I like how the Tar Man zombie is so incredibly decomposed that he's really just walking sludge (hence the name, obviously), but he has a decidedly alive-looking tongue lol
Absolutely. Think of a scenario like Dying Light's Be the Zombie Nighthunter. Even without the grappling hook, That thing is scary as fuck. Especially if your only way of defense is to use a UV light. The only way to survive would be drstroying the Nest (for some reason) or to survive until day... Idk about you but I don't think I have a UV flashlight that lasts 8+ Hours
There's something especially horrifying about zombies retaining parts of themselves, that family members could talk to you as they try to pry that brain case open
“If you know anything about government engineering, no, it’s not safe” I live next to one of the original nuclear facilities made during WW2. Can confirm.
@@rawbebaba Power plants, yes. Ww2 armaments facilities? Nope. This was before radiation was fully understood too so that just doubles the unsafe nature. The facility has caused so many problems with radiation, even in recent years, from tunnels collapsing and kicking up radioactive dust to the storage containers leaking radioactive materials into the nearby rivers and the many, many, many, many, many other problems that came from that facility. On the bright side, it had led to a bunch of nuclear research, the place getting DOE money, and inspired me to go off to become a physicist. On the not-so-bright side, the entire area has a massively increased risks of thyroid cancer... So give and take, ya know. I'm not gonna say where this is though because I kind of worry about giving away too much information about where I live on the internet.
@@BaderzOG if he went to the ISS then he would actually be falling, but falling so fast, and at the right angle, gravity ends up propelling it around the planet instead of hitting the planet
I think the slow realization of what a no-win scenario this is is the scariest part of the movie. Like, you just realize "oh, everybody's _fucked_ in this."
My paternal grandfather was exposed to agent orange in 'nam and the family still is displaying a greater than average occurrence of genetic disease; Cancer, tendancy towards chemical imbalances and epilepsy. I have been a fan of the Return series since was a kid but I completely missed the link between Agent Orange and Trioxin.
Same boat here , My Grandfather was a Marine Infantryman, exposed sometime half way through his service. We haven't seen anything yet other then Psoriasis becoming genetic (I don't have it ..... yet luckily) and possibly Type A Diabetes but its still unknown. I still worry a bit for myself.
@@Whiteknight-xg2pq also an USMC infantryman’s kid. Our genetic penchant for heart disease became a penchant for congenital heart defects and reproductive difficulties.
Idk why the goverment isn't paying reperations for servicemen who were exposed. Plus chemical weapons are technically a war crime which the USA violated due to the Geneva convention banning checmial weapons after WW1
@@KaiserStormTracking I can say from experience that the exposed Vets are getting somewhat appropriate end of life care for their exposure. Their kids, like myself, are pretty fucked though.
There was a town in the USA that had to be abandoned due to a company that housed some agent orange containers, was getting rid of them without much thought. Those containers found their way into the hands of a man who unknowingly used them the pave roads. Maybe that was what inspired these films.
@@lazarussolomon3541 Times Beach, MO. The man did not know what was in the containers, but was knowingly breaking several other laws while doing it. The town is still essentially quarantined, today, as the levels of dioxins in the soil is measurable in areas well above acceptable levels.
My grandfather was a Green Beret during Vietnam. Him and his entire unit were sent on a damage assessment mission of a bombing run when they were accidentally sprayed by Agent Orange. The government tacitly acknowledged their error and - upon the emergence of neurological impairment later in his life - gave him a monthly stipend until the end of his life. Everyone from his unit who survived the war and made it back home ended up dying from cancers or neurological deterioration associated with A.O. exposure.
This infection legitimately scared me. The fact that the gas is basically indestructible or self-replicating (possibly extreme heat causes the reaction) made it all the more unnerving.
I wonder what would happen if they dissolved them with acid and just poured it in a barrel. Destroying the nervous system completely (as seen in 2) seems to work..sort of
There are always options. Road roller, tree shredders, decapitation and limb removal, regular explosions, etc. My older brother did one good thing for me growing up. He saw I was scared easily, so he told me to watch the movies and remember how the stupid people died and how they eventually solved it. Then to start figuring out my own ways of getting out. He took a scaredy cat and made him into a real internet tough guy!
@@tormentor2285 It was pretty obvious at the end that bombing the city basically meant the end of the world due to the fact that a LOT of bodies would be reanimated. They didn't even have to say it. It was just a given.
Fun fact, Dan O’bannon mentions on the commentary of the first film that the Indian Skeleton Treaty (true name unknown to me) which was a true agreement, was eliminated shortly after the films release, leading him to believe that he had inadvertently validated some kind of dark conspiracy in India regarding the perfect teethed skeletons.
