What the hell happened to Return of the Living Dead III ? Trimark bought the rights and Brian Yuzna, who had made a name for himself in the horror biz after Society (1989) and Bride of Re-Animator (1990), was hired to direct. The only few questions he had before signing, were: Do the movie have to continue the characters? (No.) That was good to know. Do we need to bring back actors? (No.) Does it have to be funny? (No.) So what does it have to be? You gotta have the Trioxin and brain eating. Yuzna had a problem with the brain eating as he found it too cliché and comical. All his horror films are comical, but whatever. The script was written by John Penney, who worked as assistant editor on the first film.
The film was a box-office disaster and only grossed $54,207 in the USA of a $2,000,000 budget. Oof. Solid movie, though!
Julie (Melinda Clarke) is a young rebellious sadomasochist ginger with looks that could kill and has an impressive high pain threshold that would even make Pinhead and Kakihara raise their eyebrows, and maybe other things. Her boyfriend is Romeo, I mean Curt (J. Trevor Edmond), and one night they don’t have better things to do, they sneak into an Army research lab where Curt’s dad works. From a hiding spot, they witness something interesting where a cadaver, Tarman, I assume, gets rolled into the lab to be tested with the Trioxin as their plan is to use zombies as bioweapons. And poor Tarman. He looks rough as hell and completely destroyed after all the hard partying in the 1980s. Mötley Crüe can relate and Dr. Feelgood is certainly not in this building.
Fun fact: under the makeup (if there actually was makeup at all) of this particular zombie, is the legendary Clarence Epperson ― a homeless man who lived by the Los Angeles Airport where the exterior scenes of the military base were shot. In the interviews on the Blu-ray we can also learn that he was on meds, lived in his “own world“ and had to be looked after so he didn’t disappear. Huh, interesting…
Anyway, the Trioxin works and one of the lab doctors puts his fingers into his mouth, because that’s what lab doctors do, and next we have a messy bloodbath that’s more gory than the first two films combined. He eventually gets taken down, and to Curt’s frustration, Julie just seems exited over what they just witnessed. They can’t even have sex without having her fascination of necro come to mind. How nekromantik. Jörg Buttgereit wants your phone number, Julie. Yes, she’s a bit “strange and unusual“, we can say, who could as well be the sister of Trash from the first film. Then tragedy strikes with a motorcycle accident where Julie flies off and knocks her head straight to a pole…and dies. RIP. So you thought. After Julie gets resurrected in the lab after sneaking her fresh dead body in, we have an urban chaotic odyssey of pain, screaming, tears, a hurricane of strong feelings, and of course, brain eating, and more fun gory stuff.
And speaking of: the gore/prosthetic effects and Melinda Clarke is everything about this movie. Melinda has admitted that she’s not a horror fan, and took the inspiration of playing a messed-up zombie junkie after portraying Nancy Spungen in the theater play Vicious. The rebellious look of Julie with the nose-and lip ring was her own idea, and she actually had to fight with the studio because they found it to be “too much“. So did the MPAA. And yes, we’re talking about USA, not North Korea. We have come a long way with Art the Clown, haven’t we. Some of the producers must have gotten a serious stroke when they saw her in her full zombie-makeup/outfit where she looks more like a Cenobite from Hellraiser, and gives the horniest Kubrick stare ever put on film. And we’re sure to have close-ups so we can see the nice, grotesque details of what she has done to herself. There’s also a “logic“ explanation of why the self-mutilation has more importance than just pure shock value, something that Yuzna had to explain to the censor bureaucrats to avoid the big bad X-rating.
The third film takes a big leap from the comedy, and that was maybe for the better. You could easily remove the Trioxin name and the film would’ve been exactly the same, and works perfectly as a standalone. The original working title was Curt and Julie. Lame. In Spain it was released under the alternate title Mortal Zombie. Much better, and even Yuzna agrees. That said, the silly and eccentric undertones reeks through the cracks, especially during the zombie outbreak with some gooey animatronics and goofy cartoonish growl sound effects. Nothing to take serious even though Melinda Clarke and James Callahan plays it strong and straight all the way through. It’s well-directed and relatively fast-paced with little to no dull moments where we actually have a fourth act, so that none of the impressive gore effects and some more surprises goes to waste. Great, tasty stuff and certainly one of the goriest zombie movies to come out of the 1990s, at least on the surface level.
And this is the second time (I believe) the film has been released in “Full Uncut Version“. That was until 2024 when it came to light that there’s actually even more lost footage, of eight minutes to be exact, that was rediscovered by filmmaker Dustin Ferguson when he saw the first cut on a T-120 VHS Master. Well… good for him. The Blu-ray from Vestron Video has nevertheless more than enough meat, brains and red corn syrup to fill your stomach.
Director: Brian Yuzna
Writer: John Penney
Country & year: USA, 1993
Actors: Kent McCord, James T. Callahan, Sarah Douglas, Melinda Clarke, Abigail Lenz, J. Trevor Edmond, Jill Andre, Michael Decker, Billy Kane, Mike Moroff
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107953/
