I Watch 'Em So You Don't Have To

Old Movies Revisited Just For The Fun Of It 


Re-Animator (1985)
Bride Of Re-Animator (1990)
Beyond Re-Animator (2003)


Actually, I'd only ever seen the last movie before, never the original and didn't even know there was a sequel, but since I like everything Jeffrey Combs does, whether the movie is a stinker or not, I thought this would be a good diversion and I really needed one. Without getting personal or sappy, I am - not well. As in getting worse and there's no better. Enough said, on with the fun:


Re-Animator: This movie is based on the H.P. Lovecraft story Herbert West–Reanimator. It is supposed to be a horror film, and to follow the Lovecraft story, but as I've said before (and funny, Jeffrey was in that one too) Lovecraft's work has often been - screwed up, such as in The Dunwich Horror. But Jeffrey is great, the gore is what the kiddies go for and you've got a real comic element (and shades of old 50's style science fiction) so this became a cult film and is still popular. And we get a look at 80's movie style medicine. There isn't a glove to be found in this bunch of doctors and students. The only time I saw anyone wear some was when they were removing a brain. Dan (coming up) is bringing a corpse to the morgue after performing CPR unsuccessfully on her (without gloves) but there's another body with a bloody hand in his way. So, he picks up the hand, wipes his own hand on his scrubs and continues on. Ewww... you can keep your gore, I find that funny, but this kind of stuff is extremely gross.

I don't care if I have to do this in 100 movies, it'll work damn it!

In Switzerland, Herbert West brings his dead professor, Dr. Hans Gruber back to life. For a minute. Then a screaming Gruber's eyes explode out his head. I suppose that was supposed to be gruesome, though I found it hilarious. When told he killed Gruber Herbert retorts 'I gave him life'. Yeah, for a minute. A really bad minute. Skip ahead to Arkham, Mass., where Herbert works on further medical studies. He rents a room from Dan (A young Bruce Abbott that you've probably seen in a lot of things. Did you know he got his start at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival? See - we've got more than turtle-loving boys out here. Don't ask.) Herbert makes the basement into his own personal lab and immediately starts - with Dan's cat. I would have kicked his ass out right there, but Dan's a guy, apparently he wasn't that attached to the cat (or something) and he's more interested in Herbert's ability to keep it coming back to life (although it's in horrific pain and suffering - not a good part of the movie). They decide to partner up (Dan is a Doc working on his studies also) and the fun begins. The antagonist is Dr. Hill, who Herbert believes to have stolen most of his ideas from Dr. Gruber. Dr. Hill retaliates by turning the dean, who is also the father of Dan's girlfriend, against them both. They're basically booted out.

No, as a matter of fact I do NOT like turtles.

Herbert has a never-say-die attitude (Get it? Sorry, brain is on stupid overload today). He continues anyway, sneaking him and Dan into the morgue to try his 're-agent' on a 'fresher' subject. The results are bad. Apparently Herbert is a genius moron. Oh well, that just makes things that much funnier. The dean is accidentally killed and re-animated and goes insane so here we have our first 'zombie' I guess. Dr. Hill knows what Herbert did, and with his 'laser drill', another idea he pilfered, he gives the dean a lobotomy and now can control him. Why? Tut tut, there's no logic allowed in horror movies. Just deal. Dr. Hill then goes to Herbert telling him he's going to jail unless he gives him the re-agent so Dr. Hill can say he is the one who 'discovered' it. As Dr. Hill is about to take everything, Herbert attacks and in some really good gore for an 80's flick, manages not only to mash him, but decapitate him. For giggles he injects both the head (now in a tray) and the body (lying on the floor) with the re-agent. Did I mention he must be a genius moron? I did? Well, for whatever reason, the Doctor not only can talk (great feat with no vocal cords or lungs) but he can think and he knocks Herbert out with his body, then picks his head up and walks out. Here's where the 50's style movies comes to mind, and any seriousness this movie may have had ends.

I'm really ahead in this movie.

Meanwhile back at the ranch... I mean University, Dan and Megan, the dean's daughter, discover her dad lobotomized, and different items showing that Dr. Hill has designs on Megan's body (which you get to see all of several times - she's not shy). During all this, err, action, Megan manages to get herself kidnapped and we get a scene of - geez, what would you