my Movie

Movie Details

Title:   Return of the Living Dead III
Director:   Brian Yuzna
Year:   1993
Genre:   Zombie
Times Seen:   1
Last Seen:   06.27.06

Other Movies Seen By This Director (2)
- The Dentist
- Society

Notes History
Date Viewed Venue Note
06.27.06Internet I guess I never saw this... I know I saw part 2 a looooong time ago and got to revisit the first one a few weeks a go thanks to the Alamo, but both Aaron and Quentin Tarantino both sing the praises of this one so I couldn't pass it up.

First off is it's not funny. I can't remember how ha-ha the second one is but the first is kind of known for being deliberate comedy as well as gory, and since the humor is what turned QT off the series, I can see how he has no problem with this one. It takes the military trioxin story of the series and treats it sans quincy punks or sight gags. no "send more cops" here... it's all about the brain-eating.

It also looks like complete straight-to-video crap. The lighting is horrible, all the sets look like they took five minutes to put together, and most of the acting belongs on TNT. It's also primarily a love story so you have that element ladled on heavy... all together it took me a long time to really get into it because I couldn't help but be distracted by this stuff. But then the main girl freaks out in an orgy of self-mutilation and this movie becomes really awesome.

The gore is pretty good right from the get-go, but seriously... this girl (who I guess is now on The OC) gets all pierced up to the point where all the subjects in that Modify doc I saw a few days ago would be jealous as hell. She turns complete fetishistic badass in one kickass montage filled with close-ups of skin getting pierced, cut, popped, and pulled. When she walks out ready to kick the latino street gang's ass, I found myself oddly turned on for some reason.

From there the gore gets even better. There is an absolutely fantastic shot of a guy getting his lip/chin skin pulled off by her pierced mouth that's just great, plenty of brain-eating, eyeball-gouging, spine-yanking, and steam-burning in a really crazy climactic sequence... but then there's one more scene after that which kicks equal amounts of ass.

According to imdb, a lot of the great gore in the movie was cut out to make a R-rated cut for video release (and it's that censored cut that's now on region 1 DVD) so although I saw the unrated version, it was a 4:3 VHS rip that, while decent, deserves to be better.

So it had a slow first hour or so... but I'm telling ya, once she starts jabbing herself all Tetsuo: The Iron Man -style, this movie becomes gold.