A half-dozen flicks - Three double features - no. 3: The Return of the Living Dead and The Dead Don't Die

This is the last of the New Jersey Double Features Review/Recap and the first of this year’s Halloween theme: ZOMBIES!!!

Chief Cliff Robertson: What do you think did this?

Officer Ronnie Peterson: I'm thinking zombies.

Chief Cliff Robertson: What?

Officer Ronnie Peterson: You know, the undead. Ghouls.

• From The Dead Don’t Die

The Return of the Living Dead might be the best 80s zombie movie that George Romero didn’t direct. Directed by Dan O’ Bannon who up till this time, had graced the world with scripts for Carpenter’s Dark Star, Scott’s Alien, and would go onto write Total Recall, there is a vigor and almost gonzo energy in the performances. They’re all (and rightly so) dialed up to 11 and it’s great. 

After all, we’ve got zombies created by the U.S. military! If Romero  would take a more steady and satirical eye toward social issues, O’ Bannon and his writers (Rudy Ricci who had worked on this and a weird comedy/sci-fi/exploitation flick The Liberation of Cherry Janowski), John A. Russo (who had written the seminal masterpiece Night of the Living Dead with Romero and would contribute greatly to the genre), and Russell Strainer who starred in that seminal opus) gifted the world with a sly critique of the military-industrial complex and not a little observing of generational division, though all at the service of speedy film of brain-eating undead (this film is the origin of that trope). Goddamn, it’s a delight.

Films like this seemingly don’t demand much of their actors, but Clu Galager leads a small triumvirate of dipshits - he plays the owner of a medical supply warehouse where things go drastically wrong when one of his employees releases gas called Trioxin from an Army experiment that had been suppressed. 

Burt’s (Galager) business houses cadavers, including a dog’s corpse cleaved in half for an anatomy lesson, I guess? So it’s a surprise when one corpse is reanimated and very hungry for brains and the little doggy corpse starts barking again. Sit with that for a bit. Things only get weirder.

Freddy, the younger of the two employees, is due to meet up with his friends (who dunk on him in absentia, for having a job at all; this is a cautionary tale about working for the man, after all…) is played with aplomb by Thom Matthews, no stranger to similar genre fare. He’s a hapless pup and we watch as he and Frank (a game James Karen - who’s been in everything - if you don’t believe me, check out his IMDB page…) turn kind of (un)dead. 

In the meantime, Freddy’s friends are whooping it up near a graveyard which is not a good place to be as the gas has begun pervading the air and reanimating corpses, as it does. The inestimable Linnea Quigley plays Trash and strips down to dance in the graveyard, Freddy’s girlfriend Tina (Beverly Randolph, whose resume in the horror/slasher/exploitation genre is nothing to sneeze at) worries about him and sees him at one point going into a mortuary where he, Frank and Burt are going to attempt to persuade Burt’s friend Ernie to incinerate a reanimated corpse. I should note that the zombies here are not easy kills. The only way to finish them is incinerating them (just beheading or dismembering is ineffectual). Dan Scalfa is a hoot, by the way, as Ernie. Armed with Luger at one point, it’s been proposed that he was actually a Nazi scientist (I didn’t get that read, myself, though the cremation issue might support that in some way.)

I won’t detail how things go increasingly tits-up, but you can kind of put it together in your mind, though I’d recommend, rather, you watch this film. The framing device is an obscure military attache who has a computer installed in his home that his wife doesn’t seem super pleased with. I’ll leave it here with a pointer to Cloverfield as to what direction the film goes; but the key difference is that the military knew all along that there was a genuine probability this sort of thng would happen. Sacrifices, however, must be made.

Jarmusch’s The Dead Don’t Die is the cutest movie he’s ever made, “cute” not being a word associated with his work. I wouldn’t suggest it as an introduction to his work, but it might be okay for people who want a taste of an eccentric director’s approach to a genre film that’s, well, just kind of light. 

Unlike The Only Lovers Left Alive, The Dead Don’t Die isn’t nearly as emotionally resonant, richly thematic, or tightly constructed. But it is funny. I’ll gladly give it that. For a film replete with its share of beheadings and disembowelment, it’s got laughs. And to be sure, there is a sociopolitical subtext and plenty of critique about our misaligned priorities. 

Bill Murray, Adam Driver, and Chlòe Sevigny are the town of Centerville’s three cops. The biggest issue of the day is that Steve Buscemi’s MAGA stand-in Farmer Miller has accused Hermit Bob (Tom Waits, who can add another nifty character role to his list) of stealing a chicken. 

The people of Centersville seem nice enough, if oblivious. The world has been tilted off its axis due to “polar fracking”, so days are unnaturally longer and we hear of catastrophes in the background. Overall, the town exists in a bubble of civility (“a real nice place” is the slogan on the welcome sign into Centersville); but it isn’t long before the weirdness begins and here’s where Jarmusch’s typically laconic approach comes in handy. 

When Sheriffs Cliff Robertson (yep, I suspect that was on purpose) and Ronnie Peterson (Driver) are called to the town’s diner where hours earlier, two recently rendered undead popped in for coffee (Iggy Pop who fits the role perfectly and Sara Driver, Jim Jarmusch’s life partner - right now, go find You Are Not I - and Boom for Real: The Late Teenage Years of Jean-Michel Basquiat), most of the speculation goes to wild animals, but Sheriff Ronnie submits the undead/zombie theory. It is also the first instance where he says that “this will end badly.” Sheriff Mindy Morrison arrives, takes a look at the crime scene and throws up outside.

Naturally, Ronnie’s right. 

