Hooptober 12.0 – Return of the Living Dead Part II (1988)

Being Film #10 for Hooptober 2025

I typically don’t hold out a lot of hope for sequels, especially 80s sequels to 80s movies that were themselves comedic reboots of older films. But somehow despite the loss of Dan O’Bannon Return Of The Living Dead Part II not only works as a worthy successor, it leans into the ridiculous in such a way that I was laughing out loud when I wasn’t outright groaning. But even those groans were good-natured, making me nostalgic for a time when seemingly every 80s film looked and sounded like this one. How do you get nostalgic watching a film you’ve never seen? Because I’ve seen a variation of this films dozens, hundreds of times in my childhood. So sure, this might be technically worse than a lot of other films I may see this marathon. But it’s also guaranteed to have been more fun, too.

THE QUICK SUMMARY: That gosh-dang military did it again: a canister of the dangerous experimental chemical Trioxin falls off a truck and lands in a river drain where a couple of kids making trouble for young Jesse Wilson discover the cool-looking barrel. Finders keepers, and they knock a value that opens the canister, releasing not only the noxious gas that will soon permeate the ground of the local cemetery, but also let loose the undead ghoul trapped within. Pretty soon Jesse, his older sister Lucy, local cable guy heartthrob Tom are running for their lives. Meanwhile, a pair of bumbling grave robbers and a retired doctor get involved and chaos ensues as the dead make their way through no less than three music video montages in their quest for juicy, spicy brains…

You know when this movie had me? When it introduced Jesse as a young kid getting bullied and his response is basically Rodney Dangerfield his way out of it – which of course fails. Smart-alec kids, weird VHS lighting and a so-80s-its marvelous soundtrack all enhance the Return of the Living Dead Part II experience, helped immensely by the fact that writers/director Ken Wiederhorn knows this is a ridiculous premise, amping that up in the humor and the action.

It also helps that you have Dana Ashbrook as the “hero” of the movie, a year or so out from his stellar work as Bobby Briggs on Twin Peaks. He always brings an intense realism to his particular insanity and here he reins it in just enough to be the good guy, while also completely living the experience of battling the undead.

But zombie movies in general are only as good as their main characters, and in this case I mean the zombies themselves. Overall the makeup effects are once again sublime, and when they’re not (the header image is from the scene where the original zombie spaces from the canister, and you can clearly see it’s a mask, when the mouth opens and you see a guy in black makeup moaning) it comes a cross as charming in its practicality. The first music montage of the zombies rising from the cemetery is filled with physical jokes and killer effects, like the one aggravated zombie hose hans keeps getting stepped as he tries to rise from the grave. Sure, you get some real cringers like a Michael Jackson zombie popping up near the film’s end but overall I leaned into the vibe Return of the Living Dead Part II was putting out and had a blast with it.

All that and I didn’t even mention the return of Return of the Living Dead’s main characters, this time playing the grave robbers. If there are true MVPs for the film it’s James Karen and Thom Mathews: even when they try a new profession in a new movie they fall for the same old ending. Fourth walls are broken, but at least this time Mathews gets some juicy brains…