Return of The Living Dead 3
Overall Recommendation
Recommendation?
So, the zombie shit, what little there is… is quite good. It’s dated, sure, but in a good way. A way that feels comfortable and forgiving, where you’re supposed to laugh a little. But there’s so little of this good stuff- the vast majority of the movie is wandering around crap and sub-plots that aren’t worth describing. They don’t add anything and they just take up time and resources that should have been better used on more zombie stuff. I mean, there’s whole conversation between a crazy person and the lead about whether or not he should follow his dreams of being a musician. At one point, I thought that the movie had ended, but then it went on for another near half hour and changed everything. This is a movie where rotten wooden boards are nailed to steel as reinforcement, and the female lead is compelled to continue mutilating herself, but they can’t keep the continuity straight as to exactly what gory edgy thing it was that she just did. This is a movie that wanted to be Hellraiser, that thought it had the special effects nads to stand next to The Thing, it thought that it was going to take this from there and that from here and then we’re going to use them to repackage a forbidden love story with BDSM trappings and it’s gonna be awesome and we can film it in a bunch of pipes! Seriously. This is NOT part of the Living Dead at all. It’s like the slow inbred off-shoot of the cousins’ cousins, and this reminds you why you never go visiting that way. Everything that wasn’t special effects was boring filler to get to the special effects, and then those were decent, if far too focused on a young woman cutting herself. The rest of the zombie stuff? Decent, but leaning really heavily towards latex prosthetics, walking into walls, and yelling YARGH a whole lot. I’ve done my part. You know what you’re in for. Watch it if you want to. Yargh.
Plot Autopsy
Plot Autopsy
- Little ditty about Curtis and Julie…
- Got into a motorcycle crash and bounced Julie off a phone-tree
- Now Curt is desperate, gonna resurrect her, hurry…
- Oh, shit, didn’t see how that’d end up in a Hispanic gang coming after me…
- Now everyone else has been turned to zombies…
- But my daddy saved me…. what, wait… the movie’s not ending?
- Curtis is trying to save Julie from the lab again? Everything goes haywire again?
- What the fuck? This should have been over 20 minutes ago!
Zombie Description
Zombie Description
Fuck me if I know where to start. These are Trioxin zombies, which means that they’re very damp, and made out of latex and wigs and dress clothing that looks like something you’d be buried in. but instead, you’ve been barrelled, because each barrel of Trioxin comes with a FREE ZOMBIE INSIDE!! The gas can reanimate the dead into YARGH yelling prosthetic drooling clompers, but if you open the whole barrel, a zombie comes out! And then, like, you have to shoot them in the head with a special gun that just looks ridiculous.
Where the money went
Where the money went
The money went into special effects, since this was pretty much just a vehicle to show all sorts of latex and red and make everything all EWWW and GROSS. In reality, it was lame. They filmed in tunnels and a set built of ET walls. They forced the actors to improvise everything to save on ink. But they had an open wallet if it was for a prosthetic that a chunk of glass could get thrust slowly through.
Best Weapon
Best Weapon
So, let’s be honest. There was only one weapon. Aside from the sharp, pointy thing that Julie turned herself into. The space-age air gun that fires blue jelly darts that can also pierce the skull. They splot if they hit glass, but they puncture if they hit skulls. And then, like, 8 seconds later, the zombie gets what looks to be a freezing. So, lets be honest. This is an insultingly bad idea. It was horrible. It added nothing except something else specific to ridicule and rail against.
That was new!
That was new!
Never seen a zombie movie get so wrapped up in the female lead mutilating herself, or trying to tie her own hands together, or piercing her own boobs with spare wire hoops. Never saw a zombie movie that thought that ripping off everything else was good, yet they were going to make it better by having the zombies need to be killed by an air gun the size of a Barrett that has to be hand-loaded blue tranq darts that sometimes paralyze or freeze the zombies but other times don’t? There was so much here that you’ve seen before, and then again, this is so novel and frantically bad that there’s nothing it really can be compared to. It wasn’t intended as a comedy, but it’s about as subtle as a ham-sandwich to the face at 65mph. And some of us would laugh if we saw someone catch a ham sandwich to the face at the legal speed limit.
Can I get a hand?
Can I get a hand?
