"It makes the pain of being dead stop..."

Ahhh, Return of the Living Dead. You know the first time I saw it I hated it. "What?! zombie that can talk and plan and run around?! They only eat brains and their bite isn't infectious?! That's stupid!" Then one day I decided to re watch it. Now its one of my all time favorite movies. Some of that has to do with the characters in the flick they're all pretty awesome. Espcially Suicide, his "you think this is a costume?" speech is hilarious. But mostly I love the EC horror comic vibe the flick's got. Like American Werewolf in London the tone manages to be both creepy and funny without damaging either tone.
Also the Tarman is boss.
Its really weird how this one little punk rock zombie movie managed to work its way into mainstream pop culture. Zombies ate flesh up until RotLD and almost ever zombie movie, comic, novel whatever that came after it. But for some weird reason EVERYONE knows "zombies eat brains". Ask someone to do an impression of a zombie, they're more than likely going to shamble around moaning "Brraaaiiinns," but outside of the Return of the Living Dead you'll almost never see zombies doing that in zombie flicks. Weird, eh? And everyone goes on and on about how 28 days later and the Dawn of the Dead remake introduced "running zombies" but Return did it first in 1985.
Oh and steer clear of the sequels they're pretty crummy. Part two is mostly watchable, and three is pretty good, but neither are as amazing as the first, but anything after part three ... HOO-Boy!