Whoa, hold it there crazy people.

While we all have our movie favourites, the original Return of the Living Dead crackled with dry (and slapstick) humour, outrageous nods to Romero's Dead series (take note on how NOT to come across a smug know-all git, Mr. Craven), some splendid latex gore (check out 'Tarman'... "MORE brains!"), memorable characters (Thom Matthews, Clu Gulager, James Karen & Linnea Quigley in particular) and dedicated, lively writing and direction from the excellent Dan O' Bannon.

Compare this to the lacklustre and bland 90 minutes of Ken Wiederhorn's Part 2, featuring - horror of horrors - a young mouthy blond kid as the main protagonist, a lot of running about and falling over outside (eliminating the claustrophobic atmosphere of the original and Romero's movies), and some shockingly bad attempts at gore effects (nifty 'half-zombie' scene excepted) such as the cruddy bits-of-liver-hanging-out-of-the-mouths attempts to convey zombie cannibalism and those ghastly animated blue electricity bolts.

ROTLD is a punk rock gorefest with plenty of quality splatter and nudity - Part 2 is simply... well, a shit movie - as a sequel or a standalone zombie effort. Instead, watch Wiederhorn's eerie Shock Waves or nasty Eyes of a Stranger.

Part 3 criticised for not being funny? It's a fucking masterpiece tragic love story with some fantastic rubbery gore (USA viewers note; lots of this was cut in your country - surprisingly released uncut in the UK) - why downbeat themes and endings are seen as a turnoff to some people is a mystery... total misunderstanding of horror films from the word go, perhaps ?

Wait, so two movies can be a parody but the Third has to be Serious?..... thats retarded

Im all about The Frighteners

we're getting away from horror parodies and confusing them with horror comedies

Well i know why your called the "Extremist," now.

This might be a dumb question. But whats the different bewteen a comedy and a paraody? Is their serious parodies???

In parodies they make funn of other films/scenes.....but i guess its under the genre comedy or :confused:

Apart from some lame in-jokes (like the woeful "Michael Jackson" zombie), ROTLD Part 2, however hard it tried, wasn't so much a horror parody - and certainly not of the Romero films like the first instalment - as it was a daft "party" zombie movie.

More farce and comedy than cute tribute to the monumental Dead series like Part 1.

As far as the third instalment being "retardedly" serious... this was a masterstroke - Brian Yuzna turned Wiederhorn's tiresome effort on its head with a suprisingly straight approach to a doomed zombie love story... complete with some awesome spine-ripping, skin-puncturing gore to boot!

If this film doesn't sit well because the Return of the Living Dead series is supposed to be all about parody, then that's fair enough - but I find the evolution of Part 3 from the ashes of the second movie one of the best horror experiences of modern times.

a horror comedy is just that .. a movie blending horror with comedy..

a parody is a comedic version of something serious ..

The second ROTLD is really shit, the first and third one are way better. My favorites would be Re-aminator, Return of the Living Dead, and Reposessed.