Return of the Living Dead III |
  • USA / Japan • 1993 • 97m •   • Directed by: Brian Yuzna. • Starring: Kent McCord, James T. Callahan, Sarah Douglas, Melinda Clarke, Abigail Lenz, J. Trevor Edmond, Jill Andre, Michael Decker, Billy Kane, Mike Moroff, Julian Scott Urena, Pía Reyes, Sal Lopez. • Music by: Barry Goldberg.      Colonel Reynolds and his group of government scientists continue their work on re-animating the dead for military use. His son Curt and his girlfriend Julie use Dad's security pass to sneak in and watch the proceedings. Later when father and son have a disagreement, Curt and Julie take off on a motorcycle and Julie is killed in an accident. Grief-stricken, Curt takes her body to the lab and brings her back to life. Curt must help Julie deal with her new existence as military agents and local gang members try to find them.
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Review:
While this one is WAY different than the previous two, I'm still glad I watched it. Part 3 is way darker, meaner, serious, and sad. A cast made up of mostly unknowns, except maybe for Basil Wallace. (Remember him from the Segall film "Marked for Death"?)
Here's the plot line: This guy Curt (Trevor Edmund, the guy I really hated in Pumpkinhead 2) and his girlfriend Julie (Mindy Clarke, really gorgeous, I'm talkin' marriage-worthy) are madly in love and dream of "gettting away from it all" by running away to Seattle where Curt can become a rock star and Julie can come to watch him play the clubs every night or some stupid thing like that. Anyhow, times are hard for the two teens. Curt's father is a military scientist who has to relocate like every six months or so. Curt's father has been working on this new experiment so that the military will have a cheaper, more efficient way of warfare (You know, bringing the dead back to life and using them as robotzombie killers, cause they just won't go down). When Daddy breaks word to Curt that they will be moving in a week, he hops on his motor-scooter, Julie in tow, and tears ass outta there, headed for Seattle (guess this movie was made when grunge-rock dominated the pop charts). Julie gets a little frisky, on the bike(!) (no one ever said Julie was smart) and naturally, Curt wrecks the damn thing. Julie flys through the air and smacks her noggin on a telephone pole. Boom, she's dead. So what is poor, unfortunate Curt to do? Why take her to the military compound to make use of daddy's new invention. The invention works and Julie comes back to life. However, there are some side-effects. She's got a little craving for human brains and pretty soon, Curt is wondering what the hell he was thinking.
So they leave the compound, still headed for the compound. Along the way, they encounter a convience store clerk, a pack of not so friendly hombres, and a half-crazed guy from New Orleans (with a heart of gold, of course) who calls himself "Riverman". Things take a crash dive from there.
Let me make this clear. This is most certainly NOT a happy film. Yes, there are touches hither and yonder of dark comedy ( "Julie, why the hell are you eating that guy's brains?!" or "Julie, not Him!!!, he was trying to help us!!!") and the gore effects are pretty damn spectacular, but none of this stopped me from raiding the liquor cabinet by the time the final credits started rolling. I mean, this may have been depressing as hell, but it was a horror film of a rare breed. This one took itself seriously and I did, not even once, make fun of it. In fact, no horror movie has had this kind of effect on me since the first time I saw Wes Craven't "Deadly Friend". They are both very similar and very, very cold.
Just because the film may have a real downer of an ending, doesn't keep it from being great. It's nice to see that a recent horror film can take a serious approach and strike the chord that it was meant to hit. It shares the same message of that in "Pet Semetary"; "Sometimes you just gotta let the dead lie". It's worth a look. Just don't expect to be laughing when it's all said and done.
Review by billybrown41@hotmail.com from the Internet Movie Database.
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