There’s a good amount of hands. Hands reaching through wooded slats. Hands ripping through sheet metal, yet reaching through wooden slats. Hands being turned into prosthetic weapons. But no hands in the good way.
Review Notes
Review Notes
Whole lot of purple in the opening credits.
Some kind of military base?
Ominous crates. With lights. That costs extra.
A gourney.
A military guy.
ET walls.
An exoskeleton.
“Highly effective bio-weapons”
I think she’s saying they just made cyborg zombies. I’d watch that. I have. Multiple times.
A lost card? Quite lax indeed.
And now… the Lost Boys rejects.
Fucking cat is glitching!! Chick with the hat is burning herself!! Damn, that didn’t take long. Might be a new world record.
Oh. She has an iron cross on her sleeve. That didn’t age so well. Nazi punks, nazi punks, nazi punks FUCK OFF!!
HE stole his dad’s swipey!
Club kill?
I covet they Mustang.
TRIOXIN!! A BARREL OF TRIOXIN!!
And… a withered old man zombie in a red gimp costume. Not what I expected.
I mean… if you’re going to do restraints… And you don’t want to make your own…
“We were gonna use it as a weapon in our war against marijuana…” Say no more, sir. I am offended and we are mortal enemies.
That’s all it takes to ride a motorcycle into an army base?
She has an evil tongue.
Sneaking around the cases… some guard walking around.
Wow. Lotta body parts to burn.
This is a well-done zombie.
Spraying the zombie with Trioxin dry ice vapors.
That zombie is not happy to be a zombie.
Some sort of infusion…
Oh- it’s like, a freezing dart to the head. To kill them. Or, just paralyze them? I’m confused.
A lot of running from a guard.
The NUE-rons.
Dude, you STUCK your fingers in a zombie’s mouth!! What did you expect??
Oh, shit. Now the zombie has a scalpel. And enthusiasm!
“Use the projectiles!” I’m pretty sure that’s what the dude shooting him was intending.
The zombie just killed a guy by beating him against a one-way mirror. While people watched.
Oh, that is the sickest drool I’ve ever seen.
Another guy got bit. So much red in that room.
Clowntown? That’s a band?
That was sex?
What the hell is wrong with her? She’s a zombie-phile. Pretty sure that’s a no-no.
Quick! Turn down the ClownTown!
Dad’s getting reassigned?
Curtis. How old are you?
I like the posters. L7 are gods.
So… a motorcycle ride later… we see why we shouldn’t grab crotches, and then she… well, budget Hereditary is the best way to put it. She dead.
Just realized how much this makes me think of Crybaby.
And the card… and the thought…
Riding around with a corpse strapped to his back. Nice.
Well, there’s a random hand. Having screws… screwed into it.
Lotta this movie is taken up with Curtis’s indecision. Or navigating doors.
All sorts of doors. Ones with submarine circle handles, even.
And ones that slide back and forth into and out of the wall.
What the fuck is Clowntown. I’m gonna have to look into that. Silly how I can’t stop wondering about it.
Well, that’s a barrel that’s open. Way to fuck up, Curtis.
Julie is coming back to life!
And so is the zombie in the barrel!
“God, Curt, that was incredible. Let’s do it again!” (said immediately after coming back to life after being dead for 40 minutes after dying when she hit a telephone pole with her head in a motorcycle crash)
I would NOT kiss a zombie.
She’s having seizures… kinda like me in the throes of that trip…
Oh! Zombie is OUT of the barrel!
And… we’re not sure where.
Oh, shit, that is one fucked up melted mutant.
She evidently does not recall causing the motorcycle crash or dying or anything.
And now the melted mutant barrel zombie has her!
Ummm… not sure how to explain… the barrel zombie… ripped itself kinda in half? And then ate a soldier’s skull?
They’re quibbling about who is in charge?
“Oh Jesus, Curt… am I dead? Am I really dead? Do I smell? Do I smell?”
Oh. We have Hispanic gang members.
Julie is hoarding all the Hostess.
And now we have a robbery? What does this have to do with a zombie movie?
Well, Julie bit some guy, and they shot Curtis’s motorcycle. Seems fair.
Whole lot of shit going on that isn’t zombie related.
But this is van-centric, so I like it.
COPS!