Not sure this can be verified...because this same issue occured with Alien, when Giger ordered the human skull to be placed in Big Chaps "dome". There was a lot of concern, from the crew, the director, and from Giger, about the seemingly flawless condition of the skull they had recieved. Shortly after the release of Alien, the company they had ordered from shut down, and India banned the export of human remains.
Makes me wonder if that lava lamp with a human heart in it was real since I bought it from a local serial killer novelty store as a teen. I use to walk past his house with that something ain’t right feeling. Bob Berdella was his name.
Even though this series is part comedy, it scared the crap out of me even as an adult because I had never seen smart, talking zombies, who couldnt be killed by a hit to the head. A terrifying idea for an apocalypse.
It's the scariest zombies for sure. The toxin is so potent that even if they burn/nuke the zombies it will just go into the atmosphere, come down as rain, and animate everything dead in the ground. Nightmare fuel.
US just loves to do disrespectful and harmful things to it's own army. I remember watching the videos when they tested radiation from the nukes on their own people. I don't get it.
@@KaiserStormTracking It's just a defoliant, totally not a horrible deadly toxin with long-lasting complications and side effects. Dooon't worry about it, it'll be fine.
@@RolandTHX Yeah then why are ppl saying this is causing genetic disorders May I need to bring up mustard gas? Mustard gas has a reputation of causing genetic shifts
this were the kind of zombies i feared the most, unlike the romero zombies, these were, rather tanky, shooting them in the head didn't work, decapitation didn't work, burning them or outright crushing the whole body seemed to be the only sure way to stop them dead in their tracks, electrocuting them seems to work because it messes their reanimated nervous system, so a taser was your best friend. after seeing this, one would say that finding a highly secured place that only you can open, have enough food and water, and basically wait it out as they rot naturally, it might take too much time, but when fire makes it worse, electricity is something of an exotic weapon to use and crushing a body might require a jigsaw level trap, waiting might help, the more they rot, the more fragile they become, meaning it would be easier to fight them out if the need arise.
I thought that this kind of zombie was terrifying, despite the comedy since they are intelligent, sprinters, and downright unkillable except for electrocution so we would all be screwed if the chemical spread throughout the atmosphere and rained down on every single graveyard in the entire world and, because conventional means doesn't do anything to kill them, society would collapse in just a week with governments, law enforcement, and militaries being the first to fall.
It's also a terrible zombie to be. You have all your mental faculties...so you can appreciate every single moment of agony. As the lady says, they can feel themselves rotting.
The Trioxin zombies from the first Return of the Living Dead are definitely the scariest of all slow zombies. They’re difficult to destroy, can’t be killed with a gunshot, are smart, and nothing can stop the gas once it’s released in the atmosphere. I’m not sure a nuke would be enough if any radiated zombies survived
One of the most interesting routes they took with trioxin, and I haven't seen it done much anywhere else, is the idea that the undead are cognitively aware of their condition, and feel all the pain that comes with it. (Imagine your body slowly withering away, and being functionaly immortal, unable to expire. Even from decapitation, and feeling every single injury accrued, never healing. Pretty damn scary)
The pain is more than just from injuries. Their nerves are firing on all cylinders now. They can feel themselves decay. Maggots wriggle in their skin and they can feel it. It's the sort of pain we can't even imagine and the only way to get any sort of relief is by eating brains. ...which, of course, makes the third movie nonsensical.
Hell is really like that. In Hell you remember everything that happened in your life and all your senses are there. You can read about it in the Bible in the parable of Lazarus and the rich man. When the rich man is in Hell he begs Abraham to go and warn his family about Hell. But the rich man while he’s in the Hell has all his senses and all his memories while his soul is just rotting away and burning. Pretty scary.
Man that sounds like the flood, kinda. With the flood they'll take over your body and then slowly work at your brain. They'll use your body for whatever they need at the moment, like, if they need your arm to become a shield, all the bones needed will be moved there without any of your control. You feel all of it up until the flood literally steals your memories from you which can take hours.
@@EricLeafericson probably took away our optimism. Everyone used to look foward to the 21st century but that was pretty much what came through that door lol
Fun fact: They used a real life chemical outbreak to flesh out the movie . In missori, dioxin (a by product of 245 T aka Agent Orange) was being sprayed on dirt roads to keep the dust down . People and animals were starting to get sick and the CDC came in to investigate and even found barrels of dioxin buried throughout this area . As they were trying to remove the barrels a flood hit which led to the town being evacuated for good .
