bride of re-animator

Re-Animator was the poster-child for success in the VHS era. Released in 1985 in just 129 theaters, it really came to life on home video where it competed with hundreds of other horror titles that overpromised and under delivered. Director Stuart Gordon's film, though, was the genuine article: a twisted, gory, hilarious take on the writing of H.P. Lovecraft that was embraced by the critics just a wholeheartedly as it was by fans.

Stuart and producer Brian Yuzna quickly collaborated on another successful Lovecraft adaptation, From Beyond (1986), but a sequel to Re-Animator didn't develop until 1989. By that time, Stuart's studio aspirations (he wrote the story for Honey, I Shrunk the Kids) kept him off the project, so Yuzna moved forward with a rushed script and tight budget in attempt to keep the franchise alive.

If it's not obvious enough from the title, Bride of Re-Animator (1989) owes a much bigger debt to the Universal horror films than Lovecraft's complex mythology of interdimensional monsters. It's essentially a Frankenstein story with Dr. Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs) and Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott) continuing their ethically questionable experiments on body parts lifted from the hospital pathology lab.

Escaping any real fallout from the "Miskatonic Massacre" that ended the first film, Herbert is now creating a re-animated freakshow in their basement lab, patching together limbs, digits and eyeballs with reckless abandon. Cain, meanwhile, still pines after his dead fiancé, Meg (although Barbara Crampton doesn't return); so much so that he doesn't object too much when Herbert installs her heart into the latest conglomeration of body parts downstairs. But fate throws a monkey wrench into their scientific plans when the severed head of Dr. Hill (David Gale) plots his revenge, using several re-animated corpses and a grief-stricken cop to do the legwork.

If all that sounds a bit choppy and disconnected, director Brian Yuzna admits he feels the same way. Starting with an odd sequence in Peru where Herbert and Dan are mixed up in a civil war, Bride of Re-Animator feels more like a pitch session than a finished script. The film never has a chance to build momentum, moving from one gag to another - like the "finger-monster" created by stop-motion animator David Allen and Dr. Hill's grafted bat-wings that improbably allow his severed head to fly - with the aim of pleasing the Fangoria crowd.

And as a purely visceral re-cap of the first film, Bride of Re-Animator gets the job done admirably. Yuzna does a good job recapturing the slightly twisted tone, and Jeffrey Combs slips back into mad scientist mode without missing a beat. Even the constant barrage of practical effects - especially the quick parade of freaks created by Screaming Mad George - are sure to give an audience of like-minded fans their money's worth. But it's lacking the "spark" of the original, something that all the fluorescent green re-agent in the world can't seem to bring back.

Arrow Video's Blu-ray DVD limited edition is well worth the investment for those who disagree. Featuring a brand-new 2K restoration of the unrated version (and a second disc of the R-rated cut), the two-disc set comes with a pair of commentaries, new featurettes on the effects, an on-camera interview with Yuzna, a pair of deleted scenes, a ton of behind-the-scenes footage, liner notes and new cover artwork. A sweet set for an average film.