Melinda Clarke is amazing as a girl who becomes a Zombie and struggles to deal with her condition. It's surprisingly moving and tragic for the genre bur Melinda Clarke carries it through, she's lethal and dangerous when hunger overcomes her but vulnerable and needy when it involves the guy she loves.

Julie, played by Mindy Clarke or better known as Melinda Clarke — becomes the zombie, and the story follows her experience. Instead of an anonymous mass of zombies being a looming threatening presence that occasionally comes around to move the story along, this zombie is always present and is not exactly the ‘evil’ in the mix of the story.

Piercings are pretty, right? The zombie is female and remains (well, more or less) attractive. She has awareness of her past and present emotions, and that she has started having problems with sensing any sensation when she touches something. In her confusion she begins to modify her body with first small and then large piercings (which was all the rage yet around that time) which ultimately she can use as weapons.

Julie becomes hungry and Curt drives them to a store. A gang talk about her as she is eating snacks on the floor. Curt becomes angry and accidentally hits one of them. During the ensuing brawl one of the gang shoots the shopkeeper. Julie bites the shooter. The alarm goes off and the gang flees. While Curt and Julie are in a van with the wounded shopkeeper, Julie is overcome by her hunger for brains and attacks him, eating some of his brains before Curt stops her.

The gang chases Julie and Curt through the city, not realizing what is happening to their infected friend. Julie and Curt hide from the gang in the sewers, where they encounter Riverman, a vagrant who shelters them. Julie discovers that extreme pain seems to temporarily make the cravings to feed on humans go away. She mutilates her flesh with various items of junk found around Riverman's lair, until she is adorned with spikes, nails, and shards of glass sticking out of her flesh.

Director/producer Brian Yuzna was disappointed with the lack of screen time for his previous female monster creation in Bride of Re-Animator and wanted "Julie" to have a far bigger presence. Julie's full zombie look required 100 different pieces, an application process that originally took nine hours but was eventually cut down to six, not including glamour make-up.

Melinda Patrice "Mindy" Clarke (born April 24, 1969) is an American actress. Clarke is known for portraying Faith Taylor on the soap opera Days of Our Lives (1989–1990), Julie Cooper on Fox's teen drama series The O.C. (2003–2007), Lady Heather on CBS's crime drama series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2001–2015) and Amanda on the action thriller series Nikita (2010–2013).

‘Return of the Living Dead’ Reboot in the Works; “Will Expand the Existing World”

One of the greatest horror-comedies of all time, Dan O’Bannon’s 1985 movie The Return of the Living Dead ended up launching a franchise that to date includes five total movies, but you mostly only hear horror fans talking about the first three. The first sequel came in 1988 and featured returning actors, but 1993’s Brian Yuzna-directed Return of the Living Dead 3 went in an entirely different direction with a wildly different storyline. It’s become a cult classic in recent years, thanks in large part to its central villain, a sexy zombie played by Melinda Clarke.

And then we got Return of the Living Dead: Necropolis and Return of the Living Dead: Rave to the Grave, both released direct-to-television in 2005. Why don’t horror fans talk about them? Well, they took the franchise down a not-quite-desirable path, the two films cheaply made and shot at the same time. And that was the end of the franchise for almost 20 years.

But the dead are never truly dead, if George A. Romero and Dan O’Bannon taught us anything, and it looks like a Return of the Living Dead reboot is shambling to life this year.

The company Living Dead Media is behind the planned upcoming reboot, which has Steve Wolsh (Muck, Kill Her Goats) attached to direct. According to the company’s official website, the next installment in the Return of the Living Dead franchise will reboot rather than remake.

Living Dead Media previews, “Our reboot of Return of the Living Dead will expand the existing world created by the original 5 films, while staying true to the R-rated, sci-fi, horror, dark comedy roots adored by fans of the cult classic around the world for the last 35 years.”

The company also notes on their official website, “​We are excited to resurrect this storied franchise for current fans and new generations of zombie fans.”