Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		4.5
Overall		3.5

Return of the Living Dead 3 Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman November 21, 2016

Note: One central plot point in Return of the Living Dead 3 is impossible to avoid in any discussion of the film, and some may feel that this information consitutes a "spoiler". Those averse to such revelations are encouraged to skip down to the technical portions of the review, below.

Relatively recent efforts like Warm Bodies and Life After Beth have attempted to inject a little life (sorry) into the frequently tired zombie genre by positing at least one of the “Walking Dead” as part of a kinda sorta Romeo and Juliet scenario, but fans of zombie flicks will remember that this very plot device was used decades ago in Brian Yuzna’s Night of the Living Dead 3. (For those interested in a brief recap of why some zombie films culled from George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead feature titles that include Living Dead, while others just go with Dead, there’s a little information in the first paragraph of my The Return of the Living Dead Blu-ray review). Yuzna, who’s no stranger to suddenly alive corpses courtesy of his Bride of Re-Animator, talks at some length in one of the supplements included on this new Blu-ray release about how he was given more or less free rein to continue the Living Dead saga after The Return of the Living Dead and Return of the Living Dead II (the latter of which has yet to see a Blu-ray release). Yuzna decided he wanted to forego the kind of goofy humor that had been part of the previous two films, and was delighted when he was informed that the only “required” elements in this latest sequel would be the use of so-called Trioxin gas and generous feasts involving brain matter. With those two proscriptions firmly in place, John Penney’s screenplay focuses on two teenagers who get caught up in a secret government program to use Trioxin to develop a new cadre of “super soldiers”. Suffice it to say neither the government program nor the teens’ incursion into the top secret lab go as planned.

Colonel John Reynolds (Kent McCord, Adam-12) enters the lab to confer with Colonel Peck (James T. Callahan) and Lieutenant Colonel Sinclair (Sarah Douglas) about a new program designed to use Trioxin to, well, reanimate corpses as virtually unconquerable soldiers. As Yuzna mentions in one of the commentaries included on the Blu-ray disc, this opening sequence nicely summarizes the underlying plot mechanics of this particular sequence without much fuss or bother, before perhaps anachronistically segueing to a scene of teens enjoying a frolic at the beach. Among the group is Curt Reynolds (J. Trevor Edmond), son of Colonel Reynolds, who discloses to his girlfriend Julie Walker (Melinda Clarke) that he’s purloined his father’s key card to the (apparently not all that) secret lab, allowing the two to get inside, since Julie is convinced there’s something nefarious going on (though she thinks it’s more along the lines of the kind of animal experimentation that would get PETA up in arms).

While the reanimation part of the military’s scheme works pretty darned well, keeping the first test zombie in line is a bit more of a challenge, even though the scientific wizards in charge of the project have supposedly thought this part through, developing a kind of “freeze dry” approach to keep the zombies incapacitated until they’re needed. Unfortunately, the test zombie “thaws” more quickly than expected, leading to the first round of “new” members of the walking dead. Meanwhile, Curt and Julie do infiltrate the lab, but only get a partial glimpse of what’s going on. Due to the zombie outbreak at the lap, Colonel Reynolds is informed he’s going to be transferred, which in turn leads him to tell Curt the family is moving again. That pushes Curt over the edge and he attempts to let off steam by going on a reckless motorcycle ride with Julie, which then leads to the film’s central conceit when an accident leaves Julie desperately in need of some reanimation herself, so to speak.

That then leads to an expected visit to the lab, where Curt attempts to “wake” his sleeping beauty, with expectedly increasingly gruesome repercussions. I’d hazard a guess that parents concerned about self immolating young girls might want to stay away from Return of the Living Dead 3, since one of its most disturbing subplots is Julie’s repeated attempts to pierce, poke and otherwise sever herself in order to quench her now insatiable thirst (hunger?) for, you know, brains and stuff. In fact, some might argue that this particular plot point is by far the most distressing thing about Return of the Living Dead 3, despite some pretty bloody zombie incursions that take place in the second half of the film.

