesome zombie film.

What made Return of the Living Dead such a landmark in the horror genre was that writer/director Dan O'Bannon didn't set out to make a flat out horror comedy. He keeps the horror elements in check and splashes it with just enough visual panache that though it's his first directorial effort, you'd never know it. The film looks bloody amazing.

More Brains! A Return to the Living Dead gives you a full 2 hours of insight into the production of the first film. All the way from it's conception when dealing with all the legal issues associated with the title since Romero and his writing partner from Night of the Living Dead John A. Russo, owned the rights to the "living dead" title and then became involved in a court battle over ownership when Russo decided he wanted to do a sort of unofficial semi-sequel, to it's theatrical release and reception. Russo won the court battle, paving the way for his semi-unofficial sequel called Return of the Living Dead, only to have Dan O'Bannon get on board and rewrite the script and make it something uniquely different. Then it delves into the intense drama regarding "everything" Return of the Living Dead in terms of makeup effects, casting and O'Bannon's infamous tyrant like behavior behind the camera. More than any other of the issues they touch on though, it's Dan O'Bannon, Clu Gulager and costar Jewel Shepard's "difficult" behavior that you find most fascinating. I honestly had no idea all of that stuff was going on and it's truly fascinating to see almost every single actor from the original film appear in the documentary with tales of the stressful situations put upon them during production and some of the stories they had to share about there costars. Really great stuff. You also get some great insight into why O'Bannon has only ever directed 2 films in his lustrous career with Return of the Living Dead and then 1992's Shatterbrain before giving up on directing  altogether.

The special features are just as awesome. Along with trailers, Dan O'Bannon's last interview before his untimely passing in 2009 and other goodies, you have separate but smaller documentaries on the WTF? and troubled Return of the Living Dead Part 2 and Brian Yuzna's Return of the Living Dead 3, which are just equally as fascinating. Especially in regards to Part 2, a film so bad I couldn't even finish it recently when I tried revisiting it after over a decade of not having seen it.You finally get deep insight into what the hell went wrong with Part 2 and why.

Overall a really, really great documentary on one of my absolute favorite zombie flicks of all time. They manage to give the documentary a really fun vibe, even when dealing with some of the more serious issues. And it's just always great seeing all the main players as well as the supporting cast over 25 years later.

Review: Dead & Buried

1981
Directed by: Gary Sherman
Category: Horror

Dead & Buried is a film with a lot of talent behind the camera for a little seen or heard of early 80's horror film.

Directed by:
Gary Sherman (Vice Squad, Wanted Dead or Alive)
Written by:
Ronald Shusset (Alien "story", Above the Law, Total Recall)
Dan O'Bannon (Alien, Return of the Living Dead, Invaders From Mars, Total Recall, Screamers)
Special Makeup Effects:
Stan Winston (The Terminator, Aliens, Predator)

The main thing this film has going for it is it's constant sense of dread. The film carries an eerie atmospheric tone that reminded me a lot of John Carpenters The Fog, only not as awesome and not as visually stunning. In a lot of instances it reminded me of a made for TV movie. For a horror film from 1981, that's not always a good thing.

Potters Bluff, Rhode Island. A small seaside town where everybody knows everybody and nothing exciting ever happens until tourists start getting killed off in gory fashion at an alarming rate. Sheriff Dan Gillis, the college graduate who came back home to become the town sheriff, is at a loss. He thinks there is a serial killer responsible until clues lead him to believe there might be more to this close knit town, his wife and the local mortician included, than he ever imagined. 


I'd heard of this film once or twice before and finally made it a point to check it out the other day. For me, it was the talent involved behind the camera that pulled me in. I've always been a fan of both Ronald Shusset and Dan O'Bannon, who between the two of them have given me some of my favorite sci-fi, horror and action films of the 1980's. So a horror film from early in there career written by both of them with special effects by the great Stan Winston should be a sure thing right? Well yes and no. It's not so much a full on horror film as it is an atmospheric thriller with some pretty impressive effects. So going into this thing expecting a horror film and ending up with a suspense thriller that looks like it was made for television kinda left me a little bummed when it was all over. It just didn't end up being the kind of film I was hoping for. I can't really pinpoint one specific thing that felt off, because the performances and the direction were fine, but somehow it just didn't gel very well. Like it didn't know what type of film it wanted to be. At one point it felt like a Twilight Zone episode, and at another it felt like a Fog wannabe. The shifting tone really threw me off and if it wasn't for the creative and pretty awesome kills here and there as well as Jack Albertson's (in his final role) role as the local mortician with the entire town under his spell, then I woulda been bored out of my mind.

It did have a few bright spots though. The main actor who plays the sheriff, James Farentino, was pretty great. The guy was just so gung ho the entire time and gave it his all, even with some of the ridiculous scenarios. And I swear, I seriously thought it was the actor who played the dad in The Wonder Years, only younger and thinner. I'm telling you, the guy's a dead ringer. Also great was Jack Albertson, Charlie's grandfather from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He really steals the show and it was so great to see that he ended up having a much bigger part towards the end than you realize in the first half. It also had some pretty nifty special effects courtesy of Mr. Winston. The only problem was they just seemed so out of place in a movie like this. Like, the killings were so severe, but then the film turns back into a slow Twilight Zone episode or an Alfred Hitchcock presents episode and after you cringe at the painful death, you sort of scratch your head thinking it seemed so over the top compared to the rest of the film.
I would also have to say the big twist at the end was awesome. I'm talking about the very last scene right before it cuts to credits. I honestly never saw it coming and was pretty impressed with how inventive it was. Overall though, Nothing really stood out here that will ever make me watch it again unfortunately. It was a nice effort and if anything, it really makes me want to see John Carpenter's The Fog again, another horror film that came out the year before about another small seaside town dealing with mysterious murders, only made much better and worked much more effectively by a master in the beginning of his prime.