Whoops! This one's a little late, but here it is. Anyway, Return of the Living Dead: Necropolis is the fourth movie in the Return of the Living Dead franchise, filmed at the same time as the fifth film, Return of the Living Dead: Rave to the Grave. And they're both certainly movies that exist! They're not good by any stretch of the imagination--none of these movies really are--but they're still marginally better than Return of the Living Dead: Part II. Now I'm imagining that faint praise on a movie poster...
horror
Return of the Living Dead III (1993)
There was a part of me dreading watching the rest of The Return of the Living Dead movies after the second one, Return of the Living Dead: Part II. I mean, Part II was absolutely atrocious and you can fairly safely assume any following sequels are going to be worse. But Return of the Living Dead III was definitely better! It's not all that good, but it's still better than the second one!
Return of the Living Dead: Part II (1988)
Stop me if you've heard this one: a vat of Trioxin leaks, Mr. Thom Mathews and Mr. James Karen get exposed and slowly become zombies, and the gas hits clouds which rains the chemical all over a nearby graveyard. Yes, that is the setup for The Return of the Living Dead, but it's also a good chunk of the setup for the sequel, Return of the Living Dead: Part II. Look, I figured the later sequels I'd watch as part of October of the Living Dead would be bad, but I didn't expect the first sequel to be so repetitive.
The Return of the Living Dead (1985)
Most people don't have perfect memories. Details get blurred, forgotten, or flat out exchanged. For example, the iconic line "We're gonna need a bigger boat," in Jaws was actually, "You're gonna need a bigger boat," and so on. I bring this up today because while most of the Return of the Living Dead series is completely forgettable, one element of it seems to have been associated with Mr. George A Romero's movies and has flavored how the public thinks of zombies. Just little things I've noticed during October of the Living Dead.
Hellraiser (2022)
Last year for October I watched all the Hellraiser films as part of The Hellbound Halloween. That's 10 movies about Pinhead and his fellow cenobites, with a brief break near the end because holy shit they somehow got progressively worse as time went on. So when I heard that the long-awaited Hellraiser reboot was dropping in October, I knew I had to talk about it. And so here we are on a Saturday while the weekdays are taken up by October of the Living Dead.
Survival of the Dead (2009)
Survival of the Dead was Mr. George A Romero's last film he directed before passing in 2017. The man is an absolute legend in the horror genre, effectively creating the zombie subgenre as we know it today. Night of the Living Dead will most likely forever be looked at as a classic. As for all his other movies? Wildly varying quality with Survival being one of his worst. Whoops.
Diary of the Dead (2007)
This movie is a bit nostalgic to me. Back near the beginning of Movie Night, we had a friend who supplied us with a plethora of cheap horror DVDs. Shout out to Tim, who I'm not even sure knows this blog exists... Anyway, Diary of the Dead was one of those movies we watched something like over a decade ago, so I only remembered a few details. Forgotten was that this was directly created by Mr. George A Romero, which makes the fact that it's bad found footage all the more sad. Welcome back to October of the Living Dead.
Land of the Dead (2005)
I have a specific type of brain rot where I associate some actors with specific roles and just see them as that character no matter what they're in. Mr. Joel McHale will always be lovable loser Jeff Winger, no matter how serious his role in Becky tries to be. In this particular case, Land of the Dead features Luigi Mario and King Koopa. They even have a climactic fight amidst a zombie revolution! And the whole movie was just okay.
Day of the Dead (1985)
I think it's fairly safe to assume most people haven't seen the majority of the Night of the Living Dead sequels, Dawn of the Dead being the exception. That's just kind of how it goes, right? Tell people the upcoming Hellraiser film is the 11th in the franchise and their eyes go wide. Even I haven't seen most of these zombie films before watching them for October of the Living Dead. But I found myself surprised at how much I liked Day of the Dead! The zombie costumes looked better, the pacing was better, and Bub was a precious cinnamon roll that I would die for. Who's that? Well...
Dawn of the Dead (1978)
Everybody's got a movie they think is overrated. Some are contrarians--check out the 1 star reviews of any of the more famously well received films for examples--while others just don't get the hype. I find myself in that second camp with the original Dawn of the Dead, a film that just went on longer than it needed to while not really doing much. Oh man, am I already hitting the inevitable decline in quality this early in October of the Living Dead? This could be a problem...
Chwineka Watches 