Return of the Living Dead III (1993)

Title: Return of the Living Dead III (1993)

Director: Brian Yuzna

Cast: Melinda Clarke, J. Trevor Edmund, Sarah Douglas, Kent McCord

Review:

There’s this thing that happens only to movie buffs, you watch a movie at a certain point in your life, then you revisit the same film 20 years later and suddenly it takes on a whole other meaning, or you see things in it you never saw the first time. I guess this has a lot to do with how we filter films, books and songs through our own lives, our own experiences. Sometimes you watch a film as a kid and don’t get it, you watch it as an adult and it makes all the sense in the world. Or vice versa, you loved it as a kid, and end up hating it as an adult. Return of the Living Dead III was a film that I didn’t think much of the first time I saw it. For some reason, it just didn’t click with me. I was in my teens and to me, Return of the Living Dead III was something of a letdown because it didn’t have as many zombies as the previous Return of the Living Dead films did, it didn’t have scenes taking place in cemeteries with zombies coming out of their graves, which is what I loved about the previous ones. Also, this film has a more serious tone to it, it's less fun in a way and more of a sci-fi horror film. I had a chance to rewatch Return of the Living Dead III the other night and low and behold, I ended up enjoying the hell out of it. In fact, I think it is quite underrated!

The story this time around concerns two teenagers who are deeply in love, Kurt and Julie. Kurt is something of a rebel; he wants to move out with his girlfriend Julie to Seattle to follow his rock and roll dreams of becoming a drummer and living the rock and roll lifestyle. One night, when Kurt and Julie are feeling particularly adventurous, they decide to sneak in to the secret military base where Kurt’s father works at, to see what kind of sick experiments they conduct in there. When they do, they discover that the government is experimenting with the reanimation of corpses so they can be used as bio-weapons! They actually see with their own eyes how the government re-animates a corpse with the help of the chemical compound known as 245 Trioxin! Later that same night, Kurt and Julie decide to escape, to go off on their own into the world; unfortunately in their excitement Kurt and Julie have a motorcycle accident and Julie dies! In the middle of his sadness and desperation, Kurt decides to take Julie back to the military base to bring her back to life! Will she be the same Julie when she comes back?

This sequel is a bit different than the previous Return of the Living Dead films, but at the same time it walks on familiar ground. It is different because on the first and second films the military functions from behind the scenes, we known the containers with the zombies inside of them were misplaced by the military, and we know they are trying to control the whole zombie threat, but we only see the military from afar, not so on this third film in which we actually go inside the military base where the government conducts the experiments to bring back the dead. This is one of the things that I enjoyed the most about this film, how they actually show these grizzly experiments and how they can get out of control. Speaking of getting out of control, the film opens up with this extensive sequence in which we see how they reanimate a corpse that is just awesome, the sequence eventually becomes this orgy of gore and zombies! If you’re a zombie fan, you will love these scenes; they really go into the whole process of how they reanimate the dead.

Then, the film turns into a Romeo and Juliet type of deal with Kurt and Julie, this is where Return of the Living Dead III is also different to all the others, the love angle. Kurt is alive, but Julie is undead, how can they ever consummate their love for each other? Will they? Should they? This film is Melinda Clarke’s show; she is the central character, the main attraction. This beautiful actress plays Julie, Kurt’s undead girlfriend. I really enjoyed Clarke’s portrayal of the zombie girl. We get to see her feeling and describing the change of becoming one of the undead, she describes her numbness and hunger with great emotion, and you get to feel some empathy for her, I dug her performance and you can tell she was really into it. The story also complicates itself even further when Kurt and Julie stumble upon this gang of trigger happy Chicanos who end up holding a grudge against Kurt and Julie, they learn the hard way not to mess with a member undead.

