Saturday, February 9, 2008

Film Review: BRIAN YUZNA "BEYOND RE-ANIMATOR" & " BRIDE OF RE-ANIMATOR "

BRIAN YUZNA "BEYOND RE-ANIMATOR" & " BRIDE OF RE-ANIMATOR "


JEFFREY COMBS IN BEYOND-RE-ANIMATOR (2003)
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SCENE FROM " BEYOND-RE-ANIMATOR" (2003)
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PHOTO OF DECAPITATED DR. HILL IN RE-ANIMATOR (1985)
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Beyond Re-animator(2003) is a very strange film it combined Bride of Re-animator with a prison riot ala Natural Born Killers & then it decides to get weird to the extreme. It is a fun romp.

In this sequel to Bride of Re-Animator & the original Re-Animator Dr. Herbert West is this time in prison for the murders committed in the earlier films fourteen years ago & is working in the infirmary & still doing experiments to discover how to bring the dead back to life. West is now trying to capture the energy or life force which is lost at the time of death . This idea was explored in the film The ASPHYX (1973) . West believes that if he can capture this essence then he can re-animate someone with their life-force or soul intact. This is used in the film for a comical effect as the essence of a rat is injected into the prison’s warden who becomes more & more rat-like. At the end of the film there is a fight between a rat & a severed penis which is a tasteless bit of over-the-top humour.

The sadistic warden goes insane & tortures & murders prisoners during the riot in the prison but to prolong their suffering he injects them with the new serum so that those he hangs from the ceiling are unable to die outright & are kept alive while continuing to suffer.

One of the prisoners who is a drug addict & is always scheming to get more drugs from the doctor gets a hold of West’s elixir or re-agent & injects a massive overdose of the stuff but even after his body is turned into a living grossed out looking corpse of jellied flesh he still asks West for more of the elixir.

This film for me was just suitably bizarre enough for my taste. It was not completely satisfying but it was good for a second sequel to the original Re-Animator (1985).


POSTER OF BRIAN YUZNA'S " BRIDE OF RE-ANIMATOR"
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Most of the reviews I have read about this series of films praise the original Re-Animator & criticize Bride of Re-Animator for not being as good as the original. After watching these films a number of times I find I am in disagreement with this assessment of the films. In fact I prefer Bride of Re-Animator more than the original. The sequel is a lot funnier & weirder.

I found the original Re-animator too slow & talky with a lot of scenes that were too drawn out like those between the love interest & West’s assistant.
There were also scenes which made little sense & probably should have been cut.
Below is a photo of Dr. Hill's decapitated head just before the notorious & sickening sex scene between the head & the young woman who is being held down by her re-animated father. ( That scene is usually deleted from the various versions of the film)

HEAD OF DR. HILL LUSTING AFTER BARBARA CRAMPTON IN " RE-ANIMATOR " (1985)
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In Bride of Re-Animator Dr. Hill’s head is brought back into the action & after being re-animated by a pathologist he gets him to put bat wings onto his severed head . So we get a few scenes of Dr. Hill’s head flying around & threatening Herbert West.
We also get a twisted finale in which Herbert West’s failed experiments attack him in an abandoned crypt in the cemetery adjacent to their house.
There is also the story of the police detective who’s wife was sort of but not quite completely killed during the Miskatonic Massacre. The detective is upset that his wife is not quite dead & is snooping around trying to find out what really happened on that night nine months previously. But we discover that the detective was physically abusing his wife & murdered her & that’s how she ended up in the morgue. And so the detective gets his just reward turned into a grotesque zombie who beats the their pet dog up against the fire-place & he is then killed by his re-animated dead wife .
And then it gets weird. When the pieced together re-animated bride comes to life the scene is done as a homage to James Whale's Bride of Frankenstein. But she realizes it is not her that West's assistant wants but the dead Meg of the first film so she tears herself to pieces.

Herbert West: " My God they are using tools" refering to the re-animated creatures who want to destroy Herbert West for what he has done to them.

Another great site on Horror Movies is BLOODY -DISGUSTING .COM
www.bloody-disgusting.com/

and ESPLATTER-The Guide to Modern Horror Movies
www.esplatter.com/

HORROR THEATER VIDEO
/www.horrortheatervideo.com/

horror movies .ca : The Ultimate Horror Movie Database
/www.horror-movies.ca/

By for now,
GORD

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