Maniac Cop 3: Badge of Silence 1992

A Voodoo priest named Houngan Julius Harris resurrects Matt Cordell Robert Z’Dar, who takes back his badge and returns with a cold, unwavering purpose to do his bidding.

Meanwhile, two ambitious reporters hoping to snag a big break stumble into a convenience-store robbery, where Officer Katie Sullivan Gretchen Becker intervenes and wounds the suspect Frank Jessup Jackie Earle Haley. The clerk turns out to be Jessup’s girlfriend, who had intentionally let him in to rob the store, setting off a chaotic crossfire. In the fray, Katie is severely wounded and ends up comatose and brain dead, a fact that gnaws at the detective assigned to the case, Det. Sean McKinney Robert Davi.

Cordell begins to stalk the hospital, watching Katie as she lies between life and death. In a merciless display, he kills a heckler who darts in the scene and then destroys portions of the medical team: a supervising physician is struck down with defibrillator paddles, and Katie’s physician is slain by a blast of X-ray radiation. The two reporters who portrayed Katie as the aggressor are themselves slain by Cordell, leaving a trail of fear and silence in his wake.

As McKinney and a physician named Dr. Susan Fowler Caitlin Dulany dig into the murders and the strange disturbances in Katie’s condition, their inquiry leads them to Houngan. The mystic admits that he brought Cordell back from the dead and reveals his own fixation on Katie, who is hovering on the edge of death. Under duress, Cordell forces Houngan to attempt a resurrection on Katie, exposing a cruel craving that she would return to him. Houngan warns that her spirit refuses to come back to his world, and Cordell, furious, kills Houngan. The two are set ablaze, and Katie is immolated in the ensuing chaos.

The escape begins in earnest as Cordell, surviving the fire, pursues McKinney and Susan in a battered police car and an ambulance. They manage to fling an oxygen tank into the burning vehicle, triggering a dramatic explosion that halts the chase. After the wreck, the morgue doors close in on a final, chilling image: the charred bodies of Katie and Cordell lie near one another, and as the lone coroner wheels Katie’s corpse into the room, Cordell’s hand seems to move, reaching toward hers. The scene lingers on the tableau, then cuts to black.