A little bit of clarification. 2,4,5-T by itself is not Agent Orange. It is mixed with a second herbicide (2,4-D, which is still in use today) to make Agent Orange. Also, "dioxin" is a class of chemical, and not the name of the specific contaminant of 2,4,5-T. The actual name of the chemical is 2,3,7,8-Tetrachlorodibenzodioxin. It was produced as an unintentional (and unknown at the time) byproduct of 2,4,5-T production, when the temperature of the reaction was not precisely controlled. The main problem at the time was, the existence of this contaminant was not known. The guy that sprayed the roads was given barrels of 2,4,5-T production byproduct by a corrupt chemical company that was supposed to dispose of it but wanted to do so cheaply. So they just told him it was "waste oil", and didn't tell him what it was. He mixed it with old used motor oil to spray the roads. The guy probably should've asked questions though, since it was pretty obvious the company that was paying him to dispose of it was not on the up and up.
@@evilbob840 I have to disagree. Mid to late 70's were better. The 80's saw more New Wave. Hell, early Green Day was more "punk" than most 80's offerings.
@@lexioncombine9403 You aren't wrong, punk was at its heyday from mid 70s to mid 80s. I'm more of a hardcore fan and a lot of that was 80s, but there was some really good stuff in the 70s.
Very interesting...especially where you were explaining the reason behind the hunger for brains. More specifically the misfiring neurological system and how it would be a painful "living hell." As someone who has Central Pain Syndrome, I can attest to that. I'm actually in the process of getting approved for a spinal cord stimulator. I can tell you, without exaggeration, it is an extremely painful condition. Your body quite literally becomes a torture chamber you can't escape. It's often referred to as the "suicide disease." How did it happen? 25 years of hockey and heavy lifting which caused a tear in my labrum. After it was repaired, my shoulder became frozen during the recovery which eventually led to my current condition. It spreads too. I now experience it in both shoulders, hands and ankles. You get episodes that seemingly have no real rhyme or reason and they can either feel like you're being electrocuted or having your limbs amputated or both. People who have this condition, often pray for death and unfortunately, there are those who actively seek it out. So anyways this is a testimony straight from the horse's mouth, to corroborate your information in this video...
Hey man, I really feel for you. I hope you are still alive, and kicking, and striving for life. I hope you can seek out help, and I pray you find trust in christ and God's plan for our lives.
I have R.S.D as well it’s the most painful thing ever I had a stimulator but it was causing a lot of problems and had it removed so be very careful they are not a cure all as some doctors try to make let out to be ketamine treatment and sympathetic blocks got the burning to stop
I wanted to go berserk on my workouts,but after reading this I think slow, steady and consistent will be a better choice. Hope you get the treatment you need, man.
I watched this with my dad and had a blast watching it. I love the part with the zombie coming out and saying "More brains" my dad used to be able to do the walk of that zombie.
This reminds me of the excellent practical effects they developed for The Thing remake, then they trashed it all and decided to use CGI which looked like crap! WHY!?? You all NEED to see what the animatronic Thing looked like before they decided (moronically!) not to use it. I'd seen it somewhere here on RU-vid a while back.
Regarding how the trioxin zombies "know" they want to eat brains: There is a very real phenomenon in human physiology where a person who is severely deficient in particular nutrients will begin to crave foods it knows are rich in them. This phenomenon is most readily seen in pregnant women as they get sudden, nearly irresistible cravings for bizarre combinations of food as their bodies are rapidly depleted of nutrients in those foods to build a new human on a cellular level. There are also (somewhat anecdotal) stories of people who are anemic craving foods that are high in iron like spinach, shellfish, liver and so on. It's possible that, since the trioxin zombies are still basically human with mostly functional human brains, they could instinctively crave eating brains using the same physiological process.
oh yeah, urge to lick crystals or chew thin metals. I imagine cave man would be happy if he found metal copper on the surface of the planet, rub it on a stone and lick it once a week, primitive vitamins and minerals supplementation. Salt blocks and horses too. I imagine the first doctors might be walking around with sacks of different minerals
when you sleep it pumps spinal fluid through your brain and this is how your brain "resets" neurotransmitters so your brain doesn't poison itself. I could imagine if you just reanimated a dead person's cells they would have lactic acid build up and traumatic neurotransmitter buildup. they're craving raw dopamine and serotonin
When you consider that Julie doesn’t know *consciously* what she wants at first that seems likely. I mean you know if you have a craving for, say, pickles…but since ‘human brains’ aren’t exactly something most people have tasted she likely wouldn’t realize that this is what she was craving. Then she’s around the bloodied shopkeeper and things like the smell of blood might appeal to her and she would realize “ah. This.”
