DVD Review: Bride of Re-Animator (1990)

After a 5-year hiatus, those mischievous abominators-of-nature Drs. Herbert West and Dan Cain are back, this time under the direction of shock godfather Brian Yuzna. Sadly, though the grungy production values, hammy acting and gleefully silly prosthetic FX will appeal to genre fans, this is a disimprovement from Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator (1985).

After a pointless prologue set in wartorn Peru, West (the always watchable Jeffrey Combs) and Cain (Bruce Abbott, sporting an unspeakable mullet and all the charisma of an office partition) are back in good old Miskatonic University Hospital, Massachusetts. Far from discouraged by the massacre precipitated in the first film by his ‘research’ into reanimating dead tissue, West has redoubled his efforts to prove that consciousness pervades all flesh by reanimating individual body parts.

Meanwhile Police Lieutenant Chapham (Claude Earl Jones), whose wife was killed in the original Miskatonic Massacre, doggedly continues his investigation into West’s macabre practices. Irritated by his attentions, West kills and subsequently reanimates him. The crazed doctor then reveals to Cain his plans to create a whole organism from disparate body parts. Initially Cain is horrified, but relents when West suggests including the preserved heart of Cain’s dead sweetheart Megan.

Complicating matters further, an ill-advised Dr. Graves has injected West’s patented glowing green Reagent into the disembodied head of Carl Hill, decapitated with a shovel (but otherwise undaunted) in the prequel. Hill awakens and telepathically summons the now undead Chapham, who forces Graves to sew a pair of zombified bat wings onto Hill’s head. Couldn’t be simpler.

But wait. Cain’s new love interest, the bland Francesca (Fabiana Udenio) happens to be at the doctors’ scary old mansion during the Frankenstein-homage/ripoff finale, and there ensues a savage and rather ill-matched catfight between her and the reanimated golem. Cain rushes to her aid, Hill’s bat-winged head flies about the rafters, Chapham and diverse other zombies also turn up uninvited, and much crunchy evisceration ensues.

Yuzna’s characteristic sense of fun is present throughout, and there are some particularly hilarious scenes. In a moment of boredom West attaches an arm to a leg and applies the Reagent, regretting it when the double-limb proceeds to kick and strangle him simultaneously. Francesca’s dog also gets the transplant treatment and ends up sporting Chapham’s forearm for a front paw.

That said, the splatter is a little half-hearted compared to Gordon’s spirited original. The script is gauche even by grindhouse standards, a few gloriously Gothic lines excepted (“I will not be shackled by the failures of your God. The only blasphemy is to wallow in insignificance!”) And Tartan’s usually impeccable transfer can’t conceal the poor quality of the picture, which looks for all the world like 2nd-generation VHS.

Yuzna is at his best elsewhere, particularly in the deranged and brilliant Society (1989). File this one somewhere between turkey and classic.

Sam Healy