Bride of Re-Animator

I'm going to start off this section with a movie that very clearly shows a portion of my film tastes with Bride of Re-Animator.

For those of you not familiar, this one is a direct sequel to the movie Re-Animator, starring Jeffrey Combs as Dr. Herbert West, a man very interested in...well, eliminating death. The original was a great flick if you enjoy 1980's special effects and lots of blood. Dr. West moves to Massachusetts as a Med student at a hospital Miskatonic, and soon finds his way into sharing an apartment with the handsome and talented Dr. Daniel Cain, who happens to be dating the daughter of the Dean of the medical school. Well, Dr. West soon involves Dr. Cain in his activities and they both get kicked out of the medical school, with a little help from obvious bad-guy Dr. Carl Hill, played creepily by David Gale. Things go very much awry and Dr. Hill ends up a headless zombie (carrying around his own head), the dean of the medical school ends up a zombie, and what is referred to later as the "Miskatonic Massacre" breaks out, involving all of Dr. West's "experiments," killing Dr. Cain's girlfriend Megan in the process.


This second installment picks up months after the Miskatonic Massacre and finds Dr. West and Dr. Cain in Peru, lending their medical expertise to a Peruvian rebellion squad. I didn't just make that up. At any rate, the rebellion goes kaput, and the two doctors make their way back to Miskatonic, practicing again. Meanwhile, a fatty police lieutenant is put in charge of investigating the Miskatonic Massacre, who seems to have his own personal stock in it. A woman from the Peruvian rebellion, Francesca, shows up as well, looking or Dr. Cain and gets forced into the investigation by Lt. Chapman. Dr. West has taken it upon himself to console a still-grieving Dr. Cain over the loss of his girlfriend Megan, by stealing various body parts from the morgue and reassembling a body around Megan's heart. Meanwhile, a bumbling pathology doctor has inadvertently reanimated the head of Dr. Hill, who wants revenge on Dr. West. the climax takes place in the two doctors' shared house on a windy, stormy night.

While I thoroughly enjoyed Re-Animator, I found Bride to be a little more tedious than the first, with a few more forced plot points than the first. However, there was a lot of plot going on that was well-paced throughout the movie. It didn't seem too hasty, even at a mere 1:40 runtime, especially taking into consideration the fact that movies with half this plot these days run at over two hours. Dr. West's speech just before the climax is very well-done, proving that although Jeffrey Combs isn't a widely known actor, he definitely knows is territory.

So in the end, more of the same blood-spilling, reanimating fun, with a few more plot points thrown in to complicate things, sometimes a little for the worse. It's worth reanimating your DVD player for.