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#295 - Bride of Re-Animator
Brian Yuzna, 1989
A scientist continues to work on his formula for bringing the dead back to life.
I think it says a lot about what kind of movie Bride of Re-Animator is when I decide to use the poster for the review's image because all the screencaps that turned up when I typed the title into Google Images were probably a little too gory to really showcase here. Stuart Gordon did not return to direct the sequel - instead, that duty falls to Re-Animator alumnus Brian Yuzna, directing his second film after the darkly comical body horror of Society. While Society ultimately looked like the work of a low-rent David Cronenberg wannabe, it had a weird charm that elevated it above its station. Bride of Re-Animator, on the other hand, may bear the name of a similarly cultish horror-comedy, but it struggles to live up to that name.
(Note: unmarked spoilers for the first movie ahead.) Following on from the events of the first film, doctors Dan Cain and Herbert West (whose survival of the previous film's ending is never explained or questioned) are still trying to test out West's re-animation formula. This eventually leads to them giving up on re-animating whole corpses and instead trying to build a Frankenstein's monster out of spare body parts, which is naturally complicated by Cain being obsessed with recreating his dead love interest from the last movie (spoiler), the return of the evil disembodied head from the last movie (another spoiler), and also a vengeful detective snooping around in their business (not a spoiler, surprisingly). It's all a flimsy plot designed to string together 90 minutes of macabre horror-comedy that, though it might actually outdo its predecessor in terms of grossness and ambition, sacrifices a lot of the charm that the original held because of just how poor its plot and characterisation end up being. Even then, it still feels oddly unoriginal - there's at least one scene involving a bunch of severed fingers tied together and running around that feels way too much like a knock-off of the possessed hand from Evil Dead II (and it's not the only scene involving violent disembodied body parts, not by a long shot), to say nothing of instances where it rips itself off (re-animating a dead cat in the last movie becomes re-animating a dead dog in this movie - and with its missing paw replaced with a human hand, no less). Not even some of the goofier-looking effects - a disembodied head getting around by using bat wings that are grafted onto its sides? Really? - are enough to raise even the slightest snort of laughter. Only really worth a look if you really liked the original (I liked it, but not enough to guarantee that I would tolerate much of this) or just enjoy ludicrously disgusting Z-grade horror movies in general - otherwise, stay far, far away.
Brian Yuzna, 1989
A scientist continues to work on his formula for bringing the dead back to life.
I think it says a lot about what kind of movie Bride of Re-Animator is when I decide to use the poster for the review's image because all the screencaps that turned up when I typed the title into Google Images were probably a little too gory to really showcase here. Stuart Gordon did not return to direct the sequel - instead, that duty falls to Re-Animator alumnus Brian Yuzna, directing his second film after the darkly comical body horror of Society. While Society ultimately looked like the work of a low-rent David Cronenberg wannabe, it had a weird charm that elevated it above its station. Bride of Re-Animator, on the other hand, may bear the name of a similarly cultish horror-comedy, but it struggles to live up to that name.
(Note: unmarked spoilers for the first movie ahead.) Following on from the events of the first film, doctors Dan Cain and Herbert West (whose survival of the previous film's ending is never explained or questioned) are still trying to test out West's re-animation formula. This eventually leads to them giving up on re-animating whole corpses and instead trying to build a Frankenstein's monster out of spare body parts, which is naturally complicated by Cain being obsessed with recreating his dead love interest from the last movie (spoiler), the return of the evil disembodied head from the last movie (another spoiler), and also a vengeful detective snooping around in their business (not a spoiler, surprisingly). It's all a flimsy plot designed to string together 90 minutes of macabre horror-comedy that, though it might actually outdo its predecessor in terms of grossness and ambition, sacrifices a lot of the charm that the original held because of just how poor its plot and characterisation end up being. Even then, it still feels oddly unoriginal - there's at least one scene involving a bunch of severed fingers tied together and running around that feels way too much like a knock-off of the possessed hand from Evil Dead II (and it's not the only scene involving violent disembodied body parts, not by a long shot), to say nothing of instances where it rips itself off (re-animating a dead cat in the last movie becomes re-animating a dead dog in this movie - and with its missing paw replaced with a human hand, no less). Not even some of the goofier-looking effects - a disembodied head getting around by using bat wings that are grafted onto its sides? Really? - are enough to raise even the slightest snort of laughter. Only really worth a look if you really liked the original (I liked it, but not enough to guarantee that I would tolerate much of this) or just enjoy ludicrously disgusting Z-grade horror movies in general - otherwise, stay far, far away.