Last Night a Zombie Ate My Brains

Last night was my first viewing of the entirety of Dan O'Bannon's George Romero-inspired 1985 punk zombie classic The Return of the Living Dead at the Mayfair.

Return takes the premise that the inspiration for Night of the Living Dead was an actual leak of an army chemical causing the dead to come back to life with a vicious thirst for brains, allowing for a certain level of self-awareness and genre play. When two workers at a medical supply warehouse knock a drum containing one of the victims it bursts open, spraying them with the contagion which eventually works its way, through the help of a crematorium and some acid rain, into the soil of the graveyard next door. There was nothing overtly disgusting in this movie other than finding out after that some of the zombie extras were paid more money to chew on actual calf brains, and the punk characters and music add some good levity and nudity, and the ending was pretty fantastic. Now I have to decide if it's worth it to follow up with any of the sequels.