Errorvision - Highlighting The Goofs in Return of the Living Dead

Recently I somehow ended up on the Goofs page on the IMDB entry for Return of the Living Dead. It's a favorite that I've owned since I was around 7 or 8 years old, so I've seen this movie realistically probably around 30 times, but I was amazed by how many of these goofs I had never caught before. I had spotted a couple over the years, but there are like 25 things on that list. So, I thought it would be an interesting experiment to watch the movie for the 31st time while completely ignoring the important things like story, characters, and dialogue and just focus on the background trying to spot as many mistakes as I could.

Sure, you can just go on the IMDb and look at the list of the mistakes, but I thought it would be fun to go through and actually provide some visual evidence using the high-tech tools at my disposal; VLC Media Player and Microsoft Paint. I actually enjoyed grabbing these screenshots writing this post, so look for more of these sometime soon. Feel free to comment if you know of any other movies with an epic amount of mistakes that I could feature in the future.

Onto the goofs.

Like this scene in the embalming room with Ernie and Spider are discussing an escape plan—wait...who in the fuck is the guy ducking under the table?

Speaking of people who aren't in the movie appearing in the movie, where did this guy come from? 

This happens very quickly, which is why this screenshot looks so blurry, but in motion you can tell it's someone from the crew and not Don Calfa, Beverly Randolph or a bearded zombie. He slides that window open and closes it two times immediately after Clu Gulager gets out of the door. Who is this guy and why did he think peeking out of a window during filming was a good idea? That guy, if you're out there, can you explain what happened?

How about this scene where Frank and Freddy hold down a reanimated corpse with their 5 hands. I thought maybe one of these hands might've belonged to the yellow dude, but the way the hands are positioned (and the fact that none of them are yellow) it seems unlikely:

Then there's this shot of the Tarman just before eating Suicide's brains. (I don't think you'd call it "brains" when you're referring to a single person's brain, but who am I to correct a zombie's grammar?) It's a little-known fact that zombies are actually born with an extra set of teeth:

After Spider and Burt break through the cemetery gates and run into the undead roadblock Miguel Núñez, Jr., who is sitting in the passenger seat, turns from a black guy into two white guys with a camera and sound equipment:

There are several more mistakes to be found, but these were the most visually interesting. Most of them are more minor things like Clu Gulager's character name appearing onscreen as both Bert and Burt, strings attached to puppets, decades-old zombies with perfectly intact eyeballs, or things that you'd need to see in motion like when the cardboard falls on Scuz's corpse, then disappears in the next shot.

Return Of The Living Dead's Tarman Gets His Own Vintage Halloween Mask

Here's something that should give Return of the Living Dead fans out there a stiffy; Fright Rags is putting out a limited edition Ben Cooper style vintage Halloween mask and each mask comes with a shirt featuring new artwork from ROTLD production designer William Stout.

I cannot express in words how much I love the Tarman mask. I like the shirt that comes with the mask, but I would've bought this in a second if the mask came with the other shirt. I still might have to grab one of these either way, maybe both. These will only be on sale for a 4 day period, so if they don't sell out of the 500 in those 4 days, it's done either way. For more info and specific ordering times check out Fright-Rags.

No!!!! Dan O'Bannon - September 30th, 1946 - December 16th, 2009

Dan O'Bannon - September 30th, 1946 - December 16th, 2009

From Matt Goldberg @ Collider:

"A legendary screenwriter of science fiction and horror, Dan O’Bannon, best known for writing Alien, passed away today at the age of 63. Bannon broke out back in 1974 with the lo-budget sci-fi flick Dark Star, which was director John Carpenter’s first major film. O’Bannon not only wrote the script for Dark Star, he also edited, art designed, acted in, and handled the special effects on the film.

Then he wrote Alien, which would be his biggest film both critically and commercially. But oddly enough, O’Bannon’s most ardent fans, while they unabashedly love Alien, seem to support the guy more for his smaller cult movies like Dark Star, Dead & Buried, Blue Thunder, his segment “B-17″ in Heavy Metal, and for The Return of the Living Dead, a film he also directed."

