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The original The Return of the Living Dead did the seemingly impossible. It was a spoof of a horror classic (the George Romero Living Dead classics) and actually made not only a watchable film, but added to the lore in a significant way. The trope that zombies like to eat brains comes from this series, not Romero’s. The second movie in the RotLD series was a huge step down in quality, mainly because the comedy didn’t work. The third film, Return of the Living Dead III (or Return of the Living Dead Part III if you prefer) is kind of a return to form. There are a lot of changes, though, the biggest being that this third and final film in the series doesn’t really attempt the comedy.
We do have to stick with the series, though, so we’re going to pick up five years after the previous film. Young Curt Reynolds (J. Trevor Edmond) and his girlfriend Julie (Melinda “Mindy” Clarke) steal his father’s access key card to the military base he works on, and the two go exploring. While there, they discover that Curt’s father (Kent McCord) is in charge of experiments that involve re-animating the dead. However, the experiment goes wrong, and because of this, Curt’s father is reassigned.
However, Curt wants to stay with Julie (and with good reason, given that Julie is a stone-cold early ‘90s vixen), so the two of them run off on Curt’s motorcycle. Julie, excited at the prospect of life with Curt and without supervision, grabs Curt’s crotch, causing him to lose control, which sends Julie into a telephone pole, killing her. But, Curt has seen the dead come back to life, so he returns to the military base and reanimates her, and evidently does this quickly enough that Julie has maintained a sense of herself.
From this point forward, what’s going to happen is a sort of exploration into Julie’s descent into zombie-dom and the necessity of infecting a few people along the way. While the living dead in the previous films had some sense of personality, Julie is fully herself, aside from the growing hunger within her. She learns that pain causes the hunger to abate, and over time, she starts to adorn herself with glass shards, nails, spikes, and anything else she can find. Of course, the people who get in Julie’s and Curt’s way are going to find themselves on the wrong end of Julie’s bite radius. And, because of what she is, the people who help them, mainly an unhoused man called Riverman (Basil Wallace), are going to end up in the path of destruction as well.
As mentioned above, Return of the Living Dead III splits from the previous two films by not really going for the comedy. Instead, there’s much more emphasis on creating variations of the zombies that are deformed, gory, and in various stages of goopiness. There’s a lot of blood and gore in this, and that’s really what the audience is here for. It’s an interesting way to take the series. The success of the first film is in large part due to its successful blending of comedy and entertaining, humorous gore moments. The failure of the second movie was the fact that the humor was essentially just dumb people doing dumb things. Here, we don’t need to worry about any of that. It’s a straight horror movie, albeit one without a huge budget, and where most of the budget went to creating the monsters, as it should have.
For everything that Return of the Living Dead III might want to do, the real story here is the character and creation of Julie. If you look this up online, the DVD cover is a version of her, spikes, glass, and all. She is a fascinating character because unlike the previous infected characters from the previous movies, Julie is actually completely sentient, and is both guilty and disgusted with herself for craving (and eating) brains. She’s interesting also because of her sudden fascination with self-mutilation as a way to reduce her incessant cravings for brains. She’s human enough that she hurts herself to stop her from eating Curt.
The most interesting thing about Return of the Living Dead III is that it’s a completely stand-alone movie. Knowing the basics of the story of the first movie (and the second if you need it), what happens makes a little more sense, perhaps, but not a great deal more. If this is the first movie you see in this series, you won’t feel lost at all; this stands entirely on its own as a film regardless of its position in the series.
I knew this had a much better reputation than the first sequel, but I expected something much more like that film. Having this be more serious works well, and this was better than I expected it to be.
Why to watch Return of the Living Dead III: It’s vastly superior to the first sequel.
Why not to watch: If you’re expecting comedy, you won’t get it here.
