Return of the Living Dead III (1993)
Wake up, caca!
THE SUMMARY: A high schooler’s girlfriend gives him a lethal handy on a motorcycle ride as they crash and she dies, and he uses his dad’s connection to a secret military project to reanimate her, but then they kill themselves anyway because of all the other reanimated zombies they created. This is not The Walking Dead. This is not World War Z or 28 Days Later or even Shaun of the Dead. As my wife said, this is the sort of movie Blockbuster used as a placeholder when the movie you really wanted was completely rented out. At best, it’s only enjoyable because of how bad and cringe it is.
FROM MOVIE-PICKER STEPHEN: This movie was ahead of its time as zombies go in and out of fashion. Melinda played a goddess of a coherent zombie that ended up having to kill some trash Mexicans, which Blonde might find entertaining. Matt and Blonde also might still be aware of my history with Melinda. I have selfies, a Zoom screen grab with her, and fan art where Blonde might remember the two-foot tall clay statue I made of her.
JAMIE AND JEANNE’S AI FACESWAP ART:
Nice jewelry, ese!
Well, at least these two aren’t supposed to be teenagers.
I’m just thankful we were spared from the t*ts-out scenes.
REVIEW NOTE: Usually I will link to clips I’m referencing, but there are very few clips from this movie on YouTube and elsewhere. I could cut and upload clips myself, but that’s far more work than this movie deserves, especially during the holidays.
THE BEST:
The occasional cool effect: That one zombie that ripped itself apart was decent. The Mexican gang guy who got his head ripped off was okay. The Asian shop owner with half his skull missing was pretty good. And of course, the final form of Julie is certainly unique and memorable. But these are mere moments of mediocrity in 90-plus minutes otherwise wasted.
Quality cringe, if you like that sort of thing: If you like to laugh at stories that make no sense, characters that are poorly written and acted, effects that are completely unconvincing and cheap, or any other sort of cinematic failure, there’s a hint of a smirk and a chuckle here and there.
THE WORST: Literally everything. This movie is exceptionally terrible in all aspects.
Terrible story: Let me count the plot points that make no sense: military discipline dad walks in just as his teenage son finished banging his girlfriend and has no apparent objection. Curt just ‘Weekend at Bernie’s’ his dead girlfriend into a high-security military base using his dad’s access card and the guards have no questions about it, either how he’s clearly not a senior officer, or why he’s carrying a clearly visible dead body. After getting busted for previously breaking in, Curt re-enters the military base later, and not only do base personnel have no problem with his presence, but they volunteer the secrets of the operation to him, unprompted. Curt’s dad learns that his son stole his base access key, and doesn’t care about it at all. Curt’s dad keeps referencing his dead mom, which is unexplained and has no apparent relevance to the story anyway. The people at the military base keep using weapons that are ineffective against the zombies, even after learning those weapons are useless.
And even beyond these nonsense points, the story just sucks anyway. A guy’s girlfriend dies, so he makes her a zombie and they ruin the world with more zombies before they kill themselves. The end. Nobody cares. There’s nothing meaningful about it.
Terrible characters and acting: Each new character is worse than the last. Why is this middle-aged Mexican guy so hellbent on chasing teenagers around? Why is this weird ‘magical negro’ hobbling around insistently helping a stranger, as though that’s what LA bums do? I’d call him a Rafiki ripoff, but this movie came out the year before The Lion King, to be fair. And why is Curt’s dad such a bad parent? He watches his son engage in degenerate and criminal behavior without intervention, repeatedly, all the way up to suicide. And all this after saying he owes his son more attention and time, which he doesn’t provide. He deserved a gruesome death himself, but we didn’t even get that satisfaction.
(Mostly) terrible effects: When Curt and Julie first see the military base worker processing body parts, he moves a severed leg like a feather, because it’s made of foam. Julie’s attempted suicide jump into the river is done with a horribly unrealistic completely stiff dummy. Curt’s ‘wound’ makeup from the motorcycle crash is just three lines of strawberry jelly drawn with a Q-tip. Many of this movie’s effects wouldn’t even be considered high-effort for a neighborhood Halloween haunted house. Though yes, as mentioned, I’ll exempt final-form Julie from this criticism. That character aesthetic is about the only thing this movie did well.
Terrible cinematography: The camerawork is frequently awful. Many shots are overly tight on characters’ faces, and much of the motion is abrupt and confusing - see the bizarre, home video-looking zoom-out when Curt is screaming after Julie’s motorcycle crash death. There are bigfoot sightings filmed more artfully.
Why am I seeing what are supposed to be teenage Ts?: The bare boobs really caught me off-guard. Aren’t these supposed to be teenage characters? Sure, Melinda Clarke, the Julie actress, was in her mid-twenties when this movie was made, but if the premise is these characters are minors, why are we seeing sexualized nudity? And even more confusingly, why does YouTube allow these completely exposed nips?
THE RATING: 2/5 Wickies. The ‘so-bad-it’s-good’ enjoyment earns a Wicky since I wasn’t completely bored, but otherwise this movie is remarkably awful. I’m glad to see almost nobody in it went on to have a significantly successful career. They all deserve to be put down.
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NEXT WEEK: American History X (1998)
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