Return of the Living Dead III (1993)

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

I quite enjoy the films of producer/director Brian Yuzna, who had no connection to the first two Return of the Living Dead films and puts his own stamp on this series wit this third entry. The story follows a punk rock girl who happens to witness a secret government project and finds herself turned into a walking talking zombie following a motorcycle accident. Yuzna leaves out much of the comedy of the earlier films and made more of a straight horror films, but he didn't make this a traditional Romero style zombie picture either and instead made the punk rock girl more of a human-like zombie who the audience feels empathy for, which was a new twist on the genre for the time. When this film was first released, I remember being disappointed and wanted a more traditional of zombie siege film, with characters trapped somewhere and surrounded by the hungry reanimated dead, but going into this film knowing it wasn't that type of story, I think I appreciated it more this time around, even if it still isn't exactly a classic or in the same league as Yuzna's best films (those would be "Society" and "Beyond Re-Animator," though I also quite enjoyed "Faust" and "The Dentist").

Return Of The Living Dead 3 is not your standard zombie flick which is a good thing considering the endless amount of zombie flicks having the same f@$&ing concept of survival and $#!+. This is a romance zombie horror film focusing on this douche bag and the broad who's ass is picture perfect and their venture into something a rather and despite the disturbing aspects that the douche is copulating a corpse, love conquers all so f$@& the authorities, I'm humping a dead woman, b!+(#! The gore is abundant and the effects are great, the story is original and nicely executed and the acting is actual good even though the douche was a nozzle and a retard. Even though it doesn't quite follow the same aspects of the two previous entries and, well, it shouldn't of been called Return Of The Living Dead 3 in the first place, it's still a good follow up and is recommended to those for a taste of something different.

Those pesky teenagers, eh? When they're not stinking up the place with bongs and their pop music, they're sneaking into military bases to reanimate their dead girlfriends. Probably quite handy that the teenager in question's dad was in charge of the place too.I was all up liking this one after recently rediscovering the first film, and ignoring the second one (haven't seen it for years and still remember how bad it was). However, I felt kind of let down with this one. I can understand why Brian Yuzna tried to tell the story the way it was, with a tragic romance angle and what not, but due to all the drama and brow-beating (not to mention the teenager shouting "Julie" several hundred times, I couldn't help but feel that the old zombie angle had take a bit of a back seat. I'm not out for teenage love and Romeo and Juliet styles antics - I wants hundreds of the living dead pursuing the living. For brains! The living dead themselves didn't seem to have too much of a handle of them living, breathing folk and were put down before they had a chance to spread, which was a bit of a pity. I don't know - this one wasn't to my taste. Others might like it. Maybe it was played too serious for me.

Interesting 3rd sequel. With a interesting pair of young actors, Melinda Clarke and J. Trevor Edmond playing the ill-fated pair of lovers:Julie & Curt. Not really great acting but very earnest and refreshing. Kent McCord comes off better as Curt's dad,Colonel Reynolds. But then again he's had a lot of experience especially being on the TV series "Adam-12"Sarah Douglas had a good believable role as a snooty scientist but then again she is good at playing those "witch-type"roles. She seems to be typecast in that type of roles.Two actors that were completely miscast were Mike Moroff and Sal Lopez, these two great character actors have had and done way better. But here, being cast as two good old homeboys from the barrio was not believable one minute for me. Don't get me wrong they did they're best but they were just way too old for these type of characters, especially Mike Moroff.Jamaican actor Basil Wallace, who had an excellent debut in Steven Seagal's "Marked For Death", was also miscast somewhat as the homeless Riverman.But all in all a very interesting take on the zombie franchise and lore. Different also because getting bit by Trioxin zombie in the previous two Return of the Living Dead films did not turn the individuals bit into a zombie. However in Return of the Living Dead III it does. interesting note also was that At one point in preproduction, James Karen and Don Calfa were offered roles in this sequel. Both actors declined. Director Brian Yuzna on the DVD commentary regrets not coming up with a more proper name for the film as "Return of the Living Dead III" is too long. He suggested the title "Kurt and Julie" and admits that the title "Mortal Zombie" (which it was called in some places in Europe) was a nice name. And last but least, sadly, only the R-rated version is available on DVD. Those looking for the unrated director's cut will have to hunt for the VHS version :(