I see a lot of movies every year. A
ton. But this year I’ve decided I don’t see enough movies, so one of my
New Year Resolutions was to simply see more. And to write about them.
See, that’s the other half of the equation: I see a ton of movies, but
I write about comparatively few of them. There are a lot of reasons,
but they mainly boil down to the fact that I feel the  need to do long
form reviews, and sometimes – like in the midst of Sundance – I just
don’t have the time.

And
so was born this new blog! I aim to make an entry for every single
movie I see in 2010. Some entries may be very short, some may be
lengthy. Entries may take a couple of days to be posted. Let’s see how
long this lasts.

One
last  thing: one of my main objectives this year is to rewatch more
movies. I know this sounds like a strange goal, but there are films I
haven’t seen since high school, which means it’s been almost a lifetime
since I saw them. Recently I rewatched Black Christmas for the first
time since the 1980s, and I might as well have been seeing the movie
for the first time. I’m interested in getting a look at some movies I
loved or hated twenty or even ten years ago and seeing how I feel about
them now.

Let’s begin…

#44 Return of the Living Dead
1984
d. Dan O’Bannon

We had sat down to watch The Incredible Hulk (which had been a topic of nerdy discussion at a friend’s party the night before), but my DVD of that seems to have evaporated or ended up in storage. Earlier in the week I had missed the Dan O’Bannon Tribute Night at the New Bev, and the missus had never seen Return of the Living Dead, so that’s what ended up in the player instead.

The movie holds up endlessly. Funny and fun, and with the secret weapon of James Karen – his death scene still fucks me up – the film is just a blast, even through some of the slower moments in the first half hour. There are a couple of scenes that are weirdly airless – Clu Gulager talking to Don Calfa, for instance – but O’Bannon keeps most of the movie moving with an arch sensibility and not as much gore as I recalled.

What Return of the Living Dead does still have, though, are two all-time classic zombies. The Tar Man is just amazing, and if there were one movie prop I could have, I might opt for the half-lady zombie they interrogate. I love how her spine wags like a tail.

Thom Mathews may not have had the best career possible, but between this and Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives, he’s earned some not inconsiderable immortality.