Yuzna perhaps set an impossible goal for himself in trying to wrest the Living Dead franchise away from an at least partially comedic take on zombies, for this film’s overheated and often melodramatic tendencies never quite build up the tension necessary to sustain the screenplay’s attempts to craft a really doomed romance. I couldn’t help but wonder what might have happened had Penney and Yuzna gone for at least a bit more of a cheeky (no flesh joke intended) approach, something that admittedly would have made the film even more of a presager of later entries like Warm Bodies and (especially) Life After Beth. Still, at least with regard to Julie’s increasingly horrifying “problem solving”, Return of the Living Dead 3 makes it clear that there are a lot more discomfiting sights than seeing a zombie munching down sloppy brain matter.

Return of the Living Dead 3 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Return of the Living Dead 3 is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Film's new Vestron Video imprint with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. As Brian Yuzna relates in his commentary, the film was shot on a fairly paltry budget, but perhaps surprisingly some of the practical effects and even production design are quite winning and are presented here with good to very good detail levels, at least when lighting conditions are decent, though the overall look of this transfer is a bit on the soft side. The palette has moments of real vividness, notably in some of the more gruesome kill scenes, where the reds really glisten pretty impressively, but overall things can look just a little faded and anemic at times, especially with regard to (non zombified) flesh tones. There's some noticeable wobble during the opening credits, an anomaly that calms down once the actual film has begun. Grain is pretty widely variant throughout the presentation, and the chief reason I'm keeping my score at around the 3.5 mark. In some early scenes it almost looks like there's been a bit of high frequency roll off, with hints of smoothness that are commendably absent in many later, and usually much darker, sequences. In the second half of the film, much of which takes place either at night or in darkened environments, there's a pretty chunky grain field at times that flirts with compression issues and which sometimes has a slightly colored, chroma anomaly like look. Those less concerned with an occasionally heterogeneous appearance may have an at least somewhat more positive response to the video presentation.

Return of the Living Dead 3 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Return of the Living Dead 3 sports an often quite energetic sounding DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 track, one that gets some of its sonic oomph from effects like Curt's zooming motorcycle or the "freeze ray" guns that are used to immobilize the marauding zombies. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly and the pretty era specific score also sounds fine, if dated.

Return of the Living Dead 3 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary with Director Brian Yuzna


• Audio Commentary with Star Melinda Clarke and Special Effects Supervisor Tom Rainone


• Ashes to Ashes (1080p; 26:48) is a fun conversation with Brian Yuzna and John Penney.


• Living Dead Girl (1080p; 18:56) features Melinda Clarke.


• Romeo is Bleeding (1080p; 17:21) is an interview with J. Trevor Edmond.


• Trimark and Trioxin (1080p; 13:33) is a kind of interesting retrospective which offers some history on the production as well as the then nascent home video market.


• The Resurrected Dead (1080p; 18:47) focuses on some of the make-up effects, with some great archival behind the scenes footage.


• Storyboard Gallery (1080p; 5:51)


• Still Gallery (1080p; 3:54)


• Theatrical Trailers (1080p; 2:45)

Return of the Living Dead 3 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

As Brian Yuzna and John Penney discuss in some of the supplements included on this new release, it was a challenging task to combine sometimes oppositional plot elements from the first two Living Dead sequels into one reasonably coherent whole in Return of the Living Dead 3, and those efforts, while fitfully engaging, show their struggles probably a bit more than is helpful to the overall flow of the film. There are some suitably gruesome deaths in the outing, but by far the most consistently upsetting imagery is the self destructive tendencies Julie starts to exhibit after her "transformation". Video has a few hurdles to overcome, while audio sounds fine and the supplementary package is very appealing (and may in fact appeal even to those who don't care for the film itself). For genre fans if for no one else, Return of the Living Dead 3 comes Recommended.