Third Time Lucky?

The most astonishing thing I discovered in my survey of 13 Part III movies was the staggering thematic unity that linked the films. For example, Lethal Weapon 3, a relatively high-budget affair, deals with the wacky exploits of members of the Los Angeles Police Department and has a lot of car chases and explosions. Similarly, Police Academy 3, a relatively low-budget movie, deals with the wacky exploits of members of a big-city police department and has a lot of car chases and explosions.

Other common themes abound. Basket Case 3 depicts authority figures (cops) getting eaten by monsters; Howling III depicts authority figures (cops) getting eaten by monsters; and Puppet Master III depicts authority figures (Nazis) getting eaten by monsters. And that's not even mentioning the garbage man who gets eaten by his own truck in Child's Play 3 or the repressive parent who gets eaten by a wood-chipper in Stepfather III.

Another unifying thread in Part III movies is the ubiquity of foiled retirement plans as a major thematic element. In Lethal Weapon 3, Danny Glover plays an aging cop, a scant eight days away from retirement, who is tired of his violent past and just wants to sit back and take it easy, but who gets talked out of it by a wisecracking buddy with whom he goes way back. In Rambo III, Sylvester Stallone plays an aging commando who is tired of his violent past and just wants to sit back and take it easy, but who gets talked out of it by a wisecracking buddy with whom he goes way back.

In Rocky III, Sylvester Stallone plays an aging boxer who is tired of his violent past and just wants to sit back and take it easy, but who gets talked out of it by a wisecracking buddy with whom he goes way back. And in Basket Case 3, some guy you never heard of plays a mass murderer who is tired of his violent past and just wants to sit back and take it easy, but who gets talked out of it by an old buddy with whom he goes way back: a mutant pustule that was attached to his chest at birth, but which got surgically removed against the will of both parties in Part I. This repugnant creature, the hapless moviegoer eventually learns, is actually the mass murderer's disturbed, non-identical twin brother, a Siamese twin who happens to be a large, viscous growth. And you thought your family was dysfunctional.

There are many other themes that appear over and over again in Part III movies:

--_ In Child's Play 3_, a cute little kid named Andy is pursued by a serial killer that everyone else mistakes for a harmless toy. In Stepfather III, a cute little kid named Andy is pursued by serial killer that everyone else mistakes for a harmless stepfather.

-- In Rocky III, a short Italian-American who cannot fight is depicted as the greatest boxer in the world. In The Karate Kid III, a short Italian-American who cannot act and cannot fight is depicted as the greatest teenage karate champion in Los Angeles.

-- In Rocky III, Sylvester Stallone plays a champion whose aging mentor refuses to work with him anymore because his protege has gone soft and will get himself annihilated by a challenger who is a million times more talented than he is. In The Karate Kid III, Ralph Macchio plays a champion whose aging mentor refuses to work with him anymore because he has gone soft and will get himself annihilated by a challenger who is a million times more talented than he is.

-- In Rocky III, Sylvester Stallone makes a fool of himself in an L.A. gym before achieving catharsis on a California beach and whipping the piss out of his opponent. In The Karate Kid III, Ralph Macchio makes a fool of himself in an L.A. gym before achieving catharsis on a California beach and whipping the piss out of his adversary.

Other than that, the pictures have nothing in common.

Part IIIs are also characterized by a predilection for mutants that suddenly and unexpectedly emerge from parts of the human body which most viewers would probably prefer that they not emerge from, at least not while the family is huddled around the TV set eating Chinese. In Howling III, which is as fine a film about the ecological threat posed to the Australian marsupial werewolf community by a cynical, environmentally callous, totally unsympathetic public as has ever been made, the vastly underrated Imogen Annesley gives birth to a cuddly werewolflet that explodes from her loins and then crawls up her lower abdomen and wriggles into a pouch cleverly concealed in her stomach. Charming. This is pretty much the same thing that happens in Basket Case 3, where a horrible monstrosity suddenly squirms loose from a deformed woman's stomach, and then is followed by 11 siblings. Hey, the more the murkier.

The unorthodox lifestyles and dearth of interpersonal skills that typify these horrid monstrosities invariably result in their being persecuted by close-minded humans. Indeed, this leads to another theme that unites most Part III movies: that werewolves, sharks, psychopathic puppets and serpentine mutants suddenly exploding out of a female's bowels only appear to be monsters to unsophisticated observers, when in reality they are our friends. This is the theme of Jaws 3-D, in which perky marine biologist Bess Armstrong pleads with environmentally insensitive Sea World owner Lou Gossett Jr. to refrain from killing a great white shark that may have eaten one of his employees, because Science will benefit from studying it. It is also the theme of Basket Case 3, where the director seems to feel that if the rest of us would only refrain from prejudging the hideous mutants around us, we would probably come to like them, to accept them, and perhaps even to invite them into our homes to work off the books as nannies. In other words, to know, know, know them is to love, love, love them. Even if they do appear to be nothing more than festering carcasses of putrefied hog excrement.

This conciliatory theme is repeated in Puppet Master III, a film contending that the Third Reich might never have been toppled were it not for the intercession of a crack squadron of short, homicidal, anti-Nazi puppets. (Actually, the puppets are far more believable in their roles as enemies of the Gestapo than is Melanie Griffith, cast as an American spy working behind enemy lines during World War II, in Shining Through. I am willing to believe that there were short, wooden creatures active in the anti-Nazi underground in Berlin during the Second World War; I am even willing to believe that some of them are still on the CIA payroll. But I am not willing to believe that there have ever been any women like Melanie Griffith active in any anti-Nazi movement anywhere. Though, if the U.S. did use spies who talked like Chatty Cathy back in the '40s, this might explain why it took us so long to win the war.)

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