With all the talk about the poor state of survival horror games, I felt somewhat compelled to go back and start watching some of the earlier horror films that I think may have inspired the horror themes from games like Resident Evil and other games like it.

For no specific reason I decided to rewatch the classic 80's horror flick The Return of the Living Dead released in 1985. I don't remember a lot about this movie, it's been so long since I watched it. Truthfully, I had a bit of insomnia and felt like watching horror flicks for some reason. Whatever?

I've also watched every episode of Walking Dead and read some of the comics and enjoy them both. This was another reason I wanted to revisit old zombie movies specifically
because I was trying to revisit the inspiration for the TV show and comics as well as some games.

I think Return has a lot of interesting ideas about zombies. So, if you haven't seen this movie before or forgot about it, here is a minor summarization. A lot of the movie takes place in a cemetery at night, surprise! Actually the setting revolves around two places, a warehouse which specializes in medical supplies, which also stores animal and human cadavers, and a cemetary across the street which also has a mortuary, complete with chapel and crematory. A couple of incompitent employees from the warehouse release a poisonous vapor into the air which re-animates the cadavers in the warehouse, and later the bodies in the cemetary which happens to be occupied by a group of teenage punks partying in the graveyard.

Afterward the zombies are set loose, there is a bit of a relay race between the survivors sprinting back and forth from the warehouse and cemetary as they try to evade the zombie hordes and barricade themselves for safety. They helplessly watch as endless waves of police and ambulence workers get devoured in their failed attempts to save the survivors. There is also a lot of punk rock music to keep things interesting. So, it's a typical teen slasher flick basically, but with good makeup effects and an interesting story.

Some of the more interesting things about the movie are as follows. First, Return is supposed to be a sort of sequel to the original black and white Night of the Living Dead, however, in this movie, the characters reference the original movie. What? How? In the Dead series universe, these movies are supposed to have depicted things that really happened and are supposed to be continuations of each other. So the events of the first movie were referenced as events that occured in a movie. Two of the main characters have a conversation that's like this,

Dude 1: "Did you see that movie about the dead coming back to life in that town?"
Dude 2: "You mean that movie was real?"
Dude 1: "Yeah!"

So, the movie is referencing back to itself as a sort of joke? Interesting. This would be similar to Leon asking Chris if he played the first resident evil game, while
being in a resident evil game.

Another thing about this movie is that it's supposably the first to have zombies that hunger for brains. I need to do more research on this, but while this is true in this movie, the other interesting thing about these zombies is that they can talk. They are not just mindless, slow moving corpses, but actually self aware, fast moving "living" dead. At one point a zombie grabs a police radio and asks the dispatcher to send more cops. In another scene, one of or half of a zombie is interrogated and explains that eating brains helps numb their pain? Wait? What?

Spoiler alert! No one survives. It's made out to seem like there is a chance that a few might survive, but in the end everyone dies. The town basically gets nuked by the
army.

There aren't any crazy monsters here. Although there is one zombie that looks a lot like Nemesis, and he is kind of a nightmare actually. He coincidentally is the first
zombie released from a barrel or whatever, like a boss in Resident Evil I suppose.

Anyhow, for a sequel, the movie sure took a lot of liberties with source material and had fun with it. It wasn't very serious at all, and I suppose it wasn't meant to be. One thing to note is that after the original Night of the Living Dead, the series was split in two directions, one being the Dead series and another being the Return series. I wouldn't mind if Capcom or any horror game developer went back and looked at these films and tried to make a different type of game with a different tone and set of characters and maybe even a new town. This film took place in Kentucky, but it could have been Racoon City. I'm just saying it would be interesting to play as a group of teenage punks trying to survive through zombie hourdes in one night in one town as opposed to long treks around the world with giant B.O.W. monsters or whatever they are.
How about a Punk Rock soundtrack with an 80's theme Racoon City? It was a fun movie overall and I understand why some horror fans consider it a classic. I can't say the same thing about the recent sequels to horror games though. They need more brains!!!!

**Update: There are some ground rules to zombies that I believe might be established in this film. For starters, the calling out for "brains" or need of brains. Running zombies. These zombies cannot be killed with a shot to the head. No. They must be burned and acid is effective as a weapon, but only for slowing down. So, brains, running, fire and acid. Guns are pretty useless, this is especially apparent in the sequel ROTLD II. Sound also. You would be a fool to make any kind of noise around these zombies or you will find yourself corralled against a  wall very quickly. So brains, running, fire, acid and sound.