Metacritic reviews

Essential, enormous fun.

The most commendable aspect of the The Return of the Living Dead is its ability to combine horror and comedy rather than allowing the different elements to become intermittent and the tone inconsistent.

Return is a movie with some nice, droll opening scenes and the obligatory horrible climax. It doesn't make the mistake of Day Of The Dead - talking too much. It's kind of a sensation-machine, made out of the usual ingredients, and the real question is whether it's done with style. It is.

Suffice to say, this small offering from the horror genre is a hoot to watch, with never a dull moment.

Any film which features a dead, bald and very hungry punk lurching towards the camera screaming 'More Brains!' gets my vote.

The whole point is excess, and O'Bannon's good at getting to that point. But the film is so clearly meant for giggles that it packs nowhere near the emotional punch of one of Romero's, which are truly dreadful. [19 Aug 1985, p.D5]

One problem is that the action in the film is restricted to a few basic locations; the medical supply house, a nearby cemetery and an adjoining mortuary. Romero made highly productive use of confinement. O'Bannon does not, but he does earn points with inventive gall, and there are enough lunatic thrills along the way to leave one with the giddy sensation of having been alternately scared silly and tickled even sillier. [19 Aug 1985, p.D1]

Director Dan O’Bannon deserves considerable credit for creating a terrifically funny first half-hour of exposition, something in which he is greatly aided by the goofball performance of James Karen as a medical supply know-it-all.

Though certainly not for the squeamish, the film is by no means the ultimate horror movie it aspires to be. The volume of stagy gore quickly reaches a point of diminishing returns. And rather than trying to sustain a mood of grim suspense, the writer-director Dan O'Bannon has conceived this cinematic cousin of Night of the Living Dead as a mordant punk comedy.

The whole thing is played for laughs, with a pseudohip sense of humor satirizing everything from suburban punks to the military, while delivering a few legitimate chills.