Bride Of Re-Animator follows the story of Dr. Herbert West and Dr. Dan Cain, 8 years after the incidents that take place in Re-Animator. Dr. West and Dr. Cain finish a tour as field surgeons during a bloody civil war in Peru where they have continued there research trying to “conquer death”. They soon return home to Miskatonic University Hospital and take up residency in an old cemetery’s mortuary, where they’ve created a lab to continue their experiments. The remains of the Miskatonic Massacre are stored in the pathology department and studied by Dr. Wilbur Graves. Dr. Graves is soon visited by Lt. Chapel of the Arkham P.D. regarding the night of the massacre, although the case is closed, Lt. Chapel has a personal stake in the investigation as his deceased wife was re-animated and left to fester in the psychiatric ward of the hospital. Lt. Chapel is asking questions about missing parts from the pathology department like the head of Dr. Hill that Chapel presents to graves, which turned up at a circus sideshow. Dr. Graves soon begins to experiment with the re-agent and re-animates Dr. Hill’s head again. Dr. Hill is still bent on his revenge on Dr. West and soon begins exerting his control over the re-animated dead to help in ths endeavor. Meanwhile, West has been the one taking the body parts from Miskatonic for his experiments, making gruesome mismatched-part creatures to further his research. Soon Dr. West pulls on Dr. Cain’s heart strings and plays him like a fiddle by offering to recreate his dead girlfriend, Meg, by making his master creation – a new life made of different parts starting with Meg’s heart. But, Lt. Chapel is hot on their heals and soon Dr. Hill will exact his revenge.

Bride Of Re-Animator doesn’t quite live up to the level excellence that was the original, but it doesn’t fall extremely far behind. Worse sequels have definitely been made. The pacing of the movie is kind of slow, but watchable. Jeffrey Combs gives another great performance as Dr. Herbert West, delivering his usual brand of dark humor in his matter-of-fact manner. His acting and his character are the reason for watching these movies.

The zombie make-up and special effects were pretty good. The special effects department didn’t really use any astounding tricks to leave you scratching your head, but it worked just the same and mostly came off pretty campy and humorous, which is par for this course. Lots of blood and gore. I think every time you see Dr. Cain over a patient he gets sprayed with blood. It seemed as thought the special effects team my have been having their fun with it as he seemed to be acting through his discomfort and actual surprise. It was nice to see the stop-motion animated critters after so many years of CGI.

The producers of this film were trying to throw in little Bride Of Frankenstein references. The laboratory was full of superfluous gadgetry and had fog seeping out of everything, which is one thing. But, at one point Dr. Cain is wearing this blousy pirate shirt for no reason, evidently trying to bring to mind the era that Mary Shelley was writing in.

One thing that really bugged me for no reason was with Lt. Chapel character. Every time he introduces himself as a cop, he does it by fumbling over flipping his badge out. And it’s not over the top slapstick fumbling. This is something that’s usually done with relative smoothness and grace, the cop flips the badge, it gone, on to other subjects. But here it’s just this action that you know he’s going to do, you see it coming, then there’s the delivery and it just kind of flops to the side exposing the badge all awkward like. It’s really weird and I had to say something about it to see if anybody else caught it. Maybe I’m way off.

You could really take it or leave it with this movie. It has some pretty cool gags and Dr. West is always good, but it moves pretty slow and my mind began wandering. It’s definitely watchable and pretty fun, but you wouldn’t be missing anything if you skipped it. I think it would go over well with a few friends and a few beers.

Comments(1)

If you enjoyed this post, subscribe to our  RSS feed!     Bookmark to: