Caseus Archivelox: Return of the Living Dead III, Rosemary's Baby, & Spriggan

2002-03-26
Having seen both the first and second part of the series (which were basically the same movie), and having heard that the third part was much better than the first two, and a zombie movie about teen angst, I was hoping for a great movie. I was not disappointed. The movie, while unfortunately structured within the schoolboy nihilistic Return of the Living Dead movie framework, almost breaks out from it by turning one of the rules of the movie on its head: zombies that are in love can now remember that they were in love, and have no real desire to eat their loved one’s brains. This goes against the first movie, as a guy dies in his lover’s arms, immediately attempts to eat her brains. This is not a bad thing however, as it allows for the disaffected teen within us to empathize with the female zombie who is trying to find her new place in the world, after waking up with a hunger for brains. In previous movies, zombies were just something that needed to be destroyed.

One problem I have with the ROTLD movies is that they have unnecessarily nihilistic endings that do not normally fit with the sequels. After the first one, in which Louisville is destroyed by a nuclear weapon and the zombie contagion spreads, how can the next two movies be made, as the first one proved that the military could not destroy the zombies, yet they somehow have contained them enough to keep the general public from understanding that there are a large amount of indestructible zombies running rampant? I find it silly to think of that. At least the sequels to the Universal horror films attempted to explain this, while these movies just move on, reference the earlier movies occasionally, but refuse to explain how they can happen. Part three’s ending is unnecessary, as they decide to turn the biofilter off to destroy mankind because they are trying to turn zombies into weapons? Should the fact that the people who tried to do that died due to their own creations have anything to do with a reassessment of the military’s policy? And one last complaint about these movies is the fact that dead bodies suffer from rigor mortis and have problems being bent, but here once they turn into zombies they move quickly, have almost superhuman strength, and cannot be destroyed, which goes against all the rules of zombie movies.

Rosemary’s Baby
I find that of the sort-of-scary, psychological thrillers that are now classified as the new classics of the horror genre, I like Rosemary’s Baby the most, as seems like it is more realistic than the others, with less reliance upon the supernatural for its effectiveness as a movie. Until the ending scenes, the supernatural is just suggested, and could be explained as the doctor does towards the end when he says that it could be a result of normal pregnancy hysteria. The ending itself is sort of anti-climactic, however it follows from the intense love of a mother for her child that she would care for it, even if it were a badly deformed, demon baby. The reason I like the movie so much is that Roman Polanski does such an effective job in building suspense and horror throughout the movie that it makes one uncomfortably scared throughout the last hour of the movie and long afterwards, because it seems real. It broaches the idea of Satanism, cannibalism, witchcraft, and selling your soul to the devil so well, that while looking back at it, it is clear that they are fantastic ideas, when watching it, you believe that all of this could happen. Mia Farrow is excellent in this role, as the audience sees everything from her perspective and eventually identifies with her view of her baby as her own, and it does not seem like she is crazy for caring for her offspring, even if it is the Anti-Christ.

2002-03-27 - 12:04 a.m.
At least it was Return of the Living Dead III, not a great movie by any stretch of the imagination, but better than the first and second, and somewhat interesting. I don't like the Return movies as they all have nihilistic endings that are just silly, and I am sure it's just because they work from the Romero blueprint, even though they fail miserably as Romero did it first and best, and the Return movies are just too silly to be anything more than pitifully inept social commentary. Ooooh, military makes zombies, military lets zombies loose, zombies eat lots of people, military bad. Duh.

I went to go watch Spriggan, some silly dubbed anime on 35mm. Our showing was listed on the official Spriggan web site. Too bad the movie never explained how spriggans got the name spriggan. And there was some stupid stuff about Noah's Ark being responsible for controlling the weather and evolution. I don't think it made any more sense when watching it. Apparently, it was a movie from the middle of an anime series or something, and thus, if I were willing to read the manga, I'd be able to understand it. About the only good thing about the movie was that it was well animated.