Marva
It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,
Raymond Sierra
The film may be flawed, but its message is not.
Jerrie
It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...
matrixxservice-96306
Well i was a fan of the first one at a very young age my teenage siblings would rent it on vhs and i was allowed to see it so long as i "turned my head" for the T and A parts.. but eating human brains oh thats fine for the little guy he'll love it.. but part 2 is even more special to me but in a melancholy way.. it came out in theaters unlike parts 3 and 4 and i recall my mom picking myself and my lil brother up after elementary school to see a flick at the mall. i picked this and at the tender age of 8 or 9 it did scare me somewhat but more than that.. it became a special memory to me and only because.. it was that late afternoon that year.. they just never did come up with anything else like this for me to see.. very derivative of the original but only as a sort of sideshow act.. i can only describe it at best..melancholy fun.. if you arent the type that loves a bad funeral dont watch it.
Michael_Elliott
Return of the Living Dead Part II (1988)** (out of 4) Jesse Wilson (Michael Kenworthy) and a couple friends stumble across a container, which contains the infamous gas that causes the dead to return to life. Later that night the friends accidentally release the gas and the zombies come looking for brains.RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD PART II was the first horror film I ever watched on the big screen back when I was eight years old. At the time I remember liking the film because I could relate to the Jesse character and it was fun pretending that I was him battling all these zombies. With that said, even at that time I knew this sequel was a major step back from the original film and as I've gotten older I've enjoyed this film less and less.The film tries really hard to capture the mood and spirit of the original and that includes paying homage to several of the characters in the original include Tar Man, Jr. showing up here. We've also got James Karen and Thom Matthews returning but this time playing grave robbers who wind up battling zombies again. The two actors have that chemistry that they did in the first picture but it just isn't as fresh or original here. Even the zombies here are pretty bland as there just aren't too many memorable ones.The film remains slightly entertaining because you do like the characters and there are a couple funny moments scattered throughout the picture. There's a lot more humor here than in the first movie but the problem is that a lot of it doesn't work. Another problem is that there isn't nearly enough zombie action and even the gore level is pretty low. I've always thought this here played like a cleaned up version of the original and it just doesn't have that dark tone that it needed.RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD PART II has some minor entertainment scattered throughout but certainly not enough to keep it moving at a good pace.
The_Film_Cricket
I have a modest affection for a movie like this. The script is as dumb as a box of rocks but the movie sets out to be a stupid horror comedy and successfully stays the course. The title identifies it as a sequel to 'The Return of the Living Dead', one of my all-time favorite guilty pleasures. This movie doesn't rise to be it's equal but I give it points for trying.The story is pretty much in the title but I'll go into it as much as I can. In a small community a couple of kids start playing with a large metal drum that fell off of a military truck next to the town cemetery. Out of the drum pours a strange gas, which seeps into the ground and soon living dead rise and go looking for human brains. You can pretty well guess the rest.The characters are pretty cartoonish. We meet: the kid who woke the dead, his sister, a cable installer and my favorite, a fun-loving graverobber (played by the always dependable James Karen), his reluctant assistant, and a jovial doctor. Karen breaks open crypts at the mausoleum and steals their jewelry having fun the whole way.The movie seems less inspired by George Romero's 'Night of the Living Dead' and more by Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' video (to which there is a nod). The living dead are all rotting decay and dripping flesh stumbling around like drunks at a frat party (I loved the scene where twenty of them pile into a convertible and zoom around town looking for brains.Look, this is not great cinema. I love serious films; in fact I thrive on them. But once in a while I like a little junk food cinema. This is one of those horror films that doesn't take itself seriously and doesn't really even try to be a good movie. ROTLDP2 is a good time killer and never pretends to be anything else.
SombeeKillah
"I feel like we've been here before. You... Me... Them!" That's what Thom Mathews "Joey" says and that how I felt about this film. Thom Mathews and 'James Karen nearly duplicate their roles from Return of the Living Dead as a pair who are sickened by zombie gas. In both films they have the exchange, "Listen kid, if you like this job..." "Like this job? Like this job!" They only changes were their names, they were Freddy & Frank, now their Ed & Joey. Only this time they are not funny at all. James Karen even becomes a full fledged zombie who attacks a soldier and eats brains! But he was not convincing for me or scary at all. Thom has another girlfriend, Suzanne Synder (Brenda), in this one who is basically playing the same helpless role Beverly Randolph (Tina)played in the first one. The "so-called hero" in this one is played by a young Dana Ashbrook in the role of "Tom".In one of the most disturbing scenes for me is where the zombies are attacking a pet store and killing all the helpless animals, "Tom" gets mad and hits a zombie with the ambulance he is driving with and figures out the only way to kill these bastards is by electrocution.Which leads to the "grand finale". It is said that The blue electrocution lines in the final sequence were all hand-drawn frame by frame and cost over $50,000.Near the very end of this electrocution scene, a Michael Jackson impersonator zombie can be seen - a direct reference to his Thriller music video. This zombie is played by actor Brian Peck, the only person to have had a role in the first 3 movies in the 'Return of the Living Dead' franchise. Playing the role of 'Scuz' in the first, many of the closeup zombies in the second ('Pussface', ''Thriller', 'Jaw', 'Eye-Pop', 'Zombie on Car Roof') and finally 'Ballistics Technician' in the third. The only other actors I recognized were Philip Bruns ( Of Flashdance and Seinfeld fame)who played the Drunk Doctor.He was so so. And Mitch Pileggi (Skinner of the X-Files fame) playing a kill crazy sergeant. I wish they would have had more of him. Anyways, I feel this sequel was OK but not great. Gonna go see the 3rd one now and see if that's better. Bye!
