Do viewers of a flick called Return of the Living Dead III really need to be briefed on how zombies work? Yet there it is, just over a half-hour into the film: an army officer laying down the expository nugget that, “If she attacks him, he becomes like her.” Then again, this film’s forebear, the 1985 cult classic The Return of the Living Dead, did introduce some novel approaches to the archetypal zombie, even spearheading the “Brains!” trope. For better or worse, and despite its flaws (which are legion), this third installment does try new things—namely ditching the camp and comedy of its predecessors and injecting a contrived romance angle. It’s dead on arrival.
In terms of tone, this third film is nearly as far removed from the first two movies as The Return of the Living Dead is from George A. Romero’s seminal reanimated corpses. The original film came about because of creative differences between Romero and John A. Russo, who co-wrote 1968’s Night of the Living Dead. As part of their split, the two agreed that Romero’s subsequent films would simply include the Dead in their titles and Russo got to keep the Living Dead nomenclature. Romero, of course, churned out two more horror classics with Dawn of the Dead (1978) and Day of the Dead (1985). Meanwhile, sequels to The Return of the Living Dead, which was adapted from Russo’s novel of the same name, leave much to be desired, especially with this silly third film, released in 1993.
After grimy horror maestro Tobe Hooper dropped out of the first feature in order to work on Lifeforce, Dan O’Bannon was tapped and went on to direct one of the better horror-comedy romps of the ‘80s, a film which not only introduced the brain-eating zombie trope, but also introduced the world to fast zombies, talking zombies and the notion that zombies are virtually unkillable. Gone was the classic “destroy the brain or remove the head” defense. Chop the head off one of these ghouls and now you’re stuck fighting two pieces of zombie.
The success of the punkish The Return of the Living Dead led to inevitable sequels, of which there are four. Return of the Living Dead Part II (1988), however, wasn’t so much a sequel as it was a retelling of the same story in a slightly different way, a la Evil Dead II (1987). It was a strange, ineffective decision that resulted in a pointless rehashing, made all the more perplexing by the fact that actors James Karen and Thom Mathews were back in the sequel as different characters, playing bumbling graverobbers rather than hapless warehouse workers. While Evil Dead II, released a year earlier, succeeded by amplifying the original’s lunacy and slapstick, there is considerably less verve in Return of the Living Dead Part II, and it currently languishes with a (perhaps slightly unfair) 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
The one effective aspect of the first two films that Return of the Living Dead III does successfully carry over is that of the recently infected slowly realizing the horror of their situation before their minds are completely given over to an unholy craving for brains. Karen and Mathews’ respective characters in the first two films get infected through exposure to fictional airborne chemical Trioxin. Upon experiencing the bluing of their skin, dipping internal temperatures and painful stiffening of limbs undergoing rigor mortis, they soon realize that they are dead, steadily transitioning toward depraved brain-lust. There’s even a memorable scene in the first film where a heavily decayed living head-and-torso explains that zombies crave brains to ease the pain of death, because they can feel themselves rot.
This compelling dramatic aspect of a zombie film otherwise mostly playing for ghoulish laughs reappears in Return of the Living Dead III, albeit in far more heavy-handed fashion. When army brat Curt (J. Trevor Edmond) loses control of his motorcycle and accidentally kills his girlfriend, Julie (Melinda Clarke), he thankfully knows just how to bring her back. Using his dad’s keycard, Curt drags the lifeless Julie to a military base where government scientists are experimenting with (you guessed it) Trioxin. To even get to this lurid point, viewers have had to sit through a dozen or so minutes of military types stiffly providing wooden exposition about the secret government project to turn zombies into unstoppable warriors. So, Curt realizes a little blast of the mysterious mist will perk his dead girlfriend right up.
Naturally, Julie doesn’t know what’s going on once she’s brought back, but she does soon find herself stricken with an insatiable hunger. Efforts to fill the void with convenience-store snack cakes prove futile, and soon she’s chomping into skulls instead. While Julie tries to fight off her inevitable descent into zombification, she even discovers a new aspect of the cinematic living dead—evidently, extreme pain can temporarily quell the hunger. Soon Julie is taking a page out of Hellraiser and jamming her flesh with all manner of sharp metal objects, adding a sadomasochistic flair that reminds viewers that this walking corpse is also supposed to be sexy, apparently.
With Brian Yuzna in the director’s chair, eschewing comedy in favor of hammy romance is especially egregious. After all, Yuzna had recently helmed the comedy-horror sequel Bride of Re-Animator, and he would seem to have been primed to do justice to this series’ comedic chops. The absence of recent Yuzna collaborator Screaming Mad George is also unfortunate. While the creature effects here are notable for a sequel of this ilk—the ghouls taking on more of an inhumanly contorted Deadite quality than anything classically zombie—the film not including the practical special effects wizard with whom Yuzna had recently worked on Society, Bride of Re-Animator and Silent Night, Deadly Night 4 also seems like a missed opportunity.
In addition to far too much wooden dialogue between strategizing military types, the film also suffers from some unfortunate treatment of people of color. The lone Black character is a kindly hobo, simply referred to in the credits as Riverman, who ultimately gets experimented upon by the military in an icky scene, and a local gang of baddies are all very stereotypically Hispanic men. Perhaps most unfortunate of all, however, is Curt’s treatment of Julie. After bringing her back to life, he gaslights her often, calls her disgusting when her zombie nature begins to take over and tells her he liked her better before, all while insisting she can fight off the infection if she simply tries hard enough. Of course, minutes after he’s infected himself, he makes the decision for them both to hop into the incinerator, bringing an abrupt close to a melodramatic sequel that takes itself far too seriously to do its tongue-in-rotten-cheek source material any justice.
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