Editorials
‘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.
I first heard about The Mandela Catalogue through a couple of nephews who were obsessed with the ARG’s sinister mythology. It was only after watching Wendigoon’s in-depth analysis of the series that I realized just how deep this rabbit hole goes.
In fact, I’d already been exposed to the nightmarish visuals of Alex Kister’s YouTube creation for years at that point without even realizing that it was the origin of several viral “cursed images” and spooky memes that had leaked into the wider internet – with this viral element actually being a part of the Catalogue’s overarching narrative.
Flash-forward to 2026 and the unprecedented success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms has led to Hollywood betting on horrific internet properties with existing fanbases, which means that Kister’s unique hybrid of both religious and analog horror is finally headed to the big screen with a script written by Kister himself alongside Tyler Clifton.
While this news shouldn’t be too surprising if you’ve been keeping up with the ongoing success of The Mandela Catalogue (both myself and Wendigoon having previously predicted that the series would inevitably make the jump to theaters one day), plenty of horror fans are likely confused as to why so many folks are excited for what appears to be a Hollywood adaptation of a series of creepy .jpeg images under a VHS filter.
With that in mind, today I’d like to invite fellow readers to accompany me as I explore the origins of Alex Kister’s viral hit and attempt to explain exactly why we should all be excited about the Mandela Catalogue adaptation!
From High School Writing Project to Internet Horror Phenomenon
The first seeds of The Mandela Catalogue were sown when Kister was still in high school and developed a writing project subverting religious tropes in a world where biblical history had been altered by demonic forces. A little while later, Kister came across an analog horror contest on Reddit and decided to adapt his ideas into a standalone video where he would edit a religious kids’ cartoon –The Beginner’s Bible: The Nativity, to be specific- into something far creepier. This is how the iconic Overthrone video was born, with this viral short film taking on a life of its own as fans demanded more eerie content from Kister.
Though the video was originally meant to be a one-and-done sort of affair, with Kister actually regretting some of its primitive visuals and considering the editing amateurish and “YouTube-Poop-like” when compared to his current standards, fan reaction and free time during the COVID-19 pandemic encouraged the (then) seventeen-year-old filmmaker to continue producing content set in this same world. The Mandela Catalogue name was inspired by the Mandela Effect conspiracy theory, as the series would slowly begin to explore the subtle horror of alternate histories.
Inspired by existential dread brought on by extended periods of quarantine as well as a personal crisis of faith, Kister continued to expand his alternate timeline where the rise of Christianity had been prevented by what was presumably the Devil disguised as the Archangel Gabriel. This alternate course of fictional events led to the existence of certain paranormal anomalies that had come to be accepted as “normal” by the 1990s, which is why most of the series’ supernatural horror is presented in such a matter-of-fact manner.
Most of this background information and religious lore is delivered by increasingly cryptic broadcasts and in-universe PSAs, as well as the occasional found footage video, that often have to be decoded by clever viewers. Of course, it’s the consistently disturbing imagery that made the series so popular – much of which was originally created by Kister on a smartphone!
The Alternates: Horror’s Most Unsettling Modern Monsters
The show’s early episodes mostly take place within the fictional Mandela County in Wisconsin and depict life in a world where demonic entities are capable of using media to enter our reality. This process usually involves scaring victims into killing themselves and then repurposing their bodies as horrific doppelgangers referred to as “Alternates”. This terrifying phenomenon has become so common that local police already have specialized procedures in place to deal with the issue, though this usually consists of simply ignoring calls for help so as to avoid spreading so-called “Metaphysical Awareness Disorder” any further.
Over time, Kister would expand this mythology and incorporate different kinds of Alternates into the mix, though the story never stopped deconstructing religious concepts. The series’ second volume exponentially increased both video quality and the overall narrative scope as we began to follow the lives of characters who had already grown up in this dystopian hellscape where the government is forced to prohibit religion, television, and even mirrors in the hopes of mitigating the damage done by the ongoing invasion of otherworldly entities.
The really interesting part comes into play when you realize exactly how the Alternates make use of scary media in order to spread their demonic influence, with the analog horror of it all being a diegetic part of the story and something of a memetic trap orchestrated by the false Gabriel.
I particularly appreciate how some characters begin to suspect that there’s something wrong with their version of reality and that things weren’t meant to play out this way, especially when Mark utters the haunting line “who have I been praying to all this time?” That’s why I think The Mandela Catalogue is an effective piece of religious horror even if you don’t subscribe to the Christian worldview, as the mere idea of a world where evil has already won is a universally terrifying concept in and of itself. Not only that, but the series’ uncanny analog imagery alone is already worth the price of admission, as you’ve likely already noticed by looking at the pictures accompanying this article.
Why The Feature Adaptation Could Be Horror’s Next Big Success
It’s actually been a whole year since Kister first announced that he had been working on a feature-length screenplay for a Mandela Catalogue movie since 2022, with his proposed story following an ensemble of high-school graduates who uncover a supernatural conspiracy after the mysterious disappearance of a fellow student. This premise sounds similar to narrative elements present in the series’ second volume, but I’m pretty sure that Kister is going to go the Kane Parsons route and make the movie more of a spin-off than a re-imagining of its source material.
While notable Hollywood producers like Aaron B. Koontz, Scott Stuber, and Steven Spielberg himself are backing the upcoming project, I feel like there’s no one better to adapt this deeply personal exploration of faith and the dark side of communication than the person who first came up with it. That’s why I can’t wait to see Kister’s work on the big screen, as I have a feeling that this young filmmaker is the next one on the list about to make cinematic history – especially since this is clearly a passion project that has been in the works for years at this point!
That being said, there’s always a chance that the film could end up unleashing a fresh wave of Alternate incursions, but I guess that’s just a risk we’ll have to take.
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