Return of the Living Dead III was directed by Brian Yuzna, a true horror fan and certainly no stranger to the world of the undead. He’s the director behind Bride of Re-Animator (1989) and Beyond Re-Animator (2003), plus a slew of other genre films. So we get a horror film that’s directed by horror fan for horror fans, you could tell that the guy was aware that he was making a sequel to Dan O’Bannon’s genre marking Return of the Living Dead (1985). They even reference O’Bannon’s original idea for Return of the Living Dead when they mention that the ‘245 Trioxin’ chemical compound was originally intended to be used by the military on the “war against marihuana”. We get the drums filled with zombies, we get the Trioxin, we get the military experiments, so yeah, this feels a whole lot like a sequel to Return of the Living Dead as opposed to parts four and five of this franchise which don’t feel like they exist in the same universe somehow. Also, I have to give Kudos to Yuzna for making such an entertaining flick on such a low budget. You can tell this film is smaller in scale then the previous two, yet the creativity and the direction make it look better than it should. It even explores new ideas, especially when it comes to controlling zombies with an exo-skeleton type of thing, cool idea!

So we have a film that addresses familiar themes and exists within the same universe that Dan O’Bannon created, but brings a couple of new things to the table.  My final word on this movie is that it is vastly underrated. It has good acting from all involved, and it is unusually well written, I was actually a bit surprised at how much I was enjoying it. It has great characters in it too; for example there’s this homeless character called “The Riverman” who spews these golden nuggets of wisdom, LOVED that character! Another plus for the film was the gore which was plentiful. It reminded me of how gory movies used to be. We also get some pretty cool looking zombies on this one. The end of the film is this zombie blood bath with tons of gore! Anyways, bottom line with this movie is that it’s not the greatest zombie movie ever made, and sometimes it shows its budgetary limitations (especially when it comes to the cramped sets) but the imagination and energy involved elevate it and make it a worthy sequel in my book, worth a watch.

Rating: 3 1/2 out of 5

The Guyver (1991)

Title: The Guyver (1991)

Directors: Steve Wang and Screaming Mad George

Cast: Mark Hamill, David Gale, Jimmy Walker, Michael Berryman, Jack Armstrong, Vivian Wu

Review:

Sometimes in the world of filmmaking, special effect technicians end up making films. The thing about these special effects guys is that they got the knowhow and experience on the technical side of filmmaking. Since they are working in the filmmaking environment all the time, they also got the all important connections to get their ideas made into films. What happens is that since they are responsible for these cool effects sequences in so many movies; they convince producers that they can pull off a good movie, and so their project gets greenlit. The result of having special effects guys making films is that the film will have good looking monsters and visual effects, but bad acting and storytelling. Examples of this are films like Spawn (1997), Virus (1999) and Eragon (2006). These are all films with decent make up and visual effects, but they are also films that suffer from bad storytelling and acting. The main problem with this sort of film is that the filmmakers’ behind them are not storytellers by nature, they are not directors in the true sense of the word, more often then not, these are guys who care more about things looking cool than things making sense. Fx technicians aid the director in bringing his or her vision to life and most of the time they are good at their job, but the truth is that they are not good storytellers or directors. This is the case with The Guyver, a film that is entertaining, fast paced and has excellent looking creatures and make up effects, but suffers from terrible acting. Was it totally unwatchable?

The Guyver tells the story of Sean Barker, a teenager who stumbles upon an alien weapon that turns its wielder into a bio-mechanical weapon. Sean doesn’t know this at first. He believes he’s simply found some weird looking mechanical device, but not an alien armor. So one thing leads to another and Sean ends up becoming one with the Guyver Unit! Now he can fight bullies and stop evil alien corporations from taking over the world at the same time. Bonus! Meanwhile, an alien being known as Fulton Balcus is searching for the Guyver Unit so that he can wear it and become even more powerful so that he can conquer the world and all that. Will Balcus ever come to posses the Guyver Unit? Will Sean become the hero he must become and save the day?

