The Return of the Living Dead

The Return of the Living Dead (1985)

24 mistakes - chronological order

(4 votes)

Continuity mistake: Towards the beginning when the gang is breaking the door chain and lock to the cemetery, the chain is still hanging inside two door notches after the lock is broke, as soon as the door is pushed and the camera changes view to inside the cemetery, the chain is gone. (00:14:40)

Revealing mistake: As zombie Freddy breaks down the door of the chapel, where he has been locked in, he rolls over a bench which is barricading the door. As he lays flat on the ground, about to get up, his shirt lifts up and you can see that not all of his stomach has been painted with "zombie skin color". (01:10:00)

Visible crew/equipment: In the scene where Burt and Spider take the cop car to go get help, after they back up from the group of zombies in the street. You can see a cameraman in the front passengers seat holding a camera with a blinking red light on his shoulder as they drive away.

Other mistake: When Trash first comes back to life as a zombie there is a shot of rain falling and smoke swirling. The shot plays forward, then reverses for a second or two before playing forward again. The rain falls up and the smoke reverses direction.

Continuity mistake: Trash's fantasy about being eaten alive comes true when several zombies attack her, taking bites out of her before she drowns in the Trioxin-water mix. When she reanimates, she's now got no bite marks on her.

William Bergquist

Revealing mistake: At the end, when the Colonel is at his control panel on the phone just after the nuke goes off, the cord from the phone begins to peel from the control panel. This is mentioned in the DVD commentary.

William Bergquist

Continuity mistake: When they pull the half female zombie through the window, they lay a large piece of cardboard over it. An instant later, the cardboard is off to the side.

William Bergquist

Other mistake: When the zombies are climbing out of their graves, one is seen as a skull that rises, opens its eyes and mouth. If you look closely in its mouth you can see some kind of wire or control used to move the puppet. It is more clearly seen when the footage is reused at the end and the shot freezes for the closing credits on the same shot of the skull.

Continuity mistake: In the beginning when Frank is giving Freddy the warehouse tour, Frank mentions and points out wheelchairs that are off camera which is fine but when the headless corpse is trashing the warehouse, the wheelchairs are nowhere to be seen.

William Bergquist

Revealing mistake: When the guys are putting the bench in front of the door to keep Freddy inside the Chapel, the bench lands on Ernie's foot and breaks it. The bench never even touches his foot.

jbrbbt

Continuity mistake: Ernie is working on a cadaver when Burt arrives. After they cremate the body parts Burt brought over, there is one more shot where the feet of the cadaver can be seen under the blue sheet on the table. The next time we see the table, it is empty. It is never seen or referred to again.

Visible crew/equipment: When Tom, Frank and Burt are trying to kill the first corpse they cut its head off and it runs around decapitated. There are a few shots where you can see its head.

Factual error: One zombie, who's rotted away all his organs, has two eyeballs looking good as new. Even if eyeballs didn't rot, they would fall out with nothing to hold them in. Just like the half of a woman zombie that talks with a soft sultry voice but with rotting or missing vocal cords.

Plot hole: After Frank and Freddie accidentally release the trioxin gas, there are several shots of the gas entering a return air vent and traveling through the heating, ventilation and air conditioning system belonging to the warehouse. Finally the gas exits into the freezer directly on to a hanging cadaver. This room was previously confirmed as a freezer and would have had its own self contained refrigeration system with its own ventilation system. Typical freezer doors also seal as they close. The cadaver would have never come into contact with the trioxin gas and would have never reanimated.

Suicide: You think this is a fuckin' costume? This is a way of life.

More quotes from The Return of the Living Dead

Trivia: The actress who plays Trash is actually wearing a prosthetic rubber "crotch piece" during her strip scene (and subsequent scenes), which one of the producers insisted on, because he felt full frontal female nudity was "too much" for the film. Ironically, most of the shots of her are from a distance, and her under-region is hard to see, so in the end, the prosthetic was not really necessary. As confirmed in DVD commentary.

More trivia for The Return of the Living Dead

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