Tarman

“	Live brains!	„
	~ Tarman in Return of the Living Dead

The Tarman is a recurring antagonistic character featured in the Living Dead series. It is a highly decomposed zombie which has been reanimated through heavy exposure to the Trioxin gas, with its most characteristic trait being its badly melted black tissue and muscles, which give him the appearance of being covered in slimy tar. He made his debut in The Return of the Living Dead from 1985, where he was played by actors Allan Trautman and Robert Bennett. Other iterations of the character appeared later in Return of the Living Dead Part II and Return of the Living Dead: Rave from the Grave.

History[]

The Tarman was originally a corpse from the 1960s which had been in a morgue at a VA hospital and had been subjected to a Trioxin chemical spill. The Tarman had been reanimated during the incident, but somehow the U.S. Army was able to "shut everything down", neutralize the Tarman, and seal him in a pressurized canister with Trioxin gas, drying out the body and turning the Tarman into a type of mummy. The canister was one of several which was to be shipped to the Darrow Chemical Company but was misrouted to a medical supply warehouse where the canister sat in a basement for twelve years.

The Tarman is next seen in The Return of the Living Dead in a dried-up state inside a military 2-4-5 Trioxin canister. When Frank Johnson hit the tank, believing that it was strong enough to withstand the blow, a crack on it released the Trioxin gas and reawakened the Tarman, although also melting his skin in the process.

Possibly because Frank and Freddy Hanscom, the new warehouse employee, were knocked out by the gas, and also because they unknowingly turned into triombies themselves, the Tarman didn't pay attention to them and instead climbed out of the tank and went to look for fresh brains. However, since Frank and Freddy were unconscious at the time, they never knew the Tarman reanimated, and instead assumed he melted when his body came in contact with the air.

The Tarman spent most of the film trapped in the basement, until Tina went down there. He sneaked up behind her and attempted to eat her brain. Luckily, she managed to hide inside a locker; although, since the Tarman was desperate, he tried to pry open the door by tying a chain to a rotating winch. While she was trapped in the cellar, her friends heard her screaming and hurried down there. While looking for her, the Tarman managed to get a hold of Suicide and devoured his brains.

Later in the film, when trying to reach the phone in the basement to call the number on the side of the Trioxin canister, Burt Wilson knocked off the Tarman's head by hitting him with a baseball bat, disabling the monster long enough to subdue him and remove him as a threat. The Tarman was most likely destroyed along with the rest of the zombies and human survivors when the military dropped a nuclear bomb on the town in an attempt to contain the outbreak.

Another Tarman made an appearance in Return of the Living Dead Part II, where it was reanimated by Billy Crowley. This Tarman was later knocked into a river by Jesse Wilson. The main physical difference between this Tarman and the one from the first film is that this one had a nose.

The Tarman later had a cameo in Return of the Living Dead: Rave from the Grave as a triombie 5.

Abilities and traits[]

This type of Trioxin zombie at first glance appears to be the weakest of all the 2-4-5 triombies, because of how their muscles and skin are mostly melted and dissolved. However, this is alarmingly untrue, as once they grab hold of a victim, their grip is very difficult to break; not to mention being able to crack open a skull with a mere bite. They walk very slowly and clumsily, with exaggerated movements that are probably the result of having little control left of their bodies due to the extreme damage their muscles have suffered.

In the original film, the Tarman had enough intelligence above its zombie peers, to the point that it quickly solved a problem and used a chain and lever to pry open a metal closet door to reach its victim.

In Rave from the Grave, one of them is fired upon repeatedly and even takes bullets to the head, yet is unharmed. Without a strong assault on their body by using melee weapons, such as a club, baseball bat or thick lead pipe, or any other means, such as by inflicting heavy damage with a vehicle or heavy machinery, they are likely to keep coming until they manage to eat everyone.

Immortal to aging and disease, alone making this one of the harder zombies to put down.

Trivia[]

The name "Tarman" was coined by Spider in The Return of the Living Dead, because of how its melted black muscles made it look as if it was covered in tar. Most of that film's small budget went to creating the Tarman as one of the best visual zombies ever created in horror cinema, combined with Allan Trautman's already skeletal physique and impressive body movements.
The Tarman was the first zombie in history to expose their specific hunger for human brains, a trait that has since become a trope in the zombie mythos worldwide (the yellow naked zombie from the freezer technically was the first, although neither his intentions nor motives were ever revealed).
While zombies in previous diverse media portrayals had shown the ability to emit voice, this was only limited to producing moans and other guttural noises. The Tarman was the first to articulate intelligible phrases (and possibly even a conversation if given the chance, as evidenced by other zombies that were able to do so afterward).
While zombies from previous productions had already shown a limited ability to solve simple problems, such as using door handles or utilizing random items as weapons (although probably acting out of mere instinct), Tarman was the first one to display a relatively advanced level of intelligence, being able to recognize a problem, deduce a quick solution to it, and then carry it out (such as tying one end of a chain to a locker's door and the other to a winch, and then utilize the latter to force the locker open).