Hey, our good friend Lucio Fulci returns with a sequel to his first big moneymaker! Zombi 3 isn't really that well connected to its prequel in anything other than its name though. He directed a whole 15 minutes of this film- the rest was directed by the same dude as Hell of the Living Dead.
Nevertheless, it's considered part of the Lucio Fucli collection these days, if only to get more people to buy it on DVD. The film was also filmed in 3D but never shown in that format outside of Italy.
It's always a pain in the ass to watch 3D films without their gimmick as you groan each time you see something gratuitously 3D such as a head just happening to roll towards the camera.
Oddly enough, I didn't see much of that in this film which means it must have sucked for anyone watching it in 3D.
The movie begins like a lot of zombie movies- a guy who's supposed to be a doctor observing a zombie. This zombie happens to be in an airtight container of some sort. The doctor injects him with something and becomes quite pissed off that nothing is happening. Eventually, the body springs to life and starts making crazy faces.
It's not long before something goes wrong and the body's head begins to bulge and explode. After the convulsions are over, we're left with a raisin head looking zombie who probably wants to eat brains. Not what the doctor was trying to create I'm sure.
The doctor gets on the phone and informs his superiors about the failed experiment but they want the serum and information the scientist used anyway. When the scientist tries to transport the box filled with his work he gets ambushed by some terrorists in a helicopter who snatch and grab it.
When trying to get the box back, the good guys accidentally shoot the box and open it. The bad guy who was carrying the box at the time gets his hand exposed to whatever was inside of it, which turns his hand black and makes him sick. I sure hope he doesn't use that hand to go to the bathroom.
The infected man runs to a nearby hotel in search of a place to stay. Back at Good Guy HQ, the scientists are upset about the theft of the "Death One" compound. The scientists and the military are both distraught over the fact that a man was infected by it as he can spread it to others without any effort at all.
In the hotel, the infected man is going from bad to worse. He keeps ordering water from downstairs and the room service kid is getting pissed off about it. The infected man seems to be growing mold all over his body and is oozing green blood. Perhaps Death One turns you into a loaf of bread.
He works up the will to cut his infected hand off with a knife Evil Dead II style. His neighbor goes in to check on how he's doing and gets shoved into a bathroom mirror for her troubles. Just the act of smushing her against the glass causes her to spew out the cherry starburst she was eating all over the mirror.
Downstairs, a biohazard crew has busted into the hotel as everyone who has come into contact with mold man is starting to show signs of infection, including room service boy. The military orders all the infected bodies to be put in mass graves and for the body of the main infected guy to be shipped back to base where he will be burnt up.
Of course, from ROTLD we all know not to burn dead bodies as it just gets in the atmosphere and leads to more zombies.
Next we're introduced to three army dorks on leave and cruising for some pussy in their borrowed jeep. A group of girls on a bus flirt with the guys in order to use them for their passes and get to the beach. Another couple is also driving on the road and having a boring ass conversation about nature and pollution. If it's one thing zombie movies are good for other than brain eating it's heavy handed social commentary.
The couple runs into a bunch of dead birds in the middle of the road, or rather, UNDEAD birds that breathed in the burnt up corpse. One of the birds attacks the man and his girlfriend quickly gets him out of there. It's not long before undead birds are everywhere, even in the tour bus full of girls pecking and infecting everybody.
The face of the original guy pecked by birds is starting to resemble those air pocket bubbles that appear on pizza sometime. His girlfriend goes in search of water and wanders into a nearby shack. Here she gets attacked by a chained up zombie and then again by a crazy super fast zombie with a knife.
Man, fuck these zombies that actually have motor skills! The zombie chops into a gas pump and gets himself doused, and of course this bitch has to light his ass on fire before taking off.
Smart Guy HQ gets wind of all the zombie shit going down and informs the military about their dumb assedness. The military's solution? Kill every infected person! The scientists are going to focus on developing an antidote to kill off the virus in the meantime.
The army jeep dudes have dragged the hurt girl on the flirty girl bus and her friends back to the hotel from the beginning of the movie, which is now abandoned and torn up. The infected girl is growing mold all over her like the other zombies. The army dudes discover a convenient crate full of weapons in the basement and stock up.
Meanwhile, the infected girl, Leia, is oozing green shit from her pulsating wounds. One blonde army guy goes off in a jeep with one of Leia's friends while everyone else drags Leia upstairs into a bedroom. Back at army HQ, the constipated general is pissed off and orders his squad to kill off everyone in the containment area and make sure no one gets out.
Thanks for ruining everyone's fun you giant prick. The jeep containing the blondie army guy and his gal breaks down because they need water for the radiator. Naturally, it's the girl that volunteers to go off alone and find some water. At this point in the movie one thing is for certain - water = zombie encounter.
The girl wanders into a hotel foggier than Silent Hill could ever hope to be. She finds water, so of course she must find a zombie as well. This zombie turns out to be a major dork since instead of grabbing her and eating brains, he just pushes he out a window into some water.
Maybe he just wanted to help her find the water! What a guy! He lives to serve the guests even in death.