@@dr.altoclef9255 it was lithium in Z nation but in here I think its the utter lack of ability to produce endorphins in their own brain. there's no other source of human endorphins because opiates etc require functional anatomy to convert
My neighbor was exposed to agent orange in Vietnam. He passed away from cancer in 2009. His children have also had to deal with the consequences with two of them getting cancer. So far one of them has died from it. The other is sick and has been fighting it for several years. All three of them have suffered immensely.
yeah similar story, with a football sized tumor from a helicopter sprayer (infantry), but successful recovery. I like this movie because it really hones in that just spraying poisons and stuff is probobly a bad idea. I was a troll about not using round up, and it looks like it might be right, even if it was a hunch based on ROTLD and some basic chemistry knowledge
@DoomGuy I mean, you’re both a doomguy, and one is always better than two right? Now you can kill demons twice as fast, and at that rate hell will be cleansed in 2 hours
@@definitelyaperson6334 the movies actually got government incompetence accurately Conspiracy theorists treat the government like some supernatural entity that is hiding their agenda with that said incompetence
The worst part of the exo-skeleton is that it SHOULD be a good idea. If the zombie goes rogue then a handler simply locks the suit remotely. Easy / mostly safe pick-up and storage.
I think in Day of the dead Romero has a scene in the beginning where the was a huge alligator in the city, and a little later it was getting eaten, but he took the scene out because he said people didn’t like that it was eaten that it put them in a really negative mood that stopped the enjoyment of the movie. I think he also said that it adds to the zombies mythology (specifically his) where the zombies aren’t even after any flesh but specifically human flesh adding to their mysticism.
What I like about these movies is the fact they have skeletons coming back even though they can’t really do anything vs a whole corpse. They have zombies in different states of decomposition and I find that interesting.
Dude imagine being dead and waking up in the ground but too badly degraded to dig yourself out.. like buried alive but you never die and you're in constant agony
You know the anime The Sorcerer's (or Magus's?) Bride? There's a character in there that has been alive for hundreds of years, likely millennia. Some time before the dark ages he's found by an aspiring alchemist who tries to help the person. The alchemist becomes frustrated because person has decomposed flesh that will neither heal nor fully die so they are always in pain and nothing he does will help. Fast forward to the present and it's stated that this condition is apparently the product of a powerful curse someone placed on him/her. It's said that he/she did something, cursed (insulted, as apposed to a true curse) or spit or something (I can't remember), on "the son of God" implying he/she was probably cursed by God. The whole series set the person to be the antagonist who was a real asshole, but knowing their backstory made their situation pretty sad as the person was shown to constantly be in this state between life and death, with a physical body to match their predicament, never being able to attain either, through thousands of years, doomed to live eternally in physical pain. Sucks, yo.
Only to get repeatedly stepped on by your fellow residents who had somehow managed to get a head start as they have already emerged from their plots before you finally make your way out of your plot and join them.
The Return of the Living Dead (1985) is still my all time favorite zombie flick. It was also the one that started my fandom for the genre. Explains the most and actually has some funny one liners. Scared me for months as a 10 year old but watched it several times secretive and alone anyways. 😂
I remember being scared of Return of the Living Dead as a kid and every time I look back on it I'm like yeah this shit actually is scary. Being undead hurts so bad if makes you eat brains. The zombies are practically impossible to deal with in any way that isn't nukes and/or immense amounts of plot armor. Tar-man is fucking wonderful though.
For a movie that was supposed to be a comedic parody of zombie movie tropes, it was legit scarier by accident than most of the "serious" zombie movies that were actually trying to be scary.
I find it scary that if you were brought back to life which is not natural you feel pain so unbearable that it makes you want to eat brains to relieve the pain and metaphor for drugs
I always thought that the zombie lady meant that she could feel herself being dead the whole time not just when she was undead and that freaked me the hell out
If it brings back the nervous system, but doesn't restore the pulse or other functions, what would happen if you replace the heart with an artificial one before you apply the trioxin? Would that be enough to fully revive a person? Think about it. All you need is a heart to ensure blood flow and maintain bodily functions. The trioxin does all the heavy lifting with the brain and nervous system.
This would be part of the Governmental funding for the military program, it would have the military component as some fancy hardass security as well as both scientific and corporate components. The military get cheap weapons and the corporates get to sell 'immortality' to the elite shareholders of Earth Inc.
I've seen all 5 of the Return of the Living Dead films and needless to say I was freaked out when I saw the first film as this was the first Zombie movies where they can't kill the Zombies by shooting them in the head or in the case of Frank and Freddy and Burt they tried to destroy a reanimated cadaver with a pick axe and that didn't work and they cremated the thing but that made things worse and Return of the Living Dead part 2 was pretty much a remake of the first one only with a few differences and with the last 3 it was where the Zombies were being brought back to be used as bioweapons.
@AutumnWind92 I notice a lot of zombie films and shows now a days don't really focus on the apocalypse as much as interpersonal drama between the characters. That's why I cant ever get into the walking dead because I want to see more zombie action and the feel of an oncoming threat and less about the sappy crappy bullshit I think the last thing you should worry about in a zombie apocalypse is beef with another character when living corpses are ripping other people to shreds. I would care more about survival and trying to stay alive and that's the least important thing to be worrying about.
