By the winter of 1988, zombie movies were dead…for lack of a better word. Horror movies in general were in rare supply by then. Parental groups and an almost universal distaste for the genre by the most famous and professional critics meant most of the horror flicks were the bottom of the barrel, about a small rung up on the ladder behind porno movies.
Horror movies directed by experienced filmmakers starring A-list actors tiptoed around the word “horror” and called themselves “psychological thrillers.” It had been over two years since George A. Romero made Day of the Dead and he was moving away. There’s only so much you can do with zombies which is why filmmaker Dan O’Bannon turned it on its side a good two decades before meta was a thing. Now the zombies couldn’t be stopped with a gunshot to the head. They run and run fast. (28 Days Later didn’t create it.) The zombies also talked and they were jonesing for brains.
Return became a modest hit with some major critics praising it over Romero’s movie. So, a sequel was inevitable. Unfortunately, O’Bannon didn’t return. And since most of the characters were killed at the end of Return, this acts mostly as a standalone sequel. However, the Trioxin 2-4-5 has returned and another cannister has been lost in a transport during a rain storm where it comes to rest in a storm drain. There’s some speculation that two of the main characters Lucy Wilson (Marsha Dietlein) and her younger brother, Jesse (Michael Kenworthy), are the children of Burt Wilson (Clu Gulager). Jesse is trying to get into the good graces of a local bully Billy (Thor Van Lingen) when they find the cannister with a corpse inside. Billy and his friend lock Jesse into a masoleum at the nearby cemetery and return to look over the cannister more accidentally setting it open. The gas pours out as Billy and his friend run for home.
At the same time, middle-aged Ed (James Karen) and younger Joey (Thom Mathews) have arrived at the same cemetery to steal jewelry from the bodies as the Trioxin gas seeps through the cemetery and the bodies are re-animated. Jesse manages to leave the mausoleum once Ed and Joey arrive but the two graverobbers also find themselves infected with the gas. Karen and Mathews had played different characters in the first movie and Mathews later said they were asked to come back because of the first movies’ population overseas in country likes Japan.
However, Mathews said he didn’t care much for the production. Mostly, it was because the filmmaker Ken Wiederhorn was tapped by producer Tom Fox to helm the movie. Yet, Wiederhorn wasn’t too big of a fan of horror movies and let his feelings known among the cast and crew. Mathews later commented that the production had a great catering service and that was about it.
I think it’s because Wiederhorn’s arms were tied. The zombies here lack the terror and goriness than in the previous movie. I heard there were trying so hard to get the movie released with a PG-13 rating. It feels very saccharine at times. At least twice when a zombie eats a brain, we don’t see any special effects. The first movie had an absurd feel they threw it all on the wall to see what sticks.
Some gags do work such as the young cable TV tech Tom Essex (Dana Ashbrook) wrestling with a zombie on the floor and they land on the TV remote and an aerobics show comes on. Suddenly, all the zombies seem to be more interested. And Joey tells his girlfriend, Brenda (Suzanne Snyder), that he has a feeling this has happened before. There’s also a foolish scene of a zombie wearing Michael Jackson red leather jacket from Thriller.
Wiederhorn leans more into the comedy and it doesn’t really work. His previous movie Meatballs II was never really intended to be part of that franchise before it was retitled and recut down from an R rating to a PG. There’s only so much you can do with the format. That’s probably why Brian Yuzna toned down the comedy and decided to make the third movie more of a Romeo and Juliet love story. And the craziest thing is that it works.
Needless to say, Return Part II didn’t get a lot of positive reviews and barely broke even at the box officer with just over $9 million against a $6 million budget. One of the most interesting things of the movie is you can see Mitch Pileggi in a roll as an Army sergeant years before he would hit it big on the show The X-Files.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 