I like that van. I would rock it.
Back in the ET walls…
AND I want that truck, too.
Well, that’s one dead shop-keeper. In the back of a stolen van.
Being chewed on by a zombie Julie.
“Brains… Brains…”
These cops are now pointing guns at each other. Sweet.
Nice death-rattle!
It’s silly that they made a whole “need a special gun to paralyze” gimmick. Does not work.
Meanwhile, down in the tunnels…
Curtis is vomiting and Julie is apologetic.
I also am getting tired of Julie sticking herself with metal.
“The pain helps, the pain makes the hunger go away.” See, this isn’t necessary.
“You brought me back, you should have just left me dead.”
Oh, shit. You NEVER tell a woman she’s disgusting.
I think they ran out of location budget.
Why is she about to jump off the bridge? If she was going to, she would have.
And, well, she go splash.
Curtis is climbing down after her.
And a threatening minority resident is wandering after.
Meanwhile, in the Hispanic gang’s car, Carlito is getting sick. So they’re going to the river.
Curtis is losing his shit. Acting the fool, even.
“I saw a river once swallow three men. Back in New Orleans. It was a night just like this. Pitch black.” Well, that is an awkward introduction line, but I’ve uttered and offered much worse.
This movie is getting thick on irrelevant filler and quite thin on zombie shit.
“What I saw in the mirror? I saw… the bottom of my shoe!”
Oh, Julie is quite bedraggled.
“I’m telling you kid, they don’t get much deader than that.”
Julie, did they not give you any lines?
“I’m not alive, I’m not dead. I’m just lonely.”
“Total indiscriminate containment” That’s good wordage.
Meanwhile, in some crazy guy’s bunker…
15 minutes of pointless conversation.
I do like the Mardi-Gras coin. Riverman, you’re a good man.
Julie isn’t looking well. Like a red-headed toad.
Curtis, you’re full of shit.
I do not think you’ll make it.
Julie, we get it. You feel hungry. And self-destructive.
Curtis, you are making bad decisions.
Santos, you are making bad decisions.
Whole lot of self-mutilation porn. And not in a good way.
Lots of boring fighting with the Hispanic gang…
Julie has turned herself into some sort of hellraiser sex demon thing.
And not really in a good way. Not completely in a bad way…
So, Santos thinks he’s gonna hook up with Julia.
Carlito is dying.
The River Man got shot.
Santos doesn’t seem to be enjoying himself.
Decapitated spine-neck zombies… yelling in Spanish…
They’re barricading the metal framed door with wood.
Good thing, too, since the wood is holding long after the metal got ripped away.
Steam-burning the zombies…
Oh, shit. Julie ate River Man.
Dad to the rescue.
Wait… where did the rings in her bottom lip go?
Dad with the meaningful talk.
Julie ends up as Specimen 32.
Well, never mind. She was, and then the movie kept going.
So. Catching up. Uh… River Man got turned into a cyborg zombie, and killed a bunch of people, and then, uh… the lab is in chaos. Shotgun. Ineffective.
All the barrels opening.
So, lockdown happened, but we can’t tell any difference. Shit, I thought this movie ended a while ago, and Curtis just got bit!
Dad with the valiant attempt again!
But no… they’re walking hand in hand into the incinerator.
And the credits start off as accolades to the special effects people.
————End Transmission——————–
Introduction
Introduction
Well. I’ve had quite the few weeks there. I’ve got a new scar to prove it. I have a new hiding place. I have tripped a new type of trip. I have realized there’s so much more that’s broken inside my head; there’s a veritable Lord of the Flies type hunt going on in there.
I broke down while talking to my therapist… well, see, I burned myself… or rather, there’s this car, see, and it gave me a Falling Down moment. I’ve got this new job as an office monkey, see? I talked about that.
Well, the lifted van doesn’t like the commute. So I went looking for a new commuter, and I found a VERY low miles Maxima for decent money, but when we went for the test drive, not only was the fucking thing like inhaling Dresden there’d been so many cigarettes, but the transmission acted a bit quirky and the drivers window doesn’t go down.
