Crew
Director – Bill Philputt, Screenplay – Christian Sellers & Gary Smart, Producer – Thommy Hutson, Photography – Andrew Blum, Music – Sean Schafer Hennessy, Title Theme – Sean Schafer Hennessy & Uto Velasco. Production Company – Michael Perez Entertainment/Hutson Ranch Media.
Cast
Brian Peck (Narrator). With:- Jules Brenner, Don Calfa, James Dalesandro, Drew Deighan, Tony Gardner, Clu Gulager, Graham Henderson, James Karen, Thom Mathews, William Munns, Kenny Myers, Miguel Nunez, Jr., Dan O’Bannon, Brian Peck, John Penney, John Philbin, Stacey Q, Linnea Quigley, Beverly Randolph, John A. Russo, Paul A. Sammon, Jewel Shepard, Stanzi Stokes, William Stout, Allan Trautman
Return of the Living Dead (1985) was a spin off from George Romero’s classic zombie film Night of the Living Dead (1968). It came out during the second wave of the original Zombie Movie fad, which had been brought on by the first of Romero’s sequels Dawn of the Dead (1978). At contrast to Romero, director Dan O’Bannon took a sarcastic black humour approach that struck with audiences. Return of the Living Dead is regarded as a classic in its own right, although in retrospect is best remembered for pioneering the catchphrase “More brains.”
More Brains! A Return to the Living Dead is a Documentary about the making of Return of the Living Dead. Producer Tommy Hutson has been behind several other documentaries on horror films of this era with His Name Was Jason: 30 Years of Friday the 13th (2009), Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy (2010), Scream: The Inside Story (2011), Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th (2013) and Doc of Chucky (2024). Director Bill Philputt had previously made the rock concert film Stormtroopers of Death: Kill Yourself – The Movie (2000).
The documentary starts out tracing the genesis of Return of the Living Dead out of Night of the Living Dead and George Romero’s copyright split with his co-writers (one of whom – John Russo – is interviewed). We learn the development of the project from Russo’s original script, which he had planned to direct. The copyright was then bought by supermarket owner Tom Fox who had never made a film before who promptly discarded Russo’s version to make his own version. We learn of Tobe Hooper’s involvement before his departure to direct Lifeforce (1985) and then the assumption of the director’s chair by Dan O’Bannon, who was riding high on his script for Alien (1979).
More Brains frequently ends up being schematic in its approach. It progresses through Return of the Living Dead scene by scene almost and touches on each aspect as it comes up. Some of the most drawn-out stuff involves interviews with all of the actors where each of them discusses their characters and how they were cast in the film. These actor introductions end up taking up half-an-hour of screen time and feel very extruded – a lot of scenes of people saying “I didn’t like when that happened …” This is a production that could easily have been trimmed of over half-an-hour of its running time and would still be dull. There is the odd nugget amidst this – how Dan O’Bannon found Jewel Shepard at a strip-joint and hired her (although she dismisses rumours that she had sex with him to get the part). There is quite a bit of time devoted to Linnea Quigley’s nude scene and how she had to be shaved and then be given a prosthesis that hid her pussy so as not to show any genitalia on screen.
Another quibble might be that at the start several people mention how Return of the Living Dead was a difficult, problem-ridden production. However, other than the firing of Williams Munns over his inadequate initial zombie makeups, there are no scenes where any problems appear majorly evident. For the most part, the production seems to have been a smooth-sailing one without any disasters that caused the wheels to come off in any way. It is mentioned how Dan O’Bannon could be a prickly personality who didn’t always worry about niceties and one incident where Clu Gulager is reported to have either thrown a baseball bat or attacked O’Bannon with it, although Gulager denies this. But again, when you compare this to major star ego trips that wreck some entire productions – look no further than Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s The Island of Dr Moreau (2014) – these prove to be fairly insignificant road bumps.
Trailer here