RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD is one of my all-time favorites because it is a fun, outrageous, almost slapstick horror comedy and yet it is also one of the bleakest movies ever made. Its anarchistic tone is flawless. And it is the combination of those two things, the comedy and the bleakness, that is absolute perfection to me.
The plot revolves around two guys (an old man and a punk teen), their boss, the punk's friends, and the local mortician, all of whom have to fight off all the resurrected corpses from the nearby cemetery after accidentally unleashing chemical zombie gas. Here's what makes these zombies stand out, though: they're smart, they're fast, and they're basically indestructible. They're dead and pretty much can't be killed again.
What's happening to them is horrifying, though. As they explain it, they feel their bodies rotting every moment, they feel it all, and the only thing that pauses the pain is human brains. Also, yes, this is where zombies eating brains comes from, that's its stamp on pop culture. The thing I love so much about it is how much it embraces that anarchistic spirit, it's the ultimate punk horror movie because it's so anti-authoritarian, the whole thing is caused by a government screwup and their "solution" to the situation is as bad as the zombies themselves.
The spirit of RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD is that everything is doomed, nothing is fine, we're all going down in a fiery blaze, we're gonna be eaten alive and we might as well laugh our ass off and enjoy the ride. And I *love* that tone. It's loud, it's rude, it's funny, it's trashy, it's campy, and the effects are gnarly. What a ride.