‘The Return of the Living Dead’ and Its Most Memorable Zombie, Tarman [It Came From the ‘80s]
It Came From the ‘80s is a series that pays homage to the monstrous, deadly, and often slimy creatures that made the ‘80s such a fantastic decade in horror.
George A. Romero may have set a terrifying new standard for modern zombie movies, but it was Dan O’Bannon (Alien, Lifeforce, Total Recall) who proved just how funny zombies could be. Filled with outlandish humor, punk rock attitude, and endlessly quotable lines, The Return of the Living Dead remains one of the best horror comedies of all time. The bumbling humans fighting their way through an accidental zombie outbreak found an opposing foe far smarter and more talkative than zombies that came before. Many of which standout in a cast of colorful characters. Ahead of them all, though, stands Tarman, one of horror’s most endearing and expressive undead.
Tarman is the ground zero zombie in The Return of the Living Dead. When Frank (James Karen) shows new employee Freddy (Thom Mathews) the ropes at the Uneeda Medical Supply warehouse, he leaves no corner of the place uncovered. Including the large canisters in the basement containing military chemical 2-4-5 Trioxin, and a corpse, of course. Frank decides to show off further by testing the drum’s sturdiness; he pierces it instead. It lets loose the gas that reanimates all of the dead in the vicinity. Considering the warehouse is adjacent to a cemetery, well, it’s terrible news for the living. When Freddy’s friends come looking for him, they find the gangling, slimy corpse from the cannister, lovingly dubbed Tarman for his oozing tar-like appearance. Tarman is very, very excited to be in the presence of live brains. Poor Suicide (Mark Venturini) becomes breakfast.
A significant component of a special makeup effects artist’s job is problem-solving. They have to adapt and find viable solutions under the pressures of time and financial restraints, consistently. The production for this film came with a whole new layer of difficulty for Kenny Myers (The Crazies, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End) and his team. That’s because he was hired three weeks into the six-week shoot, after the film’s original makeup effects artist had been fired. Since all of the previous artist’s work had fallen apart after three weeks of filming, it meant Myers and crew had to start over.
Luckily, they didn’t have to start entirely from scratch; production designer William Stout (The Mist, Pan’s Labyrinth) was overseeing the shoot and had a lot of watercolor sketches of the living dead to model the makeups after. The previous artist had already created Tarman, which had already received some camera time, so Myers could only improve and tweak the design. His first step was to make the undead character as expressive as Stout’s sketches.
He started with the eyes; the original look featured painted ping pong balls, but Myers gave them more depth, new irises with lenses, and then coated them with epoxy for that glazed, life-like look. He hired a seamstress to rebuild the suit entirely, which was then covered with methylcellulose for the slimy effect.
While Allan Trautman (The Happytime Murders) played Tarman, the closeup of the zombie biting into Suicide’s skull was played by Myers’ hand, who rigged the head of the Tarman suit to work as a puppet. He and his team created an insert for the mouth the hide his hand as he puppeteered the biting action. The crew made a fake head for Suicide out of gelatin for the closeup of the bite.
Though his on-screen time is relatively brief, Tarman remains one of horror’s most memorable monsters of all time. From the way his eyes get big with excitement, to the way he gurgles out that iconic word, “Braaains!”; it’s endearing and downright impressive when you consider how much turmoil went on behind the scenes in bringing him to life.
