Treat Williams stars as a detective who dies in a gas chamber at the laboratory and is brought back from the dead by his coroner ex-girlfriend who instantly figures out what the resurrection machine is and how it works without having ever seen it before. So what does zombie cop do as he visibly decomposes? Of course- he stalks off after the sonofabitch that did this to him. Along the way we go down the check list of action movie cliches- bad guys that can't seem to hit their mark no matter despite destroying everything else in the room (what Roger Erbert dubbed the "Principle of Evil Marksmanship,") situations where the guy with the gun has cornered the person he intends to kill and instead decides to start talking at length, cheesy tough guy one-liners and everything else that would make Duke Nukem proud. Its one of those films that begs to be skewered by Mike, Crow and Servo on MST3K.
I hadn't seen this unintentionally silly romp since that day decades ago but thanks to Netflix I just rewatched it as an adult. As a kid, I thought it was badass. Now, just bad. Hilariously bad, mainly for its predictability and complete reliance on 80's movie cliches.
So the ultimate outcome is that this tecnology was created by an aging business tychoon (presented in the most stereotypical Carter Pewterschmidt fashion possible) who wants immortality so that he can... make MORE money! In a typical businessman-as-amoral-powermad-tyrant fashion, he expalins his intentions thusly:
"Everybody dies, rich and poor. Death doesn't descriminate, at least, not until now... Poor people are supposed to die, but the same rule doesn't apply to us- we're rich. God wants us to live forever and even if he doesn't, we can always buy him off!"
Well, there's a lot of very obvious holes here- first of all, why is it so expensive that only the rich get to use it? The process doesn't seem that expensive, in fact it appears to be ripped right from Frankenstein: just zap 'em with enough electricity to reanimate. They do it to plenty of characters throughout the series without any difficulty at all. Later, when Williams' partner (played by loveable caveman Joe Piscopoe) is similarly reanimated, it is stated that he cannot understand Williams because he has been brain dead "too long." He then responds instantly to orders to kill Williams. So... he was too braindead to understand his old partner but not too braindead to follow that order? After regaining his mental capacities (its never explained how,) he and Williams destroy the machine and- for some equally unexplained reason- they suddenly crossover into what we assume to be heaven.
I didn't want this blog entry to be heavy handed, but I had to take issue with the film's brash assumptions about the rich- that given the power to resurect themselves they would immediately use the technology to screw over their underlings. What if Steve Jobs could have been resurrected? What if the very people that made industry work for the betterment of all of humanity rather than their miscreant, bail out grubbing, lobbyist deploying progeny were back in charge? Well, Occupy would get a kick out of this one.