Tbh the most terrifying infected are either the DeadSpace Necromorphs or the I am Legends Nosferatu as *both* have no anatomical restrictions about *gotta go fast(!)*
Damn - we regard these movies as the most campy of zombie movies - not 'horror', hardly even 'comedic horror', but mostly 'comedy/camp' with a horror influence. But after viewing this video and really thinking about it - this is truly the most horrific imagining of undead mainstream fiction has presented. Every other zombie is 'oh, no, even though your body is animate your completely dead - nothing of the original person remains' or 'oh, no - it's a disease and even though you are technically alive, the original person is completely gone'. Here, though...the original person still exists. The 'infected' is still the same person they were who they were when they were alive. They may or may not still hold the same level of problem solving abilities and intellect...but things like 'identity', 'consciousness', 'love', 'terror' and 'agony' remain. The people who are infected endure a level of horror and suffering unimaginable, and that agony is so great it would drive them to literally bite through the skull of their most valued loved ones for an instant of relief. They understand what they're doing. They understand who they're doing it to. But their suffering is so far beyond mortal experience and orders of magnitude beyond the worst level of suffering a living person can ever experience, that they will do whatever they can to whomever they can to dull the agony for just a few seconds. They're still themselves. They still love you. They're horrified at what they're doing. They're constantly screaming to the point of bursting the blood vessels in their own eyes and rupturing the alveloi in their own lungs in pure horror of not only what they're experiencing internally, but in terror of their own actions. But the level of pain and fear they're experiencing is so intense, they attack them anyway. They rip them apart as their victim feebly tries to fight them off - calling them by name, begging them. The infected attacking the victim and the victim being attacked by the infected are equally horrified and scared. The infected will feel their own teeth crack and break as the skull of their co-worker or husband or daughter finally yields. Their victim begins to twitch. One more bite yields a gush of warm cerebral fluid into their rotting mouths. The victim jerks one final time, then goes limp. And the zombie, hunched over their now mercifully dead, or at least dying, victim, will continue to scream and cry as they bite into their loved one again and again, until their mouth is choked with salty, greasy matter that used to make up a loved one's brain; dead, flickering eyes of the 'zombie' staring into the dead, dilating and still eyes of their neighbor, favorite waitress, wife, child, as it gores itself on its kill. Spouses, family, children. They recognize and love them. But they can't tolerate the pain. Truly, one who is torn apart over a matter of hours in the most painful way possible by the infected experienced the greatest of mercies when compared to those who would later turn due to a painless breath that unknowingly and painlessly contained a trace amount of 2, 4, 5 Trioxin. It is not the protagonists - the living, who are the narrative subject of horror here. It is the zombies. They are the victims - it is they whose suffering should elicit horror. Absolutely awesome classical horror. Thank you for this video - gave a whole new outlook on these 'campy' classics. I never ever thought about this stuff, but you totally changed my impression of this universe. The story that plays out here - that is, in my opinion, THAT is horror...an inanimate, unstoppable enemy cannot compare to something like what plays out here.. Where both the 'monster' and the 'victims' are beset by such otherworldly terror and individually fighting for instants of reprieve - where the terror and suffering of the victim is only exceeded by that of the monster - THAT is TRUE horror.
What I wouldn't give for a replica of the Tarman costume from the first movie. It still somewhat genuinely terrifies me a bit but at the same time he's such a cool zombie
Despite me never watching Night Of The Living Dead, from what I saw of him, Tar Man has always been the creepiest zombie to me, just the way he looks, the fact his head is basically just a skull with wet, reddish orange, rotting skin sagging off him with eyes, his black, skeletal, rotted body, and the way he moves. Creepy.
Oh, the zombies in Night of the Living Dead are nowhere near as good...unless you mean the first remake. They had a good special effect budget, which the original lacked. As to the Tar Man, the movement is what sells it. I've seen the guy who played the Tar Man do the walk, so that isn't just some special effect. It looks like the spine is struggling to hold up the upper torso seeing as how most...not all...but most of the meat is gone.
He’s what makes me afraid to go into a basement late at night! Ever since I saw the movie years ago I always get a little tense at night as if a tar man will just creep through the shadows saying “brains…” I know I’m still a child lol
I was an English teacher in Cu Chi Vietnam about 6 years ago. That area had heavy amounts of agent orange dropped on it. It’s sad to see the effects it had on so many people. Most Americans have absolutely no clue how much we messed up the lives of innocent people in Vietnam.
Americans know. It was war! Stop being so one sided. You think it would have been any better if they had the means to reach the u.s.? If they had access to chemical weapons you honestly believe that the Vietnamese wouldn't use them? Don't be so Naieve
@@jasoncervantes9583 I don't agree. It was meant to defoliate the jungles, not to permanently genetically damage EVERY person in that area and all their descendants until the human race goes extinct! I would like to think that if we'd known it would do that we would have found another way. War doesn't justify just doing whatever, if it did we'd all be dead by now considering all the horrible weapons we have to use against each other now.
my dad turned this on when I was I want to say about 8 years old, and that first tar man scarred me for life lol. In fact a lot of the first movie scarred me, burning the dead that release toxins, un-killable zombies, zombies that could think on a near human/equal level to us, definitely would not like to tango with this undead horde.
