Return of the Living Dead III (1993)

Powerful

Best movie ever!

A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

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").

Having recently witnessed the horrific results of a top secret project to bring the dead back to life, a distraught youth (J. Trevor Edmond) performs the operation on his girlfriend (Melinda Clarke) after she is killed in a motorcycle accident.Apparently when this film came out, it was something of a flop and received mixed reviews. I remember it differently, though by the time I was familiar with the movie it was already out on VHS, so I can't speak to the theater crowd. I felt this was a strong sequel, perhaps even better than part two. Sure, it goes off the track a bit, but that is part of its strength -- it dared to go in a new direction. And looking back now (2015), we see that it comes across even better compared to the awful things following it.Leading this project was Brian Yuzna, who is best known for his work on "Re-Animator", "Bride of Re-Animator" and "Society". Yuzna's work is hit and miss, but he is a horror master to his core and this film is lucky to have him. Writing and producing is John Penney, who is probably less well-known. Penney started his career as a film editor, with his first job being an assistant editor on "The Dorm That Dripped Blood" and also worked on the original "Return of the Living Dead". He ought to be better known, as he has worked in horror for over thirty years now...

The first Return of the Living Dead is by far the best of the series, being immensely entertaining and creepy with very little wrong. This second sequel, and the third in the series, is an improvement over the second, which relied on too much humour (most of which was very forced) and had very few scares, and certainly much better than the fourth and fifth films, both of which were horrendous, especially the latter.Return of the Living Dead Part III does have things wrong. It does start off poorly, with a lack of suspense, some cheesy and out of place comedy (though luckily the film is never too over-reliant on that, allowing the horror and scares to come out for much of the film) some of the worst of the limited budget and it felt like it had jumped to half-way through, and some of the story does feel and wear thin in a few places, doesn't quite sustain the running time, with a very clumsy final five minutes. The limited budget does sometimes show, in some cheap-looking sets and some shoddy effects. The zombies are also very underused.However, the film is very well shot and atmospherically lit, the zombie make-up is some of the best of the entire series and most of the special effects are good. The music is haunting and catchy, with a lovingly nostalgic 80s vibe that never felt dated or cheesily over the top. The scripting is not too bad, it is nowhere near as strained as the second film's and treats its Romeo and Juliet-like story to an enjoyably dark and moving effect if sometimes taking things a little too seriously. While the execution of the story is not perfect, it doesn't try too hard to be funny and it's nowhere near as dull or as incoherent as the succeeding two sequels.It is by far the darkest and most original of the series, it does offer some genuine scares and emotional impact, the gore is suitably harrowing and the last thirty minutes is mostly enjoyably over-the-top and poignantly tragic until the clumsy final five minutes. People will argue that it is nothing like the first two, and that is one of the main reasons why it is the most polarising of the five films and understandably, I for one didn't have a problem with it.The love story is handled with a good deal of emotion and doesn't get too sappy, saccharine or silly. The zombies are underused, but when they do appear they look great and have a real sense of fun and menace, while the characters are some of the more likable and less annoying of the series, Julie is a very interesting character and easy to root for. The direction is competent, and the acting is pretty good, Sarah Douglas chews the scenery is an enormously fun way (and this is coming from a person who is not a huge fan of that kind of acting) and Mindy Clarke is excellent as Julie.All in all, not perfect or great but pretty decent and by far the best of the sequels. 6/10 Bethany Cox

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.