So, my wife and I epically miscommunicate and we end up with a shit car that shifts like shit and I don’t handle it well, and end up breaking down… well, first- I think this is even before the car… my wife and I were fighting. And I felt the words “Either fill out the divorce paperwork online with me right now or sit here and watch me play a round of Russian Roulette.” bubbling their way up and I knew I couldn’t say them and keep my marriage, much less my freedom- or at least guns- so since I happened to be heating the dab rig up for a hit, I pressed the orange quartz against my arm for a good single count of sizzle.
I think… See, before, I’d found this camping spot out by the coast. I’d taken off for the night in the van because of the fighting, and once again, I didn’t want to reference firearms as my growingly attractive badthink, so I loaded the van and left. I ended up camping in the forest by the ocean. So when I had my aforementioned breakdown with my therapist, he advised me to trip, and hard. I’d been off mushrooms for a couple weeks, and he pointed out that my life was spiraling, and he said that I should take a heavy trip and see where my head is when the sun comes up.
So I packed up the van again last weekend, this time with my wife’s blessing, and headed out to where the trees hide and the ocean booms, and I drank 3 grams of what I think is Jack Frost, and I lost my fucking mind. Which was the point.
I spent the first half of the trip hearing myself repeating “There’s too many echos in here!” and feeling myself convulsing to shake them free, and then the second half of my trip… well, it’s the part that got weird. I sat down and wrote this the next morning. “Hey T_____, there’s a whole neighborhood in here. Not in terms of population, but the geography, the space and spaces, the rooms and hallways. It’s populated by half formed little scuttlings of children, darting furtively from hiding spot to hiding spot. There’s no eye contact or communication between them, they’re all hiding from each other and everything else- especially anything from the real outside world. The outside world echos and shakes the internal world and the safest place is farthest away from the change. I shift my identity each time I close my eyes into a new thought, I am not any of them but rather the conglomeration of their impulses and reactions to any given situation. There is no consensus, just random energy pulling in different directions. There are things here, out in plain sight, that cannot be looked at, my head snaps away with the speed and strength of a seizure to avoid seeing these. There are hidden ones who never surface, but who keep me safe regardless of price or lies told, and there is one with sharp little knives in each hand who never speaks. These scuttlings make bargains with each other, and work together to present facades and images to the outside, but inside things are incompletely rendered and chaotic against a background of simple black, and I swing between perspectives faster than I can identify or react to. Sooo… Yeah. Things are interesting.
I’m considering getting hypnosis to chase the WTF down a bit further, to see what I can do to understand and address the things that I’ve realized exist yet I refuse to see.
In peripherally associated news, I had a horrible dream about killing someone. I was at a house party- something undergrad, and I was with my girlfriend and a few other friends, but there was a huge party raging all around us.
We were hanging out in a hallway, and there was a random guy there, not one of us, and he was being a dick- talking down to me, cracking jokes at my expense, that kind of stuff. And I realized that I could choke him and shut him up if I just reached out to his throat and squeezed. I had no intention of killing anyone, I just wanted to assert dominance in a way that would shut him up.
So I reached for his neck, fast and brutal, intending to grab him and hold him against the wall- and as I reached, he did that hips-roll-shoulders-push yourself up off the wall you’ve been leaning on… and his throat contacted my hand before I anticipated it, and as a result, I sort of panicked and tried to pull my hand back, but the net result was my grasping of his esophagus and jugulars hard- enough that I felt things breaking beneath my fingers, and his throat instantly turned the yellowish shade of sick green bruise, and he fell down, coughed and gagged a bunch, and then… stopped. And everyone started screaming at me.
This dream was one of the things that caused T____ to suggest a heavy trip- I think he realized that I needed to reset my subconscious, and sometimes the most effective way to do such is to melt everything currently held in it until it runs out and leaves a clean interior.
I’ve also found a church of worship that I can’t figure out how to join. Wes Borlan, I’m looking at you. I saw you once, in a concrete box somewhere… it was undergrad and we got to the concert and we were a bit late and as we were all jumping out of the car to run in, someone said “Hey, I thought we could smoke this hash before we went in.”, so we all sat back down again and shut the doors and proceeded to get stupid high on a bowl of yellow chunks and I remember laughing uncontrollably as we walked through the stadium halls and walls to get to our seats.
