Return of the Living Dead 3

(1993) *1/2



If nothing else, this franchise displayed balls for rearing its head after Return of the Living Dead 2.

Rebellious teen Kurt and his girlfriend Julie spy on his father’s top secret zombie experiments at a high security military base. Later, while the two are flying down the highway, Julie causes the motorcycle to crash after grabbing his package. Her body fatally slams into a telephone pole. Kurt vows to make things right and he sneaks her body back into the base to revive her. Success! Julie is okay and the lovers sneak off. Meanwhile a barrel of the highly toxic Trioxin spills, resulting in a fresh bunch of traditional RotLD zombies. These zombies are similar to the Romero ones, only they eat brains and specifically request them. Here we go again.

Julie remains human but develops an insatiable appetite for brains. The other zombies cause the usual chaos while Kurt’s dad relentlessly searches for him. Julie, aware of her brain snacking habit, attempts suicide by jumping off a bridge. While Kurt searches for her body, he is befriended by a homeless man who offers him shelter in the sewer. He is known only as River Man. He looks deranged but his words make a strange, prophetic sense. River Man nurses Julie back to health and gives Kurt a coin of good fortune. He asks Kurt to do something nice to someone then give that person the coin. That way there will always be good in the world.

[Hello -anybody home? This is a zombie movie people! At this point the blazing incompetence can no longer be ignored...]

Julie stays in that half zombie/half person state throughout the film. Towards the end she becomes a fetishistic super zombie with piercings galore but it’s too little too late, everything is already beyond salvageable. It’s a real shame that Kurt never gets bitten; he would have made a great zombie as he's tirelessly stupid.

Example: After Julie rips a head and spine out of a man he sincerely asks “What happened to you, Julie?” apparently forgetting that he dragged her corpse into a military complex before bringing her back to life using toxic substances. And when the whole country is in a state of emergency he wonders “What have I done?”

It's what you haven't done, Kurt.