A few moderately decent special effects are probably the best thing on offer in this lacklustre sequel to the classic comedy/horror yarn, in which the non-existent plot serves to vainly attempt to recapture the highlights from the original. For no explainable reason, the stalwart tag-team of James Karen and Thom Mathews are also brought back from the first film, playing different characters, but exactly the same thing happens to them here as it does in the original! Aside from the overwhelming déjà vu, this is a bigger-scope but lacking film, with the overdone comedy a real bore most of the time. Although there are a fair few macabre gags that pay off (the Michael Jackson homage, the severed head scenes, the disintegrating zombies) for the most part this is an irritating film that contains nothing memorable like the original. Even the music is worse.It's a bog-standard '80s comic horror romp with little brain and even less imagination on offer. The effects of the zombies are decent but the overacting – done by the entire cast now and not just Karen and Mathews – is a really big mistake. In fact there is not one straight character in the film. Just loads of bland teenagers, an annoyingly smart kid, and other extraneous folk who shout and scream a lot. It's pretty embarrassing really. The plot is predictable, the casting instantly forgettable (all long forgotten today, aside from a brief turn by X-FILES star Mitch Pileggi), the jokes just keep getting dumber and dumber. Ignore the bigger budget and heightened effects, the first film in this series is still the one to look out for.

When I was a kid I had the poster to this movie on my wall. Not just that, I also had a 4x3 foot cardboard stand from the local video shop that stood proudly in the corner of my room.I also had a miniature cardboard display next to a 5 foot RoboCop, a 4 foot Crocodile Dundee and a 6 foot Robin Williams from Good Morning Vietnam.Liking this movie was a given, I had stacks of Fangoria magazines piled next to my graphic novels that were cushioned next go my porn collection. Comics, gore, porn.... everything a growing teenage boy needs, but why is it that I can't remember anything from this movie, yet I could recite lines from the original verbatim?25 years on I got the Blu-Ray of the first 3 ROTLD movies and decided to spend a whole Sunday watching them back to back with hot winter food and alcohol, but 5 minutes into this....effort, it all came flooding back. It's appalling.I'd like to say it's like a lifeless corpse of a movie in some ironic attempt at thematic humour but it's just a pale imitation, a copy bereft of charm or wit, a typical studio failure to replicate an original premise that had vibrancy, heart and soul. From the awful staged sequences of the badly directed kids 'fighting' at the beginning.Cringe-worthy music that sounded like it was taken from a TV movie sound library.Shocking editing, as the 'gas' creeping through the graveyard is blatantly shot on 2 completely different film stocks and it just looks woefully poor. Yes, the original movie suffered from certain budget restraints and I could write a list of deficiencies as long as my arm but that makes it all the more memorable and charming and re-watchable. All of these years later, watching Return Of The Living Dead again, just hours ago was fun filled, laugh a minute entertainment. This film is everything the first movie isn't and everything we dread about sequels.I have no idea what Ken Weiderhorn thought he was doing but pissing on the legacy of a great concept. I switched this film off 15 minutes.I guess I must have done the same when I was a kid, before tearing the poster off my wall and ripping the cardboard stand to pieces.All of these things, utterly forgettable.

While transporting drums of the dangerous Trioxin gas, one of them falls from the army truck into a river. In the morning, the boy Jesse Wilson (Michael Kenworthy) is bullied by the older Billy (Thor Van Lingen) and Johnny (Jason Hogan) and he hides himself under a bridge nearby the cemetery. The two bullies find Jesse and they see the barrel. Then the bullies lock Jesse in a mausoleum and they decide to open the barrel, releasing the Trioxin and breathing the toxic gas. Meanwhile the grave robber Ed (James Karen) hires Joey (Thom Mathews) to help him to pillage the graves and they go to the cemetery in a van with Joey's girlfriend Brenda (Suzanne Snyder). Ed and Joey go to the mausoleum and Jesse is released and runs home. His sister Lucy Wilson (Marsha Dietlein) tells him to do the homework. Then the cable guy Tom Essex (Dana Ashbrook) arrives to fix the television and he recognizes Lucy from the high- school. Soon the Trioxin awakes the dead in the cemetery and the town is crowded with hordes of zombies. Ed, Joey and Brenda run to Jesse's house and team up with Lucy and Tom trying to survive to the brain eaters. "Return of the Living Dead: Part II" is a funny zombie cult movie. This sequel is a comedy with action, with good special effects and creepy zombies. There are the usual stupid attitudes from the characters but it is highly entertaining. My vote is six.Title (Brazil): "A Volta dos Mortos Vivos - Parte 2" ("The Return of the Living Dead: Part II")

Much-hated sequel to the '80s classic Return of the Living Dead is better than most people give it credit for being. It's not on the level of the first movie but it's still a fun and enjoyable horror-comedy. The plot is pretty much irrelevant but here goes: a container with a zombie in it falls off the back of an army truck. Some kids mess with it and release a toxic gas that reanimates the dead.James Karen and Thom Mathews return, playing different characters than in the last movie. They're a treat to watch, just like last time. Karen is especially funny and gets many of the movie's best lines. The main part this time around is a kid played by Michael Kenworthy. He's pretty good in what appears to have been his biggest role. The rest of the cast is fine. It's a fun movie that doesn't take itself seriously at all. I'm surprised it's hated as much as it is but the first movie was terrific so any sequel to it was bound to fall up short by comparison. Could've been a lot worse, though.