I'm just like you friend. I also saw the film at a similar age.the tar man scared the shit outta me too. Trying to survive this scenario is beyond frightening.
The answer is to trap all the effected bodies in something they can't escape, preferably in something to trap the gas when you eventually burn them, find something to break down the gas, and toss that in.
As silly as these movies are. There's a scene in #3 that has given me a basic tenant in life to believe in. Before all shit goes to the wall Riverman gives Curt a Mardi Gras coin and says: "if you meet someone, do them some good, then tell them to pass it on, that way, there's always one good deed left in the world." Might be slightly paraphrasing. Been a long time since I've seen it. Still it's stuck with me for years.
Pay it forward. Thats the only way to live, because at the end of the day, everyone that knows me cant say I didnt keep it a buck and look out for them. 🍻
This is one of the few zombie movies that genuinely had me on the edge of my seat like "oh shit. How are the characters going to get out of this situation?"
Personally I love longer videos from you man. Gives more time to get real nitty gritty with the science plus just like hearing you nerd out and crack jokes
@@AC-hj9tv Zombies were breaking into his house and he was concerned about the condition of his car. He spots his dead neighbor and waves. He casually tells someone that her boyfriend is dead but still moving, seemingly unaware that it means they could try to eat his brain at any time. His grasp on the situation was fairly loose.
I’m 45 years old and I still watch ROTLD at least a couple of times a year, usually around Halloween. I saw it for the first time when I was about 10 and it was an instant hit for me. I think I sort of recognized the fact that it was kind of a comedy, but I was still creeped out by the headless naked dude running around the warehouse, and completely terrified of the tarman. The special effects used to create that guy are perfect. I can practically smell his rotting corpse through the tv lol. I was just watching this movie a couple of weeks ago and as I often do anytime I watch a movie or tv show I’ve not seen in a while, I will Wikipedia the movie and all of the main actors just to see what’s going on with them. I specifically wanted to look up info on Clu Gulager because I’ve never been familiar with anything else he’s been in, but he’s so damn good in this film. But when I pulled up his Wiki, realized that he had died THE DAY BEFORE! Talk about a coincidence.
Here’s hoping you still watch ROTLD a few times a year… but now, as a 46 year old! What with Halloween being right around the corner, IT’S PARTY TIME!!! :)
The based on true events part at the beginning was specifically put in there for kids like me so naive and gullible to fall for it. It definitely put the fear in me as a child lol
Actually not really. In some town in Missouri I believe a guy had literal barrels of agent orange. He didn't know what it was and used it to help pave the town with, which resulted in the town being evacuated and still is today I believe.
Oh Zombie , if you eat too many brains, you won’t want your dinner. How will you ever grow to be a proper zombie with such a diet? Don’t break your moma‘s heart.
Fun Fact: The flare dance left the male cast members holding the flares with horrible burns on their palms because the flares they have weren't the kind you're supposed to hold, they were road flares, the kind you light then put down because they get really hot really fast. The guy who played Scuz (who may or may not have done some weird stuff to a kid from a Nickelodeon show, it's hard to find out if it's him or not) said the entire time they were doing that shot his palms were essentially melting.
yeah, this movie just destroys all my carefully crafted zombie clasiffication system, from black magic zombies resurrected by necromancers, to frankenstein zombies awaken my mad science, to the RELATIVELY living infected like those on world war z or L4D2. like yeah they are undead, but they been reanimated, but by a virus so they are undead infected?!? and cant be frankenstein zombies either, as one they need to be reanimated by lightning bolt and being saw back together. ghouls are more undead brought back by necromancy, so out of the question. and infected are more the type who still have metabolism there for the body is still alive not undead.
It's not a virus, it's a defoliation chemical that was developed by the Darrow Chemical Company for the United States military as an herbicide to destroy cannabis plants. The gas also somehow manages to restore function to the nervous systems of cadavers, dismembered body parts, and dead animals/insects. Moreover, a single exposure to a concentrated amount can both kill a person and revive them again. This will ultimately lead to the use of 245T being used in an attempt to create unkillable super soldiers later on in the series by Hybra Tech. 245 Trioxin is fairly stable, and can withstand temperatures in the thousands of degrees as attempts to cremate trioxin contaminated corpses release trioxin gas into the air where it may contaminate rainclouds. The resulting rainfall is irritating to the skin which often leads victims to assume that it is acid rain when in fact the diluted Trioxin is causing their nerve ends to fire rapidly. This "Trioxin shower" is no longer concentrated enough to kill a human but still potent enough to reanimate dead tissue. The concept of 245 Trioxin is based on Agent Orange, a real life defoliant used during the Vietnam War. One of the two chemicals used to produce Agent Orange is called 245-Trichlorophenoxyacetic acid. Agent Orange also contained chemicals known as dioxins. 245 Trioxin has also been compared to the chemical trioxane, which is used by morticians to repair cells and maintain a corpse's contours after postmortem tissue constriction.
