1993 Return of the Living Dead III

• Directed by: Brian Yuzna
• Written by: John Penney
• Stars: J. Trevor Edmond, Melinda Clarke, Kent McCord
• Run Time: 1 Hour, 37 Minutes
• Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJypjaGuXKo

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

After the first two movies and in another place, different mayhem ensues as the military tries to weaponize Trioxin animated corpses and things spiral out of control. This one is less funny and more grim than the first two movies were, with no cast returning and barely a hint of the events that came before. The practical effects are nice and juicy.

It’s not bad, but it lacks the unique humor that made the first one so excellent.

Spoilery Synopsis

Colonel John Reynolds meets Colonel Sinclair, here from Washington; she’s been working on reanimating dead people for use as weapons. John says his program is more humane, and then they wheel a corpse into the lab. John notices that he’s lost his ID badge somewhere.

We cut to a bunch of stereotypical teenagers, including Curt Reynolds, John’s son, who has stolen his father’s security pass. His girlfriend Julie wants to investigate because she thinks they’re experimenting on poor, suffering lab animals.

Back in the lab, the corpse is exposed to trioxin. Curt and Julie basically walk right into the warehouse and proceed toward the lab. They watch as the dead man revives. The teens then leave, shocked. The soldiers shoot it in the head, and it dies. No– not really, he was faking it. The corpse sits up and kills one of the techs. Failure! They strap down the dead subject, but then the dead lab tech gets up and starts trouble.

Julie seems obsessed with what they saw at the lab. John comes home and says they’re being relocated due to his failure. They argue and Curt and Julie storm off on his motorcycle, which goes badly. They soon crash, and Julie goes face first into a telephone pole and dies. Then he remembers the key card to the lab in his pocket.

Curt carries Julie’s body into the lab and exposes her to the trioxin, just as he saw it done earlier. Not knowing how all the equipment works, he just punctures the canister. She starts to twitch and move, but the creature inside the canister starts to move as well. She wakes up and doesn’t remember much, and he explains it to her as they leave.

A bit later, John watches the security footage and knows what Curt’s done. Anyone that Julie bites or attacks will also change, and she’s really hungry. They stop at a convenience store, and she’s being weird. The people in the store rob the place, and Julie ends up biting one of them on the way out. Julie also ends up eating the store owner’s brains in the getaway car.

John and the army drive through town, doing “damage contol” and cleaning up the bodies as it spreads. Julie starts sticking herself with pins and screws since the pain makes the hunger go away. She says she’d rather be dead than like this.

Mogo, the criminal that Julie bit, starts getting sick, and Santos, the leader of the gang, decides to find Julie and make her pay. Meanwhile, Colonel Sinclair replaces John as leader of the project, so he takes off alone.

Curt and Julie hide underground with Riverman, a homeless guy who’s got a whole lair in the sewers. She’s still hungry and still cutting herself to relieve the feeling. As Curt sleeps, Julie gets into all kinds of body modifications. The gang continues to follow Julie through the sewers, and they soon catch up. Julie shows up, looking like someone from a Hellraiser film.​​ The gang dies very quickly, but they don’t stay that way.

John shows up and disables the undead gang members. He wants to shoot Julie, who just wants to die. John shoots her as well.

John and Curt make their peace, but Julie has been given to the Colonel as a new project. The Colonel’s specialy is mechanically augmenting the dead with exoskeletons. “Biomechanical weapons driven by meat batteries.” What could go wrong?

We soon find out, as the augmented Riverman breaks loose and Curt releases Julie. Soon, all the monsters are free and the triocin cans are smashed. As they try to get out, Curt is finally bitten by a zombie. He and Julie walk into the incinerator and burn up.

Brian’s Commentary

It takes the basic ideas from the first two films and does something completely new. None of the cast of the previous films makes a return, so this is a sort of reboot.

Unfortunately, they’ve done away with almost all the humor, which was what made the first two films really unique. As a straight-up horror movie, it’s fine, but it doesn’t really fit in with the crazy humor that made the first two films great.

Kevin’s Commentary

I was bracing myself for awfulness, but I was pleasantly surprised by this. It’s not a great film, but it was a decent original continuation of what can happen in a world where Trioxin exists. It was different from the first in the level of comedy which was tamped down, and horror which was ramped up. So it was more of a mid-level straight up horror rather than horror comedy. But still pretty entertaining.