Return of the Living Dead III (1993)

nTitle: Return of the Living Dead III (1993)

nDirector: Brian Yuzna

nCast: Melinda Clarke, J. Trevor Edmund, SarahnDouglas, Kent McCord

nReview:

nThere’s this thing that happens only to movie buffs,nyou watch a movie at a certain point in your life, then you revisit the samenfilm 20 years later and suddenly it takes on a whole other meaning, or you seenthings in it you never saw the first time. I guess this has a lot to do withnhow we filter films, books and songs through our own lives, our ownnexperiences. Sometimes you watch a film as a kid and don’t get it, you watch itnas an adult and it makes all the sense in the world. Or vice versa, you lovednit as a kid, and end up hating it as an adult. Return of the Living Dead IIInwas a film that I didn’t think much of the first time I saw it. For somenreason, it just didn’t click with me. I was in my teens and to me, Return ofnthe Living Dead III was something of a letdown because it didn’t have as manynzombies as the previous Return of the Living Dead films did, it didn’t havenscenes taking place in cemeteries with zombies coming out of their graves,nwhich is what I loved about the previous ones. Also, this film has a more serious tone to it, it’s less fun in a way and more of a sci-fi horror film. I had a chance to rewatch Returnnof the Living Dead III the other night and low and behold, I ended up enjoyingnthe hell out of it. In fact, I think it is quite underrated!

nThe story this time around concerns two teenagersnwho are deeply in love, Kurt and Julie. Kurt is something of a rebel; he wantsnto move out with his girlfriend Julie to Seattle to follow his rock and rollndreams of becoming a drummer and living the rock and roll lifestyle. One night,nwhen Kurt and Julie are feeling particularly adventurous, they decide to sneaknin to the secret military base where Kurt’s father works at, to see what kindnof sick experiments they conduct in there. When they do, they discover that thengovernment is experimenting with the reanimation of corpses so they can be usednas bio-weapons! They actually see with their own eyes how the governmentnre-animates a corpse with the help of the chemical compound known as 245 Trioxin!nLater that same night, Kurt and Julie decide to escape, to go off on their ownninto the world; unfortunately in their excitement Kurt and Julie have a motorcyclenaccident and Julie dies! In the middle of his sadness and desperation, Kurtndecides to take Julie back to the military base to bring her back to life! Willnshe be the same Julie when she comes back?

nThis sequel is a bit different than the previous Returnnof the Living Dead films, but at the same time it walks on familiar ground. Itnis different because on the first and second films the military functions fromnbehind the scenes, we known the containers with the zombies inside of them werenmisplaced by the military, and we know they are trying to control the wholenzombie threat, but we only see the military from afar, not so on this thirdnfilm in which we actually go inside the military base where the governmentnconducts the experiments to bring back the dead. This is one of the things thatnI enjoyed the most about this film, how they actually show these grizzlynexperiments and how they can get out of control. Speaking of getting out ofncontrol, the film opens up with this extensive sequence in which we see hownthey reanimate a corpse that is just awesome, the sequence eventually becomesnthis orgy of gore and zombies! If you’re a zombie fan, you will love thesenscenes; they really go into the whole process of how they reanimate the dead.

nThen, the film turns into a Romeo and Juliet type ofndeal with Kurt and Julie, this is where Return of the Living Dead III is alsondifferent to all the others, the love angle. Kurt is alive, but Julie isnundead, how can they ever consummate their love for each other? Will they?nShould they? This film is Melinda Clarke’s show; she is the central character,nthe main attraction. This beautiful actress plays Julie, Kurt’s undeadngirlfriend. I really enjoyed Clarke’s portrayal of the zombie girl. We get tonsee her feeling and describing the change of becoming one of the undead, shendescribes her numbness and hunger with great emotion, and you get to feel somenempathy for her, I dug her performance and you can tell she was really into it.nThe story also complicates itself even further when Kurt and Julie stumble uponnthis gang of trigger happy Chicanos who end up holding a grudge against Kurtnand Julie, they learn the hard way not to mess with a member undead.

nReturn of the Living Dead III was directed by BriannYuzna, a true horror fan and certainly no stranger to the world of the undead. He’snthe director behind Bride of Re-Animator (1989) and Beyond Re-Animator (2003),nplus a slew of other genre films. So we get a horror film that’s directed bynhorror fan for horror fans, you could tell that the guy was aware that he wasnmaking a sequel to Dan O’Bannon’s genre marking Return of the Living Dead (1985).nThey even reference O’Bannon’s original idea for Return of the Living Dead whennthey mention that the ‘245 Trioxin’ chemical compound was originally intendednto be used by the military on the “war against marihuana”. We get the drumsnfilled with zombies, we get the Trioxin, we get the military experiments, sonyeah, this feels a whole lot like a sequel to Return of the Living Dead asnopposed to parts four and five of this franchise which don’t feel like theynexist in the same universe somehow. Also, I have to give Kudos to Yuzna fornmaking such an entertaining flick on such a low budget. You can tell this filmnis smaller in scale then the previous two, yet the creativity and the directionnmake it look better than it should. It even explores new ideas, especially whennit comes to controlling zombies with an exo-skeleton type of thing, cool idea!

nSo we have a film that addresses familiar themes andnexists within the same universe that Dan O’Bannon created, but brings a couplenof new things to the table. My finalnword on this movie is that it is vastly underrated. It has good acting from allninvolved, and it is unusually well written, I was actually a bit surprised atnhow much I was enjoying it. It has great characters in it too; for examplenthere’s this homeless character called “The Riverman” who spews these goldennnuggets of wisdom, LOVED that character! Another plus for the film was the gorenwhich was plentiful. It reminded me of how gory movies used to be. We also getnsome pretty cool looking zombies on this one. The end of the film is thisnzombie blood bath with tons of gore! Anyways, bottom line with this movie isnthat it’s not the greatest zombie movie ever made, and sometimes it shows itsnbudgetary limitations (especially when it comes to the cramped sets) but thenimagination and energy involved elevate it and make it a worthy sequel in mynbook, worth a watch.

nRating: 3 1/2 out of 5