I also want to note that the dead waitresses were played by Eszther Balint who goes back to Strangers in Paradise as John Lurie’s Polish cousin. She’s another of those multi-hyphenates (actress-violinist-singer/songwriter, you know the deal) but man, was she good in Trees Lounge and on Louie. The other was Rosal Colon (Ouija from Orange is the New Black). The reason I want to mention this is because Jarmusch has, like many auteurs, a broad stock company of actors and collaborators he’s called on over the years, many of whom are often accomplished in their own right. The larger point is that in working with people like Tom Waits, Balint, Iggy Pop, Murray, and Sevigny, there’s a sense of collaboration over a significant body of work(s) and an interconnectedness with other works, both in cinema and in other arts. This frequently lends a metatextual element to Jarmusch’s oeuvre that may or may not be intentional. 

Of course, it isn’t long before the zombie apocalypse hits Centerville and the funeral home run by the town’s coroner is full. So much so that Mallory O’Brien (Carol Kane) is laid to temporary rest in one of the jail cells. When she rises, Cliff is taken aback and wonders if she’s alive and Ronnie says, no, she’s undead. Ronnie decapitates her. 

Earlier, coroner Zelda (the always perfect Tilda Swinton; sorry to be so uncritical, but well, she just is) discovers that two of her latest corpses are coming back just after she had finished a stunning job on them. We had seen that in addition to being Scottish, Zelda wields a mean katana and so dispatches her clients back to the realm of sleep. 

Ronnie briefs Cliff on proper zombie disposal, while the local gas station operator and local comics and pop culture expert Bobby Wiggins is the other resident expert. Earlier in the film, Bobby had waited on three “hipsters” from Pittsburgh who drove in in a late 60s LeMans, like the one in The Night of the Living Dead (“very George Romero” intoned Bobby). 

The hipsters featured Selen Gomez, a pre-Elvis Austin Butler and Luka Sabbat, the up-and-coming actor/model from Grown-ish. Gomez’s character gets him if the two guys are brusque and it’s too bad that she’s one of the victims. So it goes.

Eventually, as the dead rise from the town’s cemetery and invade the town, Bobby joins Hank (Danny Glover) hole up Hank’s hardware store; Zelda ventures out into the streets with her katana, beheading zombies on her way to the police station first before eventually heading to the cemetery at the movie’s denouement. She offers her services to guard the station while the three officers venture forth to spread the word about, well, zombies taking over their fair town.

It becomes clear to Zelda that this is a no-win situation, so she determinedly ventures out again, slicing away, sauntering past the law enforcement team, into a circle of zombies, where she is beamed up into a flying saucer. This alone makes the film worthwhile. Swinton is otherworldly enough that this might be footage from a documentary.

In due course, the team’s car is stalled and surrounded by the zombie horde. Mindy sees her reanimated grandmother and leaves the car to meet her fate, Cliff and Ronnie grow tense and terse with one another (“Shut up!” “No, you shut up!”) and things come to a head when Cliff asks Ronnie why he keeps saying that this won’t end well. Ronnie tells Cliff that he read the script. Cliff, well, Bill Murray, is taken aback; but it’s true: 

“He only gave me our scenes. I never saw a complete script. After all I've done for that guy, and it's a lot that you don't even know about. What a dick.” The only real Bill Murray sounding line in the film.

It goes without saying that Ronnie and Cliff fall victim to the horde and it’s Hermit Bob through whose eyes we see the final scene. And yes, he did steal (and eat) Farmer Miller’s chicken.

All of this is entertaining, if facile. That’s not necessarily a slam; it’s just that this is not Paterson, Down by Law, or Dead Man or Ghost Dog. I found it enjoyable, but it doesn’t add up to much. Maybe it doesn’t have to. Sometimes, an diversion is just meant to be that. 

Hermit Bob is Greek Chorus/informal commentator at various points, mentioning “it’s a fucked-up world” and zeroing in on how dumbed-down society is, having “lost its soul to a Gameboy.” These observations and the indifference with which the citizens of Centerville greet the news of a very human-effected climate disaster is intended to be allegorical of the real world’s indifference and submission to diversions. 

It’s telling and not a little hilarious that the reanimated all come back to life searching for what they loved the most. Mallory revives asking for Chardonnay, Iggy Pop and Sara Driver’s zombies are fiending for coffee, there’s a guitar zombie, a fashion zombie, and so on. 

It might be worthwhile to contrast and compare what Jarmusch’s zombies crave to O’Bannon’s. In Return of the Living Dead, zombies seek brains to relieve the pain of being undead, which may be metaphorical for playing with the idea that more brains won’t relieve the pain of being alive, so maybe they’re of more use to the undead. Conversely, Jarmusch’s ghoul friends are jonesing for substances or objects that brought them some satisfaction in the world while they were alive. In both cases, zombies are metaphors for just how little we really are alive while we’re living.

There are some cute references throughout The Dead Don’t Die; Adam Driver’s Star Wars key-chain and Zelda’s line “Star Wars; that’s a good fiction” when he hands it to her is priceless. There’s also the scene where Driver is hanging out the car, lopping off zombie heads as a direct reference to a similar scene in Zombieland that Bill Murray had a really funny cameo in.

The meta elements were also amusing. From Driver’s reference about reading the script to the repeated playing of the song “The Dead Don’t Die” by Sturgill Simpson. At one point in the film, Cliff asks Ronnie why everyone likes the song and he replies that it is the film’s theme song, after all. All of this is quietly amusing, and that seems to be all Jarmusch was shooting for.

Sometime, that’s all a movie needs to be. Even - perhaps especially so - when made by a great filmmaker. Everyone is entitled to minor works; when they’re particularly entertaining like The Dead Don’t Dance, it’s a satisfying experience in itself that should be celebrated.