‘Return of the Living Dead’ is probably my favourite Zombie movie of all time quite honestly, a feverish horror comedy with an acidic punk edge, its daft, genuinely unpleasent in places and wears its strangeness on it’s sleeve. Outside of ‘Shaun of the dead’ I dont think theres finer…I’d seen posters and trailers for ‘Return of the Living Dead III’ for decades by this point, but it was always a case of ‘ships in the night’ I wasnt in the right place to catch it, or I’d miss a screening, or for the longest time it just wasnt really readily available.

But recently Vestron picked it back up for a lovely Bluray remaster which I nabbed, and after being somewhat dissapointed by ‘Return of the Living Dead II’ a while back, I figured this surely HAD to be better. and really? I wasnt dissapointed.

The film ignores Part 2…and realistically kind of ignores part 1 too! Its set in the 90s and follows a young couple Kurt and Julie. Kurts dad works int he military on a top secret project, which quickly turns out to be experiments with Trioxin gas. The aim being to create controllable, storeable zombie super soldiers with it. The couple sneak onto the base at the request of Julie and quickly stumble on the experiments. which…do not go as planned, resulting in Kurts dad being moved onto a different project in a different part of the country.

Kurt doesnt want to move and takes off with Julie to start a new life, but after a chance encounter with an oncoming truck…Well, Julie isnt going to be sneaking into any secret bases again for a while…well…not with a pulse at least.

Kurt takes her back to the base, sprays her with Trioxin and she comes back to life! but…it doesnt take long for him to realise that Julie isnt quite who she was, and when the military find out that shes now reanimated, they send out teams to try and stop her before the infection spreads.

But that plot summary really doesnt quite do justice to the film really, its a love story at its core with overtones relating to self harm, toxic relationships and trauma. Its a solidly paced work that tonally is much more serious than the original ‘Return’ but isnt so uptight to the point it cant acknowledge the absurdity of its own premise.

I think John Penney weaves and interesting script here, with characters who feel ‘OF’ the ‘RotLD’ world, while being distinctly different enough to stand on its own feet and grounding. this is less a wider character study as the original was, and a more insular, closed experience. While the first film dealt with a city wide outbreak, barely half a dozen people ultimately get infected in this one. But the infections themselves are much more powerfully dealt with. they resonate, they feel weighty. the first film could kill 100 people in a few miniutes and not have the impact the last 20 minuites of this film had.

Obviously thats only enhanced by Brian Yuzna’s direction. striking a…surprisingly somewhat mellower balance here than his other offerings (and THAT’S saying something) it doesnt have the eroticism of ‘Society’, it doesnt have the fever dream nightmarishness of ‘Silent Night, Deadly Night 4’ and it isnt as silly as ‘Bride of Reanimator’ though…having seen that this was the film Yuzna picked up right AFTER working on SNDN4 and Reanimator 2…a lot of things just clicked right now.

Its sparingly graphic for most of the runtime. its not garish or in your face in fact for most of the runtime. Instead, it prefers to save its more grotesque moments for peppered moments that hit you from out of nowhere, the zombies twisted and decaying forms are postiively hideous. and there are several ‘self mutilation’ scenes that made me honestly feel quite queasy.

Realistically; Yuzna was probably the best man for the job when it came to a ‘Return’ sequel. and I think here he does an amazing job of uniting the various cast and crew in delivering an experience thats not in amour of the original, but attempts to almost approach the subject from the inverse of the original. Which I really liked.

The cine is intense, hyper colourful, graphic and gross. Yuzna to a tee honestly, and while it IS some of the most disgusting cine i’ve seen in a long time (‘Sickly’ would be the word I’d use) I feel oddly compelled to watch it, almost like im seeing some craft in guts and gore in the same way an artist might use paint…its…hypnotic almost. and in that sense I Think its arguably brillaint.

The editing is razor, this things cut near perfect with hearty amounts of oozy wiggly B-roll to help keep things running along at a great pace. The performances are all JUST on the cusp of going full camp, but theres almost a pressured restraint to that. kind of like watching a group of people on the verge of a collective breakdown, but never QUITE tipping into it. Just…pressure cooker performances honestly. it’s tantalizing.

In fact, the only dissapointments really were the scoring…which was kind of overly generic. Not my thing at all and absolutely a step down over the originals soundtrack, and the fact that even now, due to some supply shortages, the best way generally to check this film is a nasty cropped DVD or VHS version that really doesnt do the film justice.

This isnt as good as the original, but it blows ‘Part 2’ out of the water in my opinion, try and find a good quality HD copy and go in with an open mind. This isnt the comedy antics that the first film had, its a different beast. But if I had to choose between this or ‘Part 2’ as an offical sequel to the original, there’d be no contest. This in a heartbeat. its awesome.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/return-of-the-living-dead-iii/