So this film had not one, but two directors! And both of them are guys with vast experience in make up effects work, including sculpting, painting and even art direction. This is the reason why the monsters in the film look so cool. This is the reason why The Guyver itself looks so kick ass; one look at the creatures in this film and its obvious these guys know what they are doing when it comes to creature effects. Reportedly, there are over 50 creature effects in this film! From the very beginning, you’ll see people transforming into monsters. And from the moment when the good guys infiltrate the evil Cronos Corporations’ headquarters forward, you’ll see nothing but monsters. This is totally understandable because collectively, these two directors have been responsible for some pretty cool creatures and make up effects sequences, amongst them the alien in Predator (1987), The Gillman from Monster Squad (1987), The Cockroach Transformation sequence in A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988). They’ve also worked in one way or another in make up effects heavy films like Harry and the Hendersons (1987), Godzilla (1998), Bride of Re-Animator (1990), Faust: Love of the Damned (200), Beyond Re-Animator (2003), Necronomicon (1993) and Arena (1989) amongst many others. So these guys are good when it comes to making monsters on a tight budget and even more so when they are given money.

Steve Wang sculpts a creature for Guyver: Dark Hero

The Guyver is the kind of film where make up effects guys like Wang and George are given free reign to just go crazy and do whatever the hell they can come up with, which must be a make up effects technician’s wet dream. It reminded me of a similar film called Robert Kurtzman's The Rage (2007) yet another film in which a make up effects technician was given the opportunity to direct a film and just go nuts with it. The Rage was also a make up effects technicians’ orgasm. So anyways, The Guyver was produced by Brian Yuzna, a producer/director who has been responsible for many straight to dvd horror and science fiction films. I guess he can be compared to Roger Corman in that way, producing horror films till the day they die! You’ve probably heard about some of Yuzna’s projects: Faust: Love of the Damned (2000), the entire Re-Animator franchise, Dagon (2001), Return of the Living Dead III (1993), he even produced the theatrically released Honey I Shrunk the Kids (1989) for Disney if you can believe it. But as you can see, he’s a lover of sci-fi/horror. Yuzna’s involvement is the reason why Screaming Mad George and Steve Wang directed The Guyver. They did a lot of make up effects work on many of Yuzna’s own films. This is also the reason why we see David Gale and Jeffrey Combs on this film; they’ve worked with Yuzna and Stuart Gordon many times on the Re-Animator films. So the people behind this film, from actors, to producer and directors all love science fiction and monster movies. There is a genuine love for the genre involved here.

The 'Lisker' creature from The Guyver

The film moves fast, things are never boring and the monster transformations and creatures keep things interesting and fun. The only real negative point on this film is the terrible acting from Vivian Wu, the Chinese actress who plays the daughter of a scientist experimenting with genetics for the Cronos Corporation, she’s so bad on this one that you have to see it to believe it. Incredibly enough, this actress is still making films today! She probably hates this film though cause she’s the worst thing in it. The same can be said for Greg Paik, the young actor who played Sean Barker/The Guyver. His performance is extremely wooden; thankfully he is wearing The Guyver suit most of the time. The film has one of the signs that let’s you know it is a straight to video feature; it has an ex A-list actor in a smaller roll, though by looking at the films poster, you might get the idea that Mark Hamill is the main actor in the film and that it is he who transforms into The Guyver, but alas, that’s just tricky advertisement to make you think Luke Skywalker is The Guyver, which he isnt. Hamill plays a cop investigating all the mysterious deaths surrounding the Cronos Corporation. It’s kind of sad to see a ex-A-list actor doing an extremely low budget movie like this one, but hey, I commend him because he went all out on this one! Not gonna spoil it for those of you who haven’t seen the film, but he has a pretty cool moment. I guess if you have Mark Hamill in your movie, you are contractually obligated to give him a stand out sequence.

All in all, The Guyver is a fun movie to watch. I recommend it to those who enjoy Japanese animated films. This is after all a film that is based on a Japanese animated series called The Guyver: Bio-Boosted Armor, which I might add comes highly recommended from this Film Connoisseur. It is even gorier than the movie, which ended up being less gory than it should have been so it could retain its PG-13 rating. I also recommend this flick to comic book fans, since it is essentially a comic book come to life. What is The Guyver if not a superhero? When he transforms he says “I-am- THE GUYVER!” When he first transforms into The Guyver it’s in this clichéish sequence where the hero is bullied by a bunch of criminals and the violent event triggers his transformation. The film also has transitions that come by the way of a bolt of lightning that appears on the screen, like I said a comic book movie through and through. But of course, the ones that will love this movie the most are all thoe monster lovers out there! If you love your monsters, and you love gooey effects and aliens…you will be in heaven! You just have to survive the wooden acting and bad dialog. But still, a fun ride is guaranteed! This film was followed by a superior sequel (directed by Steve Wang) called Guyver: Dark Hero (1994), I’ll be reviewing that one soon!  

