YMMV / Return of the Living Dead 3

• Best Known for the Fanservice: The most memorable thing from the movie is Julie (Melinda Clarke) in her zombified, metal-decorated punk girl outfit. If you mention the movie in conversation people probably won't remember the characters' names, but "that's the one with the hot zombie chick, right?"
• Better on DVD: The DVD was rereleased in 2016, which not only used the better received uncut version, but also for having the film be in widescreen and included a few new special features.
• Contested Sequel: While nobody thinks this movie is better than the original, opinions are fairly sharply divided between people thinking this is a respectable sequel to it or yet another example of Sequelitis.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Col. John Reynolds, Curt’s military dad, is fairly liked for genuinely caring for his son, as he respects his wishes to be a drummer, and later in the film disobeys orders from his superiors to find him and make sure he’s safe.
• Ethnic Scrappy: The antagonists consist of a group of offensive Mexican stereotypes.
• Fridge Horror: Self-mutilation as a means to stave off the pain of undeath is new to this step in the franchise, but doesn't last long. It's possible that it relieves the momentary pains of rigor mortis, while opening up further surfaces for rotting, making the pain worse in the long run. The other military zombies seem to be in significantly greater pain than Julie.
• Narm: The ending is an effective Tear Jerker, but is also almost too over-the-top to take seriously, with the protagonists killing themselves by climbing into an industrial furnace.
• Narm Charm: From the ridiculous looking sci-fi-esque science building, to the melodramatic acting and score, this movie is a goldmine of cheese... but despite that it all works; the tragedy of the young lovers, however melodramatic, really helps what would otherwise probably be a snoozer.
• Squick: ESPECIALLY the unrated version, where things such as Julie ramming a glass shard through her palm are shown in horrific, unflinching detail.
• Special Effects Failure: Julie has no visible entrance wounds when Felipe shoots her. Which is especially strange, considering all the other characters have entrance wounds when getting shot at.
• Stock Footage Failure: The R-rated cut had a tendency to loop certain scenes or perform random jump cuts in an attempt to remove the gore while still padding out the timeframe. A good example would be when Julie reveals Santos' corpse; in the uncut version, she picks up his head off the ground and then walks towards the camera. In the R-rated cut, Julie walking towards the camera is repeated twice.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: Coming off the heels of the more comedy focused second film, Part 3, while still not living up to the standards of the first movie, has been seen as a solid zombie film with impressive gore, especially in the unrated cut.
• Tear Jerker:
  • The scene where Julie attacks Curt. It shows just how bad her Horror Hunger has gotten.
  • Julie and Curt killing themselves in the end.
  • Poor Riverman only ever tried to help people.

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