The Return of the Living Dead (1985)

IMDb plot summary: When two bumbling employees at a medical supply warehouse accidentally release a deadly gas into the air, the vapors cause the dead to rise again as zombies.
Directed by Dan O'Bannon. Starring Clu Gulager, James Karen, Don Calfa, and Thom Mathews.

(Spoilers.)

While this is a moderately interesting little horror movie, it doesn't really work for me as a comedy. The jokes are often so subtle, I wouldn't have guessed this was a comedy if I hadn't known that going in. It would just feel like a clumsy drama. But what really is the nail in the coffin is how really tragic the zombies are. I felt genuinely bad for them once it's revealed that they're not just mindlessly reanimated -- they're all in agonizing pain from dying and they eat brains because for some reason that relieves the pain. Toss in our main characters dealing with this as they are turned into zombies and an extremely bleak (and really not at all absurd) ending, and this thing takes a seriously dark turn. It's such a weird tone, and the laughs are so few and far between, that it's difficult for me to call it a comedy at all. So... I think it kind of fails at its mission to be funny, but I liked the movie if I ignored its claimed genre.

3 stars.

How it entered my Flickchart:
The Return of the Living Dead > The Fortune Cookie
The Return of the Living Dead < American Outlaws
The Return of the Living Dead < Munich
The Return of the Living Dead < Shall We Dance? (2004)
The Return of the Living Dead > Chasing Amy
The Return of the Living Dead > The Wrestler
The Return of the Living Dead < Is It College Yet?
The Return of the Living Dead > The Illusionist
The Return of the Living Dead > Ran
The Return of the Living Dead > Bonnie and Clyde
The Return of the Living Dead < Wonder Boys
Final spot: #1035 out of 2321.