Dear Readers... Please indulge me a bit of "Self-Quarantine Blog Therapy" during these strange days, and bear with what follows. More of our regular and more typical content will be back next post.
As many of you know, I attend a "Thursday Night Film Group", in the basement of a friend and independent film maker, whom Esther and I met as a adult-ed college lecturer.
Those sessions, which I've attended since 2012, are presently suspended in view of... Aw, you know what!
There, we gather (Oops! Can't do THAT anymore!) to watch a film, with background provided by our host, and later go around the room to critique it. The primary genre of focus is "Horror/Sci-Fi", with side trips into "Spaghetti Western", "Giallo", and "Film Noir". You can see, this is right up my alley!
It's been a few weeks since we've done this and, as I see it, it will be MANY weeks more (perhaps even many months), before I'm willing to return in safety to this communal activity I've enjoyed so thoroughly!
But, in the spirit of "this Thursday thing", I did the following and e-mailed it to the group. Others have since followed suit.
Here are the basic ramblings I sent, posted here as I sent 'em, with no cleaning up, and no more background detail than was required. In other words: The OPPOSITE of my old standard "Looong DVD Reviews"!
But, I've wanted to get back to DVD reviews for a while - but comics related posts are both fun and easy to do, and so they tend to dominate. Some of you have also asked that I return to DVD reviews, so why not just turn this post into a great big "Self-Quarantine Blog Therapy" session!
And did I every pick a doozy of a DVD (Blu-ray, actually) to share with my film group - and now with you! Ready? Set? Go!
So, what did I do
on a Thursday night? Decided to watch a horror film, of
course.
Looking through
my shelves for something I bought a long time ago, but never watched (I've got
quite a few of those!), I stopped on "The Return of the Living Dead"
(1984), and popped it in the player.
Okay, so it's NOT
"Night of the Living Dead" (1968)... but, then again, WHAT IS?
What we have here
is a film heavy on the comedy, yet still with its gruesome moments.
It is an odd
melding of many different things, but primarily The Three Stooges (as warehouse
workers) meet (actually they inadvertently resurrect the...) zombies, meet
Scooby-Doo (if there were no dog and the kids were freakish, punk-like,
sociopathic '80s misfits).
The Three Stooges and their '80s horror-film counterparts!
Freakish, punk-like, sociopathic "meddling kids"!
Not exactly "The Mystery Machine", is it?
There's a lot of
bumbling by the warehouse workers, a lot of running, jumping, and screaming by
the kids (hence the Scooby-Doo influence) , and a lot of brain-eating by the
zombies - all done to a (Shudder!) '80s synth soundtrack. Though, the
tune "Surfin Dead" was kinda fun!
...I mean, how do
you not love a song called "Surfin Dead" ? Huh?
Oh, and there's a
good part for a funeral director - with the twist being that the dead now
walk in on their own, without an appointment!
Left to right: Matthews, Karen, and Gulager
Steady veterans
Clu Gulager and James Karen are quite entertaining as the two head warehouse
guys, with Thom Matthews thrown in as the warehouse newbie and "third
stooge", and just as good was Don Calfa as the funeral
director.
The kids?
Ehhhh? But there was one female punker that spent most of her time running
around nude - even before she became a zombie, so props to her.
"Daphne warned me about messing around in graveyards... But, did I listen? Noooo!"
Gulager
and Calfa's characters were old friends and business associates called
"Burt" and "Ernie", respectively. Bringing the chain
of character-naming events full circle from "It's a Wonderful Life" -
to "Sesame Street" - to "The Return of the Living
Dead"!
Some of the movie
looked more like video tape than film, and maybe that flaw was enhanced by
Blu-ray. (Yes, "Blu-ray"! You don't thing I streamed the
thing, do you?) And the '80s style credits looked typically cheap 'n'
cheesy.
With the synth
scoring added to the general look of the film... if you played this straight,
and dumped all the comedy bits, this could actually pass for an Italian horror
film!
Characteristically,
there would be a lot of things for me not to like, if we were to do a
"paper checklist", but that's not so! I liked it more than
I expected to for an '80s film, scored by synthesizer, with an
inconsistent narrative that veered between horror and comedy.
I give it my
genre-solid-like rating of 9.8!
I may give this a
try every Thursday night... until we meet again in 2024! That's a lot of
unwatched DVDs to catch up on! :-)
PS: It this
where the Zombie-cry of "BRAINS!" came from, or was that
one of the later Romero films? (Joe's Note: Yes, it was!)
Maybe I should
look into the sequel?
On the other side of things I should also mention that "Night of the Living Dead" (1968) is my all time favorite horror movie! Essentially the "Casablanca" or "Citizen Kane" of the Horror genre.
Add Scooby and Stooges influences to the mix, and I was predisposed to liking this more than your average '80s horror flick.
Will I do this again on other Thursday nights? Still undecided... But, perhaps my decision will be revealed in the form of another "Self-Quarantine Looong DVD Review"!
Additional Note: Sean Murray, another member of the film group, offers a correction to my description of the freakish kids as "Goth". They are not "Goth" despite my concentration on some of the black attire. I have substituted the term "Punk", hoping that to be a more suitably accurate description.
4 comments:
I liked that soundtrack. I think I reviewed it for my college newspaper.
Considering my general dislike of ‘80s era synth-scores, the fact that I liked this one (to the degree that I did) speaks well of it. Having a bent toward heavy metal, also helps it with this AC/DC and Judas Priest fan.
And, again… how do you not love a song called "Surfin Dead"?
For those who might not know, Marc is a valued charter-member of our Thursday Night Film Group, known for his creativity and sense of humor. Well… *I* “value” him for that, anyway! :-)
Well, glad to know someone appreciates my humor...
For the record, "Surfin' Dead" comes courtesy of The Cramps, a punk/surf group known for their raunchy and gory imagery. Album titles included "Look Mom, No Head" and "Creature from the Black Leather Lagoon." And they had a guitarist who went by the name Poison Ivy.
Getting back to the soundtrack for RotLD, I'm not exactly an expert on punk rock as a genre, but I recognize some of the names of bands who contributed to the album -- The Damned, T.S.O.L., Roky Erickson. There are some big names involved in this soundtrack. And, last I checked on Amazon, you can get the CD for $975.33!
My apologies to Joe if the above was too off-topic. But if so, he can decline to let it post, in which case you're not reading these words.
Nothing’s ever REALLY off-topic here, Marc!
Indeed, different comments merely take things into different (and interesting) directions.
Yeah, I think “The Cramps” were mentioned in the movie credits. Appreciate all the info.
But, when I think of all the comics, DVDs, and pizza I can get for 975.33, I think I’ll relegate *my* “cramps” to the rest room!
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