Rating: 3 out of 5 

  

H.P. Lovecraft's From Beyond (1986)

Title: From Beyond (1986)

Director: Stuart Gordon

Writers: Dennis Paoli, Brian Yuzna (based on short story by H.P. Lovecraft)

Cast: Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton, Ken Foree

Review:

From Beyond was Stuart Gordon’s second feature film, it’s the one he made after Re-Animator (1985). Usually when a director is given the opportunity to direct a second film, they will try to do everything better than they did in their first film. The second film is a directors opportunity to wow audiences a little more, and say “see? I know how to do this! I can do it on a regular basis!” And essentially, this is exactly what Gordon did with From Beyond. With this film Gordon was trying to be gorier and scarier. He tried having more action, more special effects. And for all intents and purposes I think Gordon achieved this with From Beyond. There is this ongoing debate amongst horror fans to try and decide which of these two films is Gordon’s best, as much as I love Re-Animator to death, I lean towards From Beyond being Gordon’s best film and I’ll state my reasons why during this review.

Dr. Tillingast working on The Resonator

From Beyond is a film based on H.P. Lovecrafts short story of the same name. It tells the story of Dr. Crawford Tillingast (Jeffrey Combs) who is a laboratory assistant for one Dr. Edward Pretorious, a mad scientist of sorts who has built a machine called The Resonator which stimulates your pineal gland and enhances your emotions and feelings. Suddenly, you feel everything that much more acutely. So you can imagine what this machine will do to your sexual desires! It enhances them to uncontrollable levels. The Resonator has many other side effects. For example, you will see creatures from other dimensions suddenly appear before you and trust me, they are not very nice! In fact, they are hungry for human flesh and will have no problem taking a bite right out of your face! . The use of The Resonator to stimulate the pineal gland will also turn you into a junky! You become addicted to the machine and will want to experience the intense wave of emotions and pleasure over and over again. One final detail, using The Resonator will also make you hungry for human brains! Will anyone ever destroy the damned thing?

Great thing about From Beyond is that it reunites the same creative team that brought us Re-Animator. Stuart Gordon as a director and Brian Yuzna producing. These two guys worked together on many horror films after this one, they brought us films like Dagon (2001) Dolls (1987) and Castle Freak (1995). Can’t blame them for wanting to exploit the greatness of H.P. Lovecraft’s horror stories. They are perfect for translating into horror films because they always play with the idea of the unknown. The supernatural, the horrifying. Many of his stories talk about creatures from other dimensions that defy descriptions. “Old Gods” and things that are beyond our human comprehension. Stuart Gordon and the rest of his creative team obviously love Lovecraft’s universe and have dived into it on more than one occasion. So we got a movie here that’s made by Lovecraft fans for Lovecraft fans. From Beyond also brings together two Stuart Gordons regulars: Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton, who would get to work together yet again in  another excellent Stuart Gordon film: Castle Freak. To top things off, Gordon is a horror director known for some of the grizzliest moments ever commited on celluloid, so rest assured my gore loving friends, you will be pleased in that department!

One of the side effects of using The Resonator, you have to eat brains!

From Beyond reminded me a bit of Frank Henenlotter’s Brain Damage (1988) because it plays with themes of drug addiction and loss of control over ones actions. In Frank Henenlotter’s Brain Damage the main character encounters a small creature that injects an addictive blue liquid into his brain that gives him intense sensations and makes him experience the world just a bit differently. Unfortunately, the creature has to feed on human brains! From Beyond is a lot like that. You have a machine that when turned on will give you intense pleasure, will make you do things you would normally never do, and when you turn it off, and come off the high, you feel used, dirty and ashamed of yourself. This is what happens to Barbara Crampton’s character: Dr. Katherine McMichaels. She starts out all nerdy and clean cut, but when out of curiosity she decides to experience The Resonator, well, then we see her turn completely slutty and overtly sexual. In one scene, while still under the influence of the machine, she dresses up in S&M gear and starts to seduce Jeffrey Combs. When she snaps out of it, she can’t believe what she’s done and ends up being ashamed of her actions. So what we have here is a film that talks about addiction, and how it can change a person. One moment you are a fully functional thinking human being and the next you are a person who can only think about your next fix!

