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")

The first Return of the Living Dead was and still is a hugely enjoyable film, that's clever, immensely fun and very scary, and is and always will be the best of the five films in this particular series, the only film to be above good standard. This first sequel is nowhere near as good, but it's passable stuff and is one of the better sequels in the series (certainly much better than the horrendous Necropolis and Rave to the Grave).

Visually, Return of the Living Dead Part II is not a stunner but it hardly looks amateurish either. It's shot with style, the lighting does evoke a spooky atmosphere and the effects are above average. The soundtrack is haunting and has a charming 80s feel, while not quite being as good as that of the original it doesn't date the film like it did with Necropolis and Rave to the Grave. James Karen and Thom Andrews return, and do great jobs carrying the film, Karen in particular is hysterical. The zombies are at least well-utilised, and while not very threatening at least exude some personality.

On the other hand, while the production values are mostly good the zombie make-up is very much mixed, some of it is okay (while never on the same level of the make-up in the first film, it's never as pathetic as Rave to the Grave) but at other times the zombies look like Thriller-rejects. There is a lot of bad acting here in a film where Karen and Andrews give the only good performances, Suzanne Snyder is particularly annoying as Brenda, one of the series' most obnoxious characters. The characters in general here are very bland, and there's little engaging or endearing about them. The direction is sometimes efficient but sometimes rather languid, while the story is basically just a very predictable and sometimes repetitive re-hash of the first film's but with few of the ingredients that made its predecessor work so well. The film's biggest problem is that it has more emphasis on comedy than scares, this may not seem a problem at first but unfortunately the original achieved a much better balance between comedy and scares whereas this doesn't do very well with either. Scares are barely there in fact and the gore gets tiresome, and worse the comedy is incredibly strained in places with some of the better (if not by much) moments being completely unintentional.

In conclusion, passable first sequel but its predecessor is so much better. 5/10 Bethany Cox

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.