Return of the Living Dead has been my favorite movie since about 1987 when I first saw it, so I'm especially saddened by this one. I actually yelled "No!!!" out loud a few times when I heard the news a few moments ago, despite the fact that it's currently about 2:50 in the morning.

I will honor him with a Alien/Dead & Buried/ROTLD/Dark Star/The Resurrected/Total Recall marathon this weekend.

Weird Science

I think Weird Science would be my favorite of the John Hughes-directed films of the 1980's. Although Planes, Trains and Automobiles and Uncle Buck are quite spectacular as well. I wouldn't say Weird Science was the "best" of the bunch, but it's still my favorite. I've found that a lot of the movies that I ended up revisiting the most feature a couple of nerdy/misfit/outcast friends/brothers in some kind of wacky misadventures. Put Strange Brew, Wayne's World or Bill and Ted, Lebowski (it counts) on in front of me and I will stop anything I'm doing and stay put until the credits roll. (Once I can own it and watch it on a regular basis, the critically maligned Pineapple Express will be added to that list as well.)

In addition to Weird Science being loaded with nerdiriffic shenaningans, there is also some great and hilarious dialog between Garry, Wyatt and their digitally-created Frankenbroad Lisa. I've also always felt there were some great casting choices in Weird Science; Anthony Michael Hall, Robert Downey Jr., Bill Paxton, Michael Berryman and that chick from Night of the Creeps, Return of the Living Dead II and Killer Klowns From Outer Space - that's good casting if I ever saw it.

Anyway, I've said enough for one post, but while I'm talking Hughes, I just need to state, for the record, that it is my opinion that The Breakfast Club has by far the worst out-of-nowhere dance scene in the history of time and space. I cringed so hard the first time I saw that scene that my face has still not fully recovered. It's caused some problems for me over the years. Oh, and Ally Sheedy was much hotter before they Ringwalded her up at the end. Thank you for listening, I had to get that off my chest.

You're stewed, buttwad!

Allan Trautman - Professional Zombie

Here's a cool little thing I found while going through my stuff earlier today. This was sent to me a few years ago by Allan Trautman, the man underneath the Tarman costume in Return of the Living Dead. Thankfully they were able to reattach his head after it was knocked off by Clu Gulager during the movie and Allan went on to have a pretty nice little career as an actor/puppeteer in things like Greg the Bunny and Unhappily Ever After.

Apart from this, my autograph collection is pretty limited. I've never gone to a convention and even then I'm a bit cheap so if I did attend one I doubt I'd pay Ken Foree, for example, $20 for him to write his name on something, as awesome as Ken might be. That said I do have a postcard signed by Catriona MacColl, another signed by Caroline Munro, and an issue of Fangoria signed by one David DeCocteau. That's about the extent of my signed items collection. I thought this would be cool to post since any kind of behind the scenes stuff on Return of the Living Dead is sadly quite lacking. I know there's a documentary on the newly released DVD, but I haven't picked that up yet and from what I read it looks like it's just newly recorded stuff. Unless I'm mistaken, which I very well could be.

Barry Goldberg - Return of the Living Dead 3

Brian Yunza's Return of the Living Dead 3. Return of the Living Dead is my favorite movie, so obviously it's my favorite of the trilogy, but I think Part 3 would be my second favorite. It's not a great movie, but I do think it's a respectable effort. Of course, don't take my word for it, I even like Part 2, which is considered by many to be a complete and total piece of crap. I think what bothered most people about Part 2 was the overuse of cheesy comedy. Sure the original was very funny, but that was due to the characters and how they reacted to the situations. Part 2 tries to be wacky a little bit too much, I'm amazed they didn't work a zombie fart joke into the film. (By the way, I'm aware of and own ROTLD 4 Necropolis and ROTLD 5 Rave From The Grave, but I refuse to acknowledge those as actual Return of the Living Dead films.)

