Le retour des morts-vivants 3

Return 3 starts off very poorly. Actors are pretending to be in the military in a very cheap looking set. As usual in many low budget horror movies, moronic teenagers decide to break into a top secret military facility for fun.... <sigh>, and naturally accidentally release whatever the base is trying to contain. I was prepared at that point for the worst and settled myself in for 90 minutes of frustration. Return of the Living Dead 2 was one of the worst sequels I had ever seen, so I really wasn't expecting much from Return 3. But then something happened, and Return 3 got better and better. There was a real story! The director actually tried for some character development! There was suddenly plenty of extremely well done gore! There were some moments of real horror!

The scenes where Julie starts cutting and impaling herself were difficult to watch, that's how well done they were. The movie moves from a cheap horror-comedy into a well put together love story with incredibly gory effects. I actually really felt for the main couple, even though she was slowly turning into a zombie! Normally, one of them would get whacked which would give the remaining person a few lame Arnold-type lines, and an excuse to obliterate whatever (or whomever) is supposed to be the bad guy. However, this movie doesn't follow that formulaic path. It takes a very weird turn halfway through and never looks back.

When Julie makes her transformed appearance in the sewer, it is truly an awe-inspiring site! They actually managed to make her look both incredibly repulsive and very sexy at the same time. This film reminded me a lot of the Ginger Snaps movies in the type of character development pursued within the confines of a horror movie. Very pleasant surprise.

8/10

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.

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

Return of the Living Dead III is the type of horror film you can watch with your friends, or your girlfriend. It is a film with a romantic (yet tragic) edge to it that saves it from the muck of sequel overkill. The story follows a young man who, after seeing his girlfriend die who he loves so much, brings her back to life in a top secret facility with the gas that brings back the dead from part 1 (without them being able to get electricuted), but then strange things happen. Clever horror with a edge, with it's only problem not stopping too often and of course the sequel overkill. Still worth a look, especially for horror enthusaists who don't believe there's life after part 2. A-

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.