Return of the Living Dead III

Return of the Living Dead III (1993) was released upon the 25th anniversary of the release of Night of the Living Dead (1968). Instead of making another bad spoof, Brian Yuzna wisely decided to make a return to the basics. A creepy and dark horror film. A young military brat and his girl are fooling around on a motorcycle and she's killed in a fatal accident. Grief stricken and severely sprung, the kid takes his girl to the army base where his dad works and takes her to a secret lab and revives her. Sadly the boy doesn't know what he's unleashed and this young "frankenstein" has to destroy his little "creation". If you're going to watch this movie please avoid the "rated" version. As in all of Brian Yuzna's films he likes to make his flicks over the top and very gory. The "family" rental companies carry the "rated" version so "look out" for the "unrated" label. If not then you'll be treated to a bunch of freeze frames and badly cut scenes. A sad tale about true love.

Recommended.

Let's hope this ends the series. If it does then it'll end on a high note.

The third movie in the Return of the Living Dead series marks a change in direction from horror comedy to tragic love story. The plot to this one has a teenage boy (J. Trevor Edmond) using the zombie gas from the first two films to bring his dead girlfriend (Melinda 'Mindy' Clarke) back to life, with horrifying results. This is easily the second best in the series, surpassed only by the first. The '90s wasn't a great time for horror fans. Most of what was being made was cheap straight-to-video stuff. I can count on one hand the number of decent horror movies from that time. This movie would make the cut. It has interesting direction from Brian Yuzna, a refreshing story, and a decent cast. Melinda Clarke is especially good. Definitely worth taking a look at if you want something different.

Teen army brat Curt (J. Trevor Edmond) is so in love with wild, sexy punkette Julie (Mindy Clarke) that he decides not to let her untimely death in a motorcylce accident keep them apart. Thankfully his father (Kent McCord) works at a top-secret military lab experimenting on bringing the dead back to life. Curt sneaks in and uses the "Trioxin" gas to revive Julie, then spends the rest of the movie watching helplessly in horror at her mental and physical deterioration and increasing hunger for human flesh!

Having very little to do with the two previous comic RETURN titles helps Part III overcome familiarity, while director Brian Yuzna delivers loads of brain-munching horror without losing sight of the compelling, tragic central romance. Excellent FX work by Steve Johnson and many others, including Julie's amazing transformation from whimpering ghoul to multi-pierced, S&M femme fatale zombie queen.

This film was released in R and unrated versions. Shoot for the latter.

Score: 7 out of 10

Here we have the third installment in the ROTLD series. It is a Romeo and Juliet-ish tale about ill fated love. Curt is an army brat that met a girl that borders on beigg goth. Curt's father is in charge of a project that will use the trioxin to create an army of undead super soldiers. To impress his girlfriend Julie, they sneak into the army base and witness some experiments. Because these experiments end up failing epically, Curt finds out his father is being reassigned and they must move. Curt chooses Julie over his father and they flee. While on the road they are in an accident that claims Julie's life. Curt uses the trioxin to reanimate her and the zombie fun begins. I liked this better than the first two installments. It was a different take on this subclass of zombie, and the humor was cut way down. Melinda Clark steals every scene she is in as Julie. The rest of the cast, the acting is on par with what one might expect from this kind of film.

I was reluctant to watch the third part of the series (I have no interest in the second) as I knew the character of Burt would no longer be joining us. The death of Burt in the first ROTLD is one of the most unfortunate things in all cinema and had me depressed for weeks. I had further reservations when the logic of the first one was changed significantly--people in this movie are turned into zombies when bitten by one, which was not part of the original at all (this was also not the case in "Night of the Living Dead," but Romero put it into the sequel. It seems to be a weird detail that was obliquely added to the zombie genre and is now taken for granted). There is also some uncertainty as to why the resurrected character Julie even wants brains. In the first one, the zombies can feel themselves decomposing and only brains can relieve the pain--in this one, she is just inexplicably hungry, and brains... make her full, or something. This leads to a rather hilarious scene in which she's stuffing all sorts of food into her mouth at a gas station and had me wondering if the movie was going to be idiotic, but at that moment the director hits the clutch and the plot veers into full throttle awesomeness. (And in retrospect it's not that big a plot hole; maybe she can't feel herself rotting yet but her body knows it's happening and desires brains.)

We begin following Julie and her boyfriend Curt (weird side note: these are the names of my aunt and uncle!) as they aimlessly run through the streets while pursued by a gang, with Julie becoming more insatiably hungry by the minute. It's top-notch horror. A lot of horror movies have you wondering, "Why don't they just get HELP or something," but here it is clearly impossible for the police or medics to do anything, and you're as stumped about what the characters should do as they are. There's no feeling superior to them, a hard trick to pull off in a horror movie. Eventually, Julie attempts suicide and is rescued by a black man dressed like a Jedi Knight, and here I was no longer sad that Burt wasn't around because this new fellow actually out-awesomes Burt. He takes them to a room in a sewer which he has converted into some sort of temple and announces, "YOU CAN CALL ME... RIVERMAN," whereby I was able to conclude that if I were somehow put in charge of the MPAA rating system, I would rate every movie based on whether or not Riverman was in it (Riverman being played by cult actor Basil Wallace, best known as Screwface from the badass action movie "Marked for Death"). It is while in Riverman's lair that Julie discovers extreme pain can take her mind off brains, leading to the famous scene wherein she mutilates herself beyond recognition (some may see this as another plot hole, since the original ROTLD zombies needed brains to take their minds off pain, but I believe Julie still has enough of a conscience that she prefers the pain to killing). The astute viewer will realize here that all this eating and cutting on Julie's part seems to be referencing some actual real-life issues, although I'm not entirely sure what the point of it is. It might be just a joke, but the tone is dark enough that it makes a sobering addition to an already depressing story.

There's more awesomeness that I don't want to spoil here--I will only say that the freaky zombies from the first movie make an appearance at the end, bringing it all to a chaotic conclusion. Mindy Clarke is AMAZING as Julie--she makes a believable performance out of a role that is far different than the usual teen-horror "scream queen." The doomed bond between her and Curt works as both straight horror and tragedy, and the slick direction and elaborate set pieces make this a fine action flick as well. It's not quite as fun as the first in the series, but it's definitely impressive on its own, and I can honestly rate it as one of the better movies of the 80's. Check it out. 7/10.