ROTLD 3 is much more serious than any of the other films in the series. Perhaps a little too serious to where it's even a bit depressing at times. Starring Melinda Clarke (or Mindy as she's credited in this), of recently canceled mindless melodramatic teeny bopper soap opera The O.C. as Julie, a girl who bites it in a motorcycle accident while running away with her aspiring drummer boyfriend. The boyfriend, Curt, is played J. Trevor Edmond, who you might recognize as the tremendously miscast badass in the hilariously terrible Pumpkinhead 2. Curt is distraught over losing Julie, because while he didn't know her all that long, she was really, really hot. Oh, and he loved her. I guess. So he does what any loving boyfriend would do, sneaks her corpse into his father's top secret military lab and resurrects her with some zombifying toxin. Since Curt never saw the full effect of what this toxin does to a corpse, this plan backfires as she gradually turns into a flesh-eating she-beast. Albeit, a hot flesh-eating she-beast. It's a pretty good film overall, but I think it has too much of a military sci-fi film kind of feel during several scenes. Still, check it out if you haven't already.

1. Intro title (02:54)
2. Enter the isolation room (01:21)
3. Lab enter (01:32)
4. Osc'scope zombie (04:22)
5. Zombie a go go (01:44)
6. Worker zombie (01:21)
7. The motorcycle ride (00:51)
8. Julie's dead (01:48)
9. Back at the lab (03:44)
10. Julie comes back to life (00:54)
11. Lab full of zombies (03:53)
12. Shooting in the store (00:35)
13. Julie's first bite (00:46)
14. Escape from the store (03:01)
15. Police investigate (02:42)
16. Julie's first piecing (00:39)
17. Julie's rebuke (00:39)
18. riverman (00:31)
19. Julie falls (01:06)
20. Riverman meets Kurt (00:32)
21. Julie is found (01:41)
22. Kids flee (03:28)
23. Riverman's tale (00:57)
24. COIN / Tunnel (01:26)
25. Julie shows her stuff (08:34)
26. Fight and capture (04:14)
27. Julie is freed (05:45)
28. Last fight / end credits (10:12)

Julie, are you eating him? You should stop it.

Selections from Linnea Quigley's Horror Workout

This is another one of those completely retarded things that's very existence completely amazes me. The self-dubbed "scariest exercise video ever made", Linnea Quigley's Horror Workout. Although if we're choosing the scariest exercise video ever made I'd like to throw this little number out there as one I think just might take the cake for that title.

So I was bored and thought it'd be fun to rip the music from a few of the little routines, or whatever the hell you call workout numbers. I've been going back and forth on whether to post this or not. The copy I have was a DVD+R copy given to me by a friend. It was ripped from a VHS, which is surely the only incarnation of this thing we'll ever see, so the sound quality on these few tracks is not great. I tried to touch up the audio, I did some noise reduction, but I'm not an expert or anything, so it's not great. But it's not totally terrible. The music itself is cheesy as hell, kinda like Nintendo-ish music from 1988, but like Nintendo music that you can dance to or something. In fact the final track reminds me of the music from T&C Surf Design. The first track is actually very cool, but sadly Linnea is in the shower for the whole scene so you can hear water running the whole track. I mean, "Yay!" for the naked part, but the music suffers from it. I don't know, I just thought it would be kinda funny to post this. If at least one person gets a kick out of this, then I've done my job.

John Vulich is credited as the man responsible for the music. This is his only attempt at scoring, although he's done a lot of make-up work for films like Day of the Dead, Night of the Living Dead 1990, and Being John Malkovich. He most recently did effects work on Christopher Nolan's The Prestige.

The workout video is only an hour-long, 1/4 of which is just clips from Linnea's movies, then there are scenes between each routine so the "soundtrack" here is only about 25 minutes long.

1. Warning : The Most Gratuitous Shower Scene Since Sorority House Massacre II
2. The Killer Interupts Linnea's Warmup
3. Zombie Joggers Stalk Linnea
4. Final Workout Prior To The Slaughter

Download

Enjoy Kristy Langford on Linnea Quigley. Thanks Kristy! Linnea Quigley Interview