Two particularly amusing/terrifying things regarding Part 2. First, the zombies actually know how to steal a jeep and drive it around. Second, they have enough sense to use hand tools, including a pick axe, to try and break into the back of the truck.
an interesting idea: if the undead are able to properly think, do you think if you were to give them Dopamine Tablets would they be able to be reintagrated into scociaty? as long as they never miss a dose, the pain should dull giving them some relife
No. At some point no medication will be able to release pain. We see this with cancer. If it's getting to a certain point nothing can really ease the pain.
@@cegesh1459 while in reality, yes, i aggree, but we see that a single bite is enough to sooth a severely rotten individual (The Torso) for several hours, i do not think this disease runs on real world logic
I always dug the look of the first Return movie. In particular whoever picked the wardrobe must have seriously been into the punk movement, all the kids fit the aesthetic but in various different ways.
Because Tina was the straight laced one of the group she was dating Freddy so she was friends by association with the group and probably knew them from school she clearly like the bad boy so makes sense to me
Nah, that was kind of creepy. That zombie tried to sound professional with the whole, "Come in, dispatch..." The funny one was the other zombie with, "Send moar cops..."
These zombies never fail to put a strong, lasting fear in me everytime I see them. It's like a nuke that eats you alive, you can't stop it in any way, your only chance is outrunning it if you're lucky
So I think an interesting concept that Roanoke brought up was that the brain acts as a way to dull the pain in the same way a spinal implant would. So I think what could be done within this universe would be to just install a spinal implant to allow the infected to not feel the horrible pain that drives them to feed. I believe that then it might allow them to override this urge and lead to them maybe even being immortal
Would only work temporarily. They would require constant amounts of it over time, which would eventually fry their muscles. They would also not be immortal, considering they require muscles to continue moving. Depending on external circumstances, a body not being preserved will completely decay somewhere between 5 and 50 years.
Saw this pop up and immediately clicked, the Return of the Living Dead franchise is one of my favorite zombie franchises of all time so I just had to watch this. Just so you know, the last two films Necropolis and Rave to the Grave are not terrible additions though not great. The way the infected functions in those films are more typical of Romero Zombies minus the desire to eat brains. They can be put down with the traditional headshot, though why now despite the same chemical is being used is up in the air. Now I was always fascinated with why brains and thought it was the Endorphins being possibly absorbed into the cadavers as they were being ingested. Seeing as Endorphins are the body's natural "painkillers" and the zombies in the first film were created as a metaphor for drug addicts. Note that the first film created by Dan O'Bannon was made as a dark horror comedy that was meant to be a "what if" sequel to Night of the Living Dead while George A. Romero was still making his direct sequel Dawn of the Dead, also as a side note the use of "Living Dead" was copywritten and O'Bannon won the rights to use it and Romero was forced to use something else, hence his films post Night of the Living Dead using "the Dead". Edit: Thanks to a reply(no sarcasm), I had to re-read my comment, I know that Romero Zombies don't eat brains. I meant to say aside from them eating brains, they function more like traditional zombies in that they can be put down by more traditional means. My bad.
@@the_rose_garden01 yeah this first time I watched it it was a thrill ride. Up until the zombie started talking about how they are all in pain. That was freaky.
Weren't Necropolis and Rave to the Grave Syfy channel movies? Like OP, I think they were the worst two of the five, but still worth seeing. By the way, Romero zombies don't eat brains, that idea came from this series, and has continued on in the lore, often mistakenly being attributed to Romero.
My mom was pro horror movies from day one. So when I was 5 I watched this movie with my sister and my mom. Still scared of this movie almost 30 years later.....
You know, if the feral behavior of a living person infected with Trioxin is caused by onset brain death and the subsequent brain damage due to a lack of oxygen, couldn't that be mitigated or outright solved through re-starting their heart, or using a prosthetic replacement? To resume their blood-flow.
The first movie is honestly the best and most rewatchable, however the 3rd one has a very special place in my heart for being the first in the series that I watched. Spooked the shit out of me as a kid, but I absolutely adored the monster effects and gore and couldn't look away
what are you even talking about? Thriller Night? what does that mean? Is it a code word, is it a description of something? Im guessing that its probably some kind of pop culture reference? an obscure one apparently.
