BRIDE OF RE-ANIMATOR
US, US, 1990, 96 minutes, Colour.
Jeffrey Combs, Bruce Abbott, Claude Earl Jones, Fabuaba Udenio, David Gale, Kathleen Kinmont.
Directed by Brian Yuzna.
Stuart Gordon’s initial film, Re-animator, 1985, received strong welcome as a 1980s horror film, based on a novel by H.P. Lovecraft but owing much to the influence of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
In the first film there were experiments, skin grafts, experiments with reviving the dead, undertaken at Massachusetts University by two young doctors played by Jeffrey Combs and Bruce Abbott. As the title suggests, reanimation.
This sequel, five years later, again based on the Lovecraft stories, was directed by Brian Yuzna (who had just directed the body horror film, Society). It begins eight months after the ending of the first film, the two doctors finding themselves involved in warfare in Peru, but still the interest in reviving lives.
Then, they are back in Massachusetts involved in the same experiments. Lovecraft’s title includes the name of the key doctor, Herbert West. He is played with serious intensity and some relentlessness by Jeffrey Combs, looking something like a diminutive Clark Kent, glasses, intensely serious. His associate, Daniel Kane, is tall and lanky, intense but also having some relationships. And, there is the young girl they saw at their work in Peru and has come to the US.
Dr West is still continuing his experiments, a particular focus on a young woman, friend of Daniel, her surgery, his attempts to revive her, her coming to life in the same vein as the Bride of Frankenstein. There are also hidden in a room, some of the reanimated survivors, especially the wife of an investigator who keeps coming to interrogate the two doctors – but then becomes a victim, along with the other living dead, pursued by his wife, continually bringing out his official badge.
In the meantime, the doctor from the original film, separated from his body, only a head, continues to haunt people, especially another doctor involved in experiments played by Claude Earl Jones (no relation!).
Many laboratory sequences moving towards some kind of final mayhem, involving the young girl from Peru, her attraction to Dan, coming to the laboratory, pursued by the Bride, the other creatures getting loose and running amok, including the separated head. Dan is torn between the achievement and his emotions for the women. No such scruple for Dr West, relentlessly moving on, trying to escape.
And the film ends suddenly – but, in 2003, a further sequel, Beyond Reanimator and the return of the star, Jeffrey Combs as Dr West.