"Actor: Linda Callahan"

• Return Of The Living Dead III | Blu Ray | (28/08/2017) from £10.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Return of the Living Dead III is the third go-round for a premise intended as both a sequel to and a satire of the George A Romero Living Dead films. This could just as easily have been an entry in director Brian Yuzna's Re-Animator series, and indeed the plot nugget seems derived from the last shot of Re-Animator itself, as a devoted youth (J. Trevor Edmond) revives his freshly dead girlfriend (Mindy Clarke) with trioxin, a military zombie-making gas, and learns to regret his actions. Though it has some left-field ideas--the heroine turns herself into a DIY Hellraiser Cenobite poster-girl with extreme body piercing to distract herself from the desire to eat her boyfriend's brain--and effective action, it is still confined by its low budget and thus stuck with ordinary acting, a minimal plot and too many dumb developments. The central thread is the necrophile/SM romance, which ends up in a liebestod clinch in the army base's furnace, but there's a sub-plot about a quartet of zombified gang members which serves mainly to get some violence going every few minutes. Clarke is a striking presence, studded with bits of metal like a punk porcupine, but her performance flat lines even before her death in a motorcycle crash and revival as a zombie, while the rest of the cast--with the honourable exceptions of Kent McCord as a senior officer and Basil Wallace as a mystical down-and-out--are typified by Sarah Douglas' strident militarist mad scientist, who wants to put zombies in armoured exoskeletons and deploy them as combat troops. Nevertheless, this is gruesome fun for the fans, with some imaginative zombie mutilation effects. On the DVD: It's a no-frills full-screen transfer. The only extra is a 50-second trailer.--Kim Newman

• The Return Of The Living Dead 3 | DVD | (10/09/2001) from £22.50   |  Saving you £-9.52 (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Return of the Living Dead III is the third go-round for a premise intended as both a sequel to and a satire of the George A Romero Living Dead films. This could just as easily have been an entry in director Brian Yuzna's Re-Animator series, and indeed the plot nugget seems derived from the last shot of Re-Animator itself, as a devoted youth (J. Trevor Edmond) revives his freshly dead girlfriend (Mindy Clarke) with trioxin, a military zombie-making gas, and learns to regret his actions. Though it has some left-field ideas--the heroine turns herself into a DIY Hellraiser Cenobite poster-girl with extreme body piercing to distract herself from the desire to eat her boyfriend's brain--and effective action, it is still confined by its low budget and thus stuck with ordinary acting, a minimal plot and too many dumb developments. The central thread is the necrophile/SM romance, which ends up in a liebestod clinch in the army base's furnace, but there's a sub-plot about a quartet of zombified gang members which serves mainly to get some violence going every few minutes. Clarke is a striking presence, studded with bits of metal like a punk porcupine, but her performance flat lines even before her death in a motorcycle crash and revival as a zombie, while the rest of the cast--with the honourable exceptions of Kent McCord as a senior officer and Basil Wallace as a mystical down-and-out--are typified by Sarah Douglas' strident militarist mad scientist, who wants to put zombies in armoured exoskeletons and deploy them as combat troops. Nevertheless, this is gruesome fun for the fans, with some imaginative zombie mutilation effects. On the DVD: It's a no-frills full-screen transfer. The only extra is a 50-second trailer.--Kim Newman

• Three Businessmen | DVD | (26/02/2001) from £18.23   |  Saving you £-12.24 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Alex Cox's Three Businessman is an existentialist fable for the independent businessman. Two travelling art dealers staying in a labyrinthine Liverpool hotel, Frank King (Alex Cox) and Bennie Reyes (Miguel Sandoval of Clear and Present Danger), sit down for dinner only to find that the hotel staff have deserted them. They begin to walk the Mersey streets in search of sustenance, talking about dogs, dinner, the "Plutonium" credit card and the state of the world. But lost without a map, they inadvertently wander half way across the world on public transport in search of their hotel, touching down in Rotterdam, Hong Kong, Japan and Spain. In a desert, they come across a third businessman, Leroy Jasper (Robert Wisdom), clutching a replica of the Mir space station. Soon after, they stumble across a food stand outside a small abode that holds within it the true object of their quest. It is a destination that they have found without looking for. This small, mannered movie grows in stature as it progresses. Sandoval and Cox are amiably crotchety travelling companions. Aided and abetted by jump cuts, the surrealist conceit that allows the businessman to roam across the world without ever realising they have left Liverpool is distinctly Bunuelian (cf. the name of Cox's production company Exterminating Angel Films). On the DVD: An amusing commentary by Alex Cox and writing partner and producer Tod Davies has the added bonus of Cox acting out deleted scenes. The feature appears in widescreen format with an excellent sound and picture transfer, enhanced by Pray for Rain's melancholic soundtrack. But the Debbie Harry and Iggy Pop promo video promised on the sleeve and liner notes does not appear anywhere on the disc. --Chris Campion