I think electricuting the 245 Trioxin zombies kind of makes sense. At high enough voltages, electricity can break chemical bonds, high voltages could break down the 245 Trioxin molecule thus killing the zombie.
I always thought of this movie as an allegory to drugs. How people become addicted and ravenous in need of it constantly,how it alters you and how it can make you dependent on it. Example being the female zombie saying “it makes the pain go away.” Our at least that’s my personal thought on it.🤣
That...actually makes a lot of sense. Hmm...still, I don't think the allegory was done very well. I mean, the whole point of the Trioxin was to destroy weed fields. It was literally a weapon in the war against drugs.
Yeah, that's what I always got out of it. Especially with the graffiti around the cemetery. I can't remember it exactly, but I remember it saying something along the lines of "We're already dead," which fits together nicely with "We need it to stop the paaaaiiin! The pain of being... dead." These kids feel like they have no future, and look for something to make them feel alive again, if only for a moment.
just to point out a couple things, in the 2nd movie the town wasn't really overrun they managed to evacuate the (at least) majority of civilians In the 3rd the reason the son stays behind is because he was already infected in the escape
To me, ROTLD's first three movies had the best special effects and makeup than any other zombie movies. I wish more great movies with their quality of f/x would be made, though there are some great ones coming out of foreign countries lately.
Great movie (in my top 10). I love the way the zombies are portrayed, not slow and dumb like the original or running around rage monsters like worldwar Z. Also adding in some intelligents changes the dynamic of zombies and adds a new layer in fright. They can lay traps, solve problems, to me that's hella more scary then parkour running zombies.
@@TimeForDunston To say nothing of a worse fate. Can you imagine suddenly waking up and just...EVERYTHING hurts? Every single part of you is screaming in agony and for some reason you know there is ONLY one thing that can make it stop. And it's worse for the buried ones. Coffins are not easy to break. So they undoubtedly damage themselves more getting out.
@@theshermantanker7043 well they can't die. The only way to end them permanently is to set themselves on fire. Which not even a sane human being would want to die.
The one thing that always irritated me when watching older zombie movies is the zombies coming out of their graves, because they're usually six feet or more under the ground inside of a casket which has a metal cover over top of the casket,
@@lolstalgic9602 id say whatever is left, is amplified enough for them to dig out, but a lot would be so rotted theyd just be stuck in their coffin in the ground Deathless and trapped forever in the dark
The ending of the first movie surprised the hell out of me because the military reacting to the situation is something that could actually happen and that’s scarier than fiction
What you just described from the biting effects of 245 Trioxin entering the bodies of living victims is like what happens in the original George Romero films where people who are attacked by the living Dead become Zombies themselves after being bitten and it all depends where the victim is bitten.
You will still turn into a zombie regardless where you are bit if you don't take care of the wound. In Day of the Dead Miguel was bit on the arm and they amputated it and cauterized it. So essentially they stopped the infection from spreading and prevented him from becoming a zombie. If they didn't amputate it, then he for sure would have turned into a zombie.
John Russo and George Romero cowrote night of the living dead. While Romero continued the night of the living dead series, Russo went on to create the return of the living dead series. They basically both had rights to the first movie, but different ideas on where to take it.
@@Marcus_PostmaEveryone had rights to the first movie. They failed to file a proper copyright back then. Anyone who wanted to use the movie could and Romero and Russo wouldn't see a cent. Fortunately the film was good enough to get a sequel so Romero could get properly paid for his efforts.
Weird thing about Part 2 is that when zombies chomp down on some of the characters' brains they have this look of surprise that it doesn't hurt or even pleasure. Why was this a thing?
The brain, as I understand it, doesn't actually have pain receptors. You'd expect it to, because of things like headaches. Imagine thinking getting your brain chomped would hurt, but aside from the whole skull splitting thing, it doesn't. Could also be a thing of the Trioxin in a zombie's saliva interacting with the brain and causing a euphoric sensation so the person doesn't fight or try to escape.
I always assumed that was due to the massive brain trauma that the zombie was causing - essentially, as the zombie chews through the brain tissue, its teeth are severing the connections between the different parts of the brain as it utterly destroys other parts. In essence, as A Closer Look pointed out, yes, the zombie is lobotomizing the victim. Hypothetically, the sudden shift of emotions in the victim would most likely be due to the part of the brain that generates emotional responses being ripped out and eaten. Another hypothesis for why some victims look more euphoric could be that the section of their brain that regulates pain could have been eaten before their emotional center, making it seem like all of their pain was suddenly removed, which it technically was.
The simple answer is it's a comedy horror. Dan O'Bannon specifically made it more comedy-driven as to not step on anyone's toes (George A. Romero). If you look back, none of the death scenes are classic "gut munch" scenes. It was a way to subvert the horror element while still conveying the message the movie was trying to provide.
