It’s that time of year again! Time to celebrate the Resurrection with a weeklong plunge into all things zombie! Here’s the history: In 2008, Dr. Girlfriend and I decided to spend a week or so each year marathoning through zombie films that we’d never seen before, and I would blog short reviews. And simple as that, the Easter Zombie Movie Marathon was born.
For the curious, here are links to 2008, 2009 (a bad year), 2010, 2011, 2012 (when we left the blog behind), 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023.
When it came time to put a sequel to Re-Animator together, Stuart Gordon and Barbara Crampton were no longer available. Gordon, after moving on to other successful works, From Beyond (1986), Dolls (1987), and the extremely popular Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989), had no interest in doing a sequel, especially if it had to be brought in at an R-rating. As for Crampton, she initially claimed scheduling conflicts with her soap opera work, but in an interview from CraveOnline in 2011, explained that her agent convinced her not to take the part as it wasn’t much more than a glorified cameo.
This meant that Brian Yuzna needed to step up to the plate to write and direct the straight-to-video sequel. According to the July 1991 issue of Fangoria, pre-production began in early 1989 with filming scheduled to begin on June 5, 1989, giving him very little time to get the project going. It wasn’t until late May that he could even confirm Jeffrey Combs could return to play Herbert West, thanks to actual scheduling conflicts. Bruce Abbott also returns to reprise the role of Dr. Daniel Cain alongside David Gale returning to play the presumed dead Dr. Hill.
I say presumed dead, because we pretty much saw his head get crushed and smashed against a wall, leaving only a smear and a head that looked like a deflated basketball at the end of Re-Animator.
This wasn’t Yuzna’s first time in the director’s chair. His film Society was released a year earlier in 1989 and if you’ve seen it, you know that he and his special-effects partner-in-crime, Screaming Mad George, were going to be able to handle Bride of Re-Animator without missing much of a beat. In fact, in the end, I’d say they out-crazy Re-Animator’s over-the-top climax. Oh, and if you haven’t seen Society, you should really go watch it as soon as you finish reading this review.
The plot of Bride of Re-Animator is inspired by episodes “V. The Horror from the Shadows” and “VI. The Tomb-Legions” of Lovecraft’s original serialized story, as well as taking more than a little inspiration from The Bride of Frankenstein. Having somehow survived what seemed like certain death at the climax of Re-Animator, now Dr. Herbert West and Dr. Dan Cain are working as medics in the middle of the Peruvian Civil War, where they have plenty of access to dead bodies with which to continue their experimentation. After just barely escaping being overrun, they return and with no explanation have jobs as doctors at Miskatonic University Hospital, where West continues his work in Cain’s basement, this time handily sharing a wall with a crypt from the neighboring graveyard.
That sounds like a great place to dump failed experiments, doesn’t it?
After using body parts from the hospital’s morgue, West discovers that his reagent not only reanimates the dead but can also bring individual body parts back to some sort of life. This includes a hilarious stop-motion creation made of fingers and an eyeball that I hope someone out there has turned into a collectible toy. At the same time, pathologist Dr. Wilbur Graves (Mel Stewart) discovers a vial of West’s reagent and the severed head of Dr. Carl Hill in the preserved evidence from what is now called “The Miskatonic Massacre” that ended the last film.
Meanwhile, police officer Lt. Leslie Chapham (Claude Earl Jones) begins nosing around West and Cain, as they were the only unaffected survivors of the massacre where his wife was recovered as one of the crazed zombies (we learn later that he beat her to death). Needless to say, these parallel narrative threads begin tying in directly to West’s use of dead Megan’s (Crampton) heart to manipulate Cain into helping create a new life from the pieces of various dead women. All of this climaxes into a finale where West and Cain’s bride is brought to life just as a reanimated Lt. Chapham leads an assault on West and Cain’s home, with Dr. Hill flying around thanks to the bat wings that Graves sewed to his severed head. Hill is also psychically commanding all of the zombie survivors of the Miskatonic Massacre.
Add to that (as if it needed anything else), all of West’s failed experiments, collections of living body parts sewn together in grotesque combinations, burst through the crypt wall to make the ending of Bride of Re-Animator one of the most insane conclusions to a zombie film that I’ve ever seen (until tomorrow night’s movie, that is).
What Bride of Re-Animator lacks in the wit and charm of the first film, it more than makes up for it in just out-and-out amazing visual effects. Tony Doublin of Doublin FX (who also worked on Re-Animator, From Beyond, and The Blob) created the stop-motion finger/eye thing as well as the puppet dog with Chapham’s undead arm attached. Did I forget to mention that one? The opening scene’s battlefield medical tent effects were overseen by Greg Nicotero (The Walking Dead), and finally, Screaming Mad George designed and created all of the failed test subjects.
Another performance I almost forgot to mention was Fabiana Udenio as Francesca Danelli, the woman who comes between Herbert and Dan. Because if Herbert isn’t in some bizarre form of love with Dan, I’ll eat my hat. Every scene in this and the previous film where a woman is tempting Dan away from their work, Jeffrey Combs plays West as practically seething with jealousy coupled with quippy, catty remarks about them. Doesn’t Dan understand that it is their destiny to create non-procreative life together? Sheesh, Dan. Don’t you see that Herbert just can’t quit you?
A special shout-out to Kathleen Kinmont who plays the dying patient Gloria that Dr. Cain has fixated on (that man just can’t not get emotionally wrecked by terminal patients), who’s head is then used to cap the monstrous body of the Bride in the finale. She’s not given a lot to do in the rest of the film, but damn does give her all as the Bride.
Strangely enough, Bride of Re-Animator wasn’t the only Bride of Frankenstein homage made in 1990. While Bride went straight-to-video and didn’t actually hit shelves until February 1991, another indie-horror maestro, Frank Henenlotter, the man responsible for the Basket Case franchise (1982-1991) and Brain Damage (1988), released the decidedly sleazier Frankenhooker on June 1, 1990.
But more on that tomorrow.