But don’t take From Beyond for a preachy film, because it isn’t. Its main purpose is to entertain us with its fantasy, and with its gore and effects, and there are plenty of those! You see, Dr. Pretorious, the creator of The Resonator gets taken to another dimension when a creature bites of his head! His head melds with a creature “From Beyond” so Dr. Pretorious suddenly becomes two beings in one. And every time Pretorious returns from the other dimension, he looks less and less human, which basically means we get to see a bunch of cool transformations, creatures and make up effects! This is one of those movies that was made when latex and make up effects reigned supreme, so every time Dr. Pretorious comes from his dimensional travels, he looks more monstrous!

Dr. Pretorious after returning from another dimension

My only gripe with this movie is that sometimes, the Pretorious creature wasn’t pulled off so well. This is a problem that the filmmakers of Slither (2006) also had. In Slither we encounter a creature called the Grant Grant monster, a giant fleshy mess of a creature that looks cool but is ultimately not that menacing because it looks so static. Same thing happened in From Beyond. The Dr. Pretorious creature looks cool, but it doesn’t look like it can move, it looks like a puppet that doesn’t have much mobility and as a result, the performance of the creature looks stiff and clunky, not like something that is alive, not like something that can hurt you. This translates to loss of believability to me. You kind of disconnect because you know you’re just watching a clunky looking puppet. But the thing with this movie is that I’m having so much fun with it that I don’t care, I love the make up effects and the gore. I just wish they had pulled off that creature slightly better. Other creatures look awesome, like this giant worm thing that Dr. Tillingast and Bubba (Ken Foree) have to fight off in the house’s basement, while trying to turn off The Resonator. The worm thing looks like one of the worms from Dune (1984) only smaller. This giant worm thing grabs Dr. Tillingast by the mellon and sucks on his head! Pretty cool sequence! Like I said, there’s lots of gooey fun in store for you guys if you like that sort of film with lots of monsters and creatures coming from other dimensions.

"Humans are such easy prey..."

This is one of those movies that’s constantly trying to wow you and amaze you and I love that about it. Stuart Gordon knows that the worst thing a horror movie can be is boring, so he always builds his horror movies on a frenetic pace. From Beyond is never boring, and its always going over the top with everything! One of the many things that is over the top about this movie is its performances. Jeffrey Combs once again plays the crazy scientists searching for that truth, that new experiment that will put him on the map. Unfortunately, with Dr. Pretorious’s Resonator machine he seems to have bitten off more than he can chew. He plays the wacky crazy doctor, his transformation is extremely grizzly, not gonna spoil it for you. But it’s always a treat to see Jeffrey Combs playing the crazy guy in a horror movie. Check out The Frightners (1996) if you don’t believe me! Barbara Crampton plays a nerdy doctor, who’s curious for the machine and its effects. Once she gives the machine a try, she goes from nerdy to slut in 0.5 seconds! She shows a little more skin than she did in Re-Animator, but in the movies defense I will say that her nudity actually goes with the story, because The Resonator enhances your sensual side. Finally, we got Ken Foree who plays the conscience of the team, the one trying to make sense of it all, always trying to do the right thing. So we got a good cast rounding up the film.

The Resonator reminded me of the dimensional portal in the Phantasm films because they also worked with sonic vibrations. Cool thing about The Resonator is that whenever it was turned on, it cast these purple flashes of light that gave the film its own unique color palette, appropriately otherworldly. Everything is made that much more exciting thanks to the musical score composed by Richard Band. It is a very cinematic score and reminded me of the good old days when films had that kind of music to them. In closing I’ll just say that there are many gory delights in store for you in this film. It is fast paced, over the top and simply put: tons of fun! I wish Stuart Gordon would give us another gory film sometime soon!

Rating: 4 out of 5