Return of the
Living Dead
Necropolis
Return of the Living Dead (ROTLD) is a series of movies which
added some funny shades to the Zombie genre, especially the 2nd
part was really enjoyable if you like this kind of crazy humour.
The Zombies in ROTLD are created by a gas called "Trioxyn-5"
which is usually kept in some kind of metal barrels. Once the
gas is released it zombifies the living and turns any dead
creature into a zombie. The gas also works with separated body
parts and the zombies can't be killed unless you burn them,
which unfortunately releases the gas again.
At least this was what we learned from part 1-3 of ROTLD. Things
are different in this part, since you can obviously kill the
beasts by shooting their head or just by putting enough bullets
into them. While dropping these important facts, the zombies in
ROTLD4 can still talk and act halfway reasonable, like in the
previous parts.
However, the movie starts off with some crazy professor, who
managed to get hold of the few remaining barrels of "Trioxyn-5"
which were believed to be destroyed. As you might expect getting
the barrels home doesn't work out exactly as planned since one
of them is no longer properly sealed. Strange that a gas is
sitting as green slime on the barrel, but hey, to hell with the
logic anyway.
So what's happening next? A bunch of high school seniors are
fooling around like in every other teen movie until one of them
has a stupid bike accident. He mysteriously vanishes from the
Hospital and is brought into the labs of "Hybratech" some cheesy
mega cooperation which produces almost anything from food to
biological weapons. What a coincidence, that one of the
teenagers works part time in the security service of that
company. As you might have already guessed, the teenagers plan
to rescue their friend from the "Hybratech"-lab and accidentally
release a horde of reanimated corpses which causes the usual
gore-fest you would expect from such a movie.
In comparison ROTLD 4 is not as funny as the 2nd part for
example but it cites some of the jokes from there: "Bring more
security guards!" etc.
Booh!
Even though the story is not exactly brilliant, the movie is not
exactly bad, at least if you watch it in English. What spoils it
for me are the many cuts whenever gore is about to be shown. The
German Company who was responsible for publishing cut out every
little bit that might make this movie worth to be seen. Don't
expect to see any real splatter scenes in this version. The
makeup and costumes however are nicely done. The Zombies in the
foreground look really good in most cases, while some in the
background can be easily spotted as rubber-masks, especially in
the low security area of the lab.
Blood and Gore are the key element in Splatter movies, spilled
brains, gutted carcasses and torn away body parts are what
people expect from a Zombie movie. If you remove that element,
which was done by the German publisher you get an annoying and
stupid movie, which otherwise could have been quite enjoyable.
To put it into a final statement: "When the dead walk? The
living run!" Probably from this terribly butchered DVD, no
matter how good or bad the movie might be, the German DVD
edition is cut to 81 minutes compared to the 88 minutes of the
original American Version. This fact alone justifies avoiding
the DVD even though it's sold for around 10 EUR at most places.
If you really need to grab a copy of it, buy the Swiss version,
which is almost complete, but only lacks a few scenes of people
running away from Zombies.
Cyclone / X-Troll for Alive, 2006-06-15
|