Well, turns out he had ulterior motives as when blonde army dude pulls the girl out of the water her legs have burnt off and she's a crazy zombie trying to eat him. He's not desperate enough to fuck a zombie quite yet so he throws her back in the water to burn up.
All the zombie guests come out of the woodwork to chase blondie dude around the hotel. They're no match for his special ops training which allows him to swing all over the hotel railings and banisters like a monkey.
Blondie makes it a nearby road where he encounters the girl and sick boyfriend from earlier in the film. They're on their way to the nearby hospital to get help for the boy.
Back at the hotel Leia is getting worse and worse and shows all the signs of a dead person. Two of the random folks hanging around the hotel go looking for a bite to eat and end up getting bitten when they open the freezer.
A completely severed head somehow launches itself out of the freezer and attaches it to a guy's neck. His headless body attacks his girl companion and rips her throat out. Are these vampires or zombies? It's hard to tell since all the zombies in this movie seem to go directly for the neck.
Perhaps they're just trying to make their screaming victims shut the fuck up. It would probably be easier just to rip their own ears off. Back in the car with blondie, the girl's boyfriend has finally gone zombified and informs his girlfriend that he's thirsty again- for her brains!
Oh man, what a total zombie fake out tactic. The girl pulls over the car and army dude fistfights her zombie boyfriend and holds him off for a while until a ton of zombies take over the bridge. It's like the bridge level in Streets of Rage with the army dude punching the undead, except he loses this fight and the zombies do that funny thing where you blow on somebody's stomach.
Except they're not so much blowing on his stomach rather than ripping it open and eating his entrails. The girl from the car demonstrates some brains and jumps off the bridge into the water before the zombies can force her to do the thriller.
At the hotel, Leia finally gets her zombie on and eats a few of her friends before being tossed out a window. She falls to the ground level where the remaining two army grunts are standing guard. They don't find the corpse of Leia that strange as they're interested by the shadowy girl coming towards them in the dark.
It turns out to be the girl who just jumped off the bridge. It's at this point that the movie tries to remedy the fact that none of these characters really have names.
It's too late for that now Zombi 3, I've been calling that dude "Dork with glasses" for the past hour and there's no way I'm going to call him David now just because you mentioned it in passing.
As is the case in every zombie movie in the universe, the few survivors decide to barricade themselves into the hotel. Good thing they found those conveniently placed weapons earlier! Random guy in blue shirt is the first to fall to the zombies as he trips over his own feet and lets them swarm upon him. Fucking dork.
The film makers paid a lot to rent a fog machine and they're damn well going to use it! Magical fog pours in through every nook and cranny of the house. Many spectacular scenes of zombie ultraviolence follow such as zombies heads exploding, zombies on fire, and zombies getting staked through the neck.
The human crew realizes that this barricade shit is a pretty bad idea and run off into the jungle. They eventually wander into some rickety village and get attacked by zombies. The Billy Ray Cyrus look-alike army man takes out all the zombies by himself and the good guy crew hops into some canoes to escape. Back at the BK Kids Club, the scientists have devised an antidote to the zombie disease.
The military general once again puts heavy importance on the fact that NO LIVING CREATE IN THE CONTAMINATED AREA WILL ESCAPE THE AREA ALIVE. Then the camera switches to the good guys in the canoe. DO YOU GET IT? SHALL I BEAT YOU OVER THE HEAD WITH MY FORESHADOWING SOME MORE?
Dork with glasses is the first to get taken out by the SS Cleansing Squads hired by the government after he wanders off chasing after a chicken. You read that right. The rest of the good guys run away. The two girls in the group go investigate a nearby hospital and encounter a pregnant woman with the virus.
Oh my, I think it's zombie fetus time. A zombie fetus is only going to further complicate the argument as to whether fetuses are living creatures. The two army dudes encounter the cleansing squad but apparently military fatigues automatically make you kick ass like Guile from Street Fighter. They take out the entire squad.
Back in the delivery room, one of the girls gets attacked by a zombie who rips her face off and pushes her head down to the pregnant woman's stomach. The zombie fetus pokes its arm through its mother's stomach and rips off her face. The other woman is being attacked by the zombie of her former boyfriend who she ran away from on the bridge. She does what any good girlfriend would do and chops his fucking head off with a pickaxe.
The two army dudes from Contra finish shooting all the cleaning guys and go in search of the girls. The two guys and one remaining girl hop into a nearby helicopter to get the hell out of there but one of the G.I.'s falls out and gets consumed by tricky zombies that were hiding in the grass.
As the two heroes fly away in their helicopters they turn on the radio to hear the heavy handed radio announcer who has spouted philosophy the entire movie is now a zombie and is spreading pro-zombie rhetoric now. The two heroes wonder just what type of world they're flying back to now since it's full of zombies, but the army dude resolves to fight it and bring the zombies down.
Then the movie abruptly ends and the audience is left with zombie movie blue balls. As far as zombie movies go, this one is pretty lame. The whole virus aspect pisses me off, but that's just because I hate that explanation.
The movie never really goes anywhere as we just watch the good guys run from one location to the other and have mostly boring zombie battles with the occasional good gore spliced in. A nice effort, but it's neither particularly entertaining nor heavy with gore, making it merely a footnote in the long line of zombie flicks.
