The Return of the Living Dead (1985) on Netflix
Frank Johnson accidentally releases a toxic gas while showing new employee Freddy Hanscom drums in a Louisville warehouse. The dead rise in the cemetery where Freddy's girlfriend Tina waits.
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Trailer
Plot summary
At the Uneeda Medical Supply Warehouse in Louisville, Frank Johnson shows new employee Freddy Hanscom the military drums of Trioxin that ended up in the basement years earlier through a delivery error. A knock against a drum releases the gas, and the cadavers stored in the building come back to life. Boss Burt Wilson joins them, and the three find that a reanimated body cannot be stopped even when it is cut apart. Mortician Ernie Kaltenbrunner burns the remains at his crematorium. Across the street, Freddy's girlfriend Tina waits in the cemetery with Spider, Trash, Chuck, Casey, Scuz and Suicide. Smoke from the cremation carries the chemical skyward, and a thunderstorm brings it back to earth as rain.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Return of the Living Dead (1985)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Return of the Living Dead is credited with introducing the now-standard idea that zombies crave human brains specifically, rather than any flesh, to the zombie genre.
- The film's fictional military chemical "2-4-5 Trioxin," made by the "Darrow Chemical Company," spoofs the real Dow Chemical Company and its Vietnam-era defoliant Agent Orange, known scientifically as 2,4,5-T Dioxin and used in Operation Ranch Hand and at Canada's CFB Gagetown.
- Director Tobe Hooper dropped out of Return of the Living Dead to make Lifeforce instead, so producers brought in Lifeforce co-writer Dan O'Bannon, who took the director's chair on the condition he could rewrite the script to differ sharply from George Romero's zombie films.
- After Night of the Living Dead, co-writers John Russo and George Romero split the rights: Russo kept the "Living Dead" name for spin-offs like this film, while Romero was free to make his own sequels, starting with Dawn of the Dead.