I have only the vaguest recollection of the concert, but that’s par for my course. I remember the lighting favored red a whole lot. And there were sparks. Lots of sparks. Speaking of attending performances while on drugs, my wife and I are going to the ballet on Sunday. We’re going to see Cinderella. I’m going to take mushrooms.
I *think* we’re going to see Cinderella. We *might* be going to see… Uh… A different one whose name I cannot recall at the moment. But I’m still going to be taking mushrooms. I think I might get into the closet and pull out a less potent strain for this, though. Something with more visuals and less mewling introspection.
So. It has been a good couple weeks since I’ve done a review. I’m looking forward to it. It’s a good feeling. One of the things that is interesting about starting a new job is the meeting of all the people. It’s something that I never really thought I was good at, but I also thought that I didn’t care about people, so I didn’t care that I was the worst person at forgetting names, or being the only person at work unable to tell the identical twins who worked in the same department at the same job apart. I suck at meeting people. I say the wrong things.
I used to blame other people for not having senses of humor, but now that we’re down with ASPD we’re aware that we can make our own life easier by being better with other humans. (until such a date that we’re able to remove them all) So, it’s been from this “I know I have a personality disorder that affects my ability to socialize and communicate and stay within the boundaries of social norms” perspective that I’ve been watching my own actions and reactions from others- I’ve been watching myself flail and fail, man, that’s the truth. I am not well suited to the conversation game.
Since this job is coverage for a maternity leave, there is a blank spot, a question mark- regarding what I am going to be doing at and for the company in a couple of months when N_____ decides to come back. I know my manager wants to utilize me further, and I’ve become smitten with the idea of setting a career path goal-defined by “Whatever will make me an attractive candidate to our operations in Cape Town, South Africa.”
I think this would be an interesting place to work. I may be able to swing getting stationed there for three years. Imagine that. I mean, that’s literally all I can do at this point is imagine shit, since I know very little about South Africa. I know Zef though.
I cannot achieve the perfect snack. But, snacks aside, I’ve never had a reason for making any of the career decisions that I made, other than rampant grabs for power and money. Of course, responsibility and dedication… nay, loyalty come with said money and… money and… money and power, but I also sort of just ran with my gut regarding decision-making, with the sole aspect of self-preservation as motivation. The downside to this was although I’ve managed teams and businesses and made more money than I had any right to be paid, I always ended up completely fucking pissed off at the everything that I was surrounded by. I was a very bitter employee, but let’s be honest- I was a bitter person, too. So…
I’m intentionally going about this with a goal other than “Conquest.”. I’m going at this as a ticket across the world. See, our Cape Town office is about 5 miles from the beach, and about 20 miles from wilderness mountains. I’ve never actually tried at a job for anything interesting or important to me- I can probably say that aside from the teams I’ve built and the mentorship I’ve done, I haven’t done anything at all.
This… idea of trying towards something excites me. In other news, I still haven’t gotten around to getting punched in the face, or losing any weight, or any of the other personal goals. I’ve been using this burn’s healing as an excuse for the past week.
I got some caffeinated pre-workout though, so I don’t really need to make myself go to the gym; just drink some of it. I’m so sensitive to caffeine I’ll end up working out whether I want to or not. Return of the Living Dead III “A young man uses a secret government chemical and program to reanimate his dead girlfriend, and helps her as she consumes the only thing that will nourish her—human brains.”
Seen this a LONG time ago when I was first navigating the various off-shoots of things labelled as Living Dead. I don’t re member good things about it. I remember a plot that is really close to- but not as good as- Seth Green’s episode of The X-Files.
Well. Someone just learned a valuable lesson about dry-swallowing mushrooms. As much as chewing them sucks, it’s preferable to wondering if you have one lodged in your pipe. I don’t know why I didn’t take them with coffee. I don’t even have any coffee.
It really has been a long time since I’ve done a review- I’ve forgotten the basics. Anyway, a third of a gram of the Jack Frost. Let’s see if I feel anything. Probably a good idea no coffee involved. If I remember right, these things keep you awake. I mean, I’m at a 10th the dose (no idea if the math lines up, I’ma-running with it) and now I’m burping. I really don’t want to accidently inhale a dehydrated mushroom. That would suck to end up explaining in the emergency room. Of the hospital my wife works at. Ok. Time to add to the list of things to avoid. (rustling of much-worn paper)