While Romero’s films are social satires, The Return of the Living Dead is a cynical scream. It ends on one of the most bleakly funny notes in horror history, suggesting that no matter how hard you fight, the bureaucracy of the military and the persistence of chemistry will eventually turn everyone into a snack.

The film is a time capsule of the 1980s Los Angeles punk scene. From the graveyards to the soundtrack, it’s drenched in subculture.

Dismembering them just creates multiple moving parts; burning them creates toxic smoke that causes more zombies.

You have a gang of punks (including the iconic Trash and Suicide) hanging out in a cemetery, providing a sharp, cynical contrast to the "aw-shucks" medical supply warehouse employees who accidentally start the outbreak.

Before Dan O'Bannon wrote and directed this film, zombies were generally understood to be stopped by a shot to the head. O’Bannon threw that rulebook out. In this universe, zombies are: