In our weekly seriesAnatomy of a Nude Scene, we're going to be taking a look at (in)famous sexscenes and nude scenes throughout cinema history and examining their construction, their relationship to the film around it, and their legacy. This October, we're heading back to Horror Town for a quartet of scary movies with great nudity! This week, sheepish producersturn Linnea Quigley's nude scene in The Return of the Living Dead from obscure to infamous!
Dan O'Bannon is a legend in the world of science fiction cinema, having been one of the writers on such classics as Alien, Blue Thunder, Tobe Hooper's Lifeforce, Paul Verhoeven's Total Recall, and the cult classic Dark Star. However, for all his genre bonafides, he's only directed two films: 1991's completely forgotten H.P. Lovecraft tale The Resurrected, and the much more highly regarded 1985 zombie-punk movie The Return of the Living Dead. While not at all related to the George A. Romerozombie films—this one hit theaters one month after Romero's Day of the Dead—the film does have its roots in the 1968 original Night of the Living Dead.
Author John Russo was an old college friend of Romero's who helped him develop the idea for Night of the Living Dead. Russo went on to pen several scripts utilizing the phrase "Living Dead," the rights to which he exclusively retained, which goes some way toward explaining the absence of the word Living from the titles of all the Romero-directed zombie sequels. However, despite this adjacency to Romero's franchise, The Return of the Living Dead and its four sequelsare not considered part of the same "cinematic universe," to borrow a popular phrase of the time, though it originally looked like it was heading that way.
Russo's attempts to get a competing zombie flick into the marketplace first took him to the doorstep of grand guignol master of the time, Tobe Hooper. In 1983, Hooper and Russo announced that 1984 would see the release of a 3D film with the titleThe Return of the Living Dead. Not long after, the short-lived 3D renaissance of the early 80s came to a screeching halt and Hooper got a better offer to make the much larger budgeted Lifeforce for Cannon Films. Russo and producer Tom Fox next turned to the writer of that film, Dan O'Bannon, to give their Return of the Living Dead script a polish, before attempting toconvince him to take over as director.
O'Bannon agreed to take over as director on the condition that he could dramatically rewrite the script so as to better differentiate his zombie world from Romero's. The film that Hooper was going to make, based on Russo's original script, was more or less a direct sequel to Night of the Living Dead, and O'Bannon didn't want to step on any toes as Romero had already released his own sequel,Dawn of the Dead, in 1978. O'Bannon pitched producers on the idea of a cheekier take on the genre, inserting much more humor into the film as a different way of conveying the subtly hidden social commentary.
While the producers were game, Russo was not and left the project, retaining only a story credit. He would later write a novelization based on his original script, and though it was released as atie-into the film, it bears no resemblance to the finished product. The setting, however, remained the same finding the film set in a medical supply warehouse where are a group of yokels unwittingly unleash a toxic chemical that reanimates the corpses at a nearby cemetery over the July 4th holiday weekend. O'Bannon diverged into his own story, however, with a group of teenage punks setting up camp in the cemetery at the same time, putting one of the most hated demographics in America at the time at ground zero for the zombie apocalypse.
The punks carry such names as Trash (Linnea Quigley), Scuz (Brian Peck), Suicide (Mark Venturini), and Spider, played by Miguel A. Nuñez Jr., better known as Juwanna Mann, but who also appeared in that same year's Friday the 13th: A New Beginning as the "Oooo baby, oooo baby," guy. The script called for Quigley's character to kick off the graveyard party by stripping nude and dancing to "Tonight (We'll Make Love Until We Die)" by synthpop band SSQ, who composed another song titled "Trash's Theme" for the film.
On the night the scene in question was to be shot, producers TomFox and Graham Henderson were on the set and were caught off guard by the fact that Quigley was stripping completely nude in the scene. Worried that any exposed genitalia might earn them a dreaded X-rating, Fox and Henderson demanded O'Bannon figure out a compromise. They decided to devise a special plastic apparatus to go over her crotch that still left her buns exposed, but covered her labia. Once the makeup team blended it, Quigley was left with—in O'Bannon's own words—"a Barbie doll crotch, with no detail."
It likely seemed like no big deal at the time, as O'Bannon and the producers couldn't have possibly foreseen the era of high definition restoration that would eventually expose their dirty little secret. Rumors flew about the scene for years, but it wasn't until the film got released on Blu-ray that it was confirmed she's sporting a Barbie doll crotch...
Obviously this factoid did little to dissuade audiences who helped the film gross $14 million against a budget of $4 million, spawning four sequels and keeping the zombie craze rolling through the 80s and 90s. The film was also generally well received by critics at the time, with Roger Ebert giving it 3 our of 4 stars, though the film's legend grew as audiences and critics alike helped champion the film as a more-than-competently made genre exercise that manages to be fun and gory at the same time.
One other little thing to note about The Return of the Living Dead and its lasting impression on pop culture. The notion of zombies craving specifically brains comes from this film. While the zombies of Romero's films would just feast on any flesh they could get their hands on, these zombies targeted human brains as their main source of nourishment. So the next time a zombie cosplayer lumbers your way chanting "Braaaaaaains," remind them of this fun fact. Cosplayers love when people do that!
For more Linnea Quigley goodness, check out our Anatomy of a Nude Scene: Linnea Quigley Finds a New Use for Lipstick in Night of the Demonsand A SKIN-depth Look at the Nightmare on Elm Street Franchise!
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