Return of the Living Dead Part II (1988)

Directed by Ken Wiederhorn

Movie Review by Al Fleshrot

Summary
Trioxin gas is back! Jesse and his two friends find one of the infamous military canisters in a large culvert. The two friends return later and open it up, releasing the gas and the zombie inside. Naturally their happens to be cemetery nearby and soon the dead are rising again. Frank and Freddy (the over dramatic duo from the first movie) return, this time as Ed and Joey. They are moonlighting as grave robbers when the gas strikes, and once again slowly turn into zombies during the movie. When the zombies overrun the community and mass hysteria takes hold, only Jesse keeps his cool. They narrowly escape several zombie encounters, and by chance they witness a zombie getting electrocuted. The cable guy who's been tagging along with Jesse and his sister gets a clue and devises the master plan. They load up a truck with cow brains and like Peter the Pied Piper lead the entire zombie horde to the local electric plant. After a few hiccups in their plan, they finally get the juice going and electrocute all the zombies.

Review
It's essentially the same formula as its predecessor, but that's not necessarily a bad deal. The movie is more comedy than horror - in fact there's not a single scary moment! But it throws in plenty of zombies getting their fill of fresh meat. It's impossible not to compare this movie to The Return of the Living Dead, and unfortunately the sequel doesn't quite measure up to the original.

Best Zombie Kill
When Ed and Joey start freaking out, they steal the cable guy's van and start speeding away. But they soon hit a lady head on and crash the van. A neighbor sees the commotion outside and runs to help the poor lady. Too bad for him, she was already dead before the accident! As he bends down to check on her, she grabs him tight and takes a big bite out of his head. It doesn't take long before several zombies join the fray and dine on the poor guy's corpse.

Best Zombie Death
Jesse gets cornered by a zombie in the hospital, but manages to get a shot off with his grandpa's pistol and blows a big chunk out of the monster's face. But the zombie keeps coming and Jesse is in big trouble. His sister shows up just in time and blows the zombie in half with two shotgun blasts. Everybody watches in amazement as the lower half of the zombie walks off, even the poor zombie's other half! Once the distraction passes, the zombie torso uses its hands to come at Jesse again. The cable guy takes a couple of shots at the zombie and then rips off one of its arms. Finally Jesse opens a valve which sprays the zombie with what I believe is nitrogen gas because it melts all the skin away. The zombie finally seems to run out of gas as it grunts and falls flat on its face!

Memorable Scene
When Ed and Joey flee the zombie infested cemetery, they bring their loot bag with them. Inside happens to be the severed head of the corpse they were defiling! They end up in Jesse's house and finally realize that the bag is moving. Ed pulls out the head and pulls his funny cry and moan shtick act. The head chomps down on his finger and won't let go until he violently shakes it off. The cable guy stabs the head with a screwdriver, and the head says, "Get that damn screwdriver out of my head"! They finally dispose of the head by tossing it in a closet.

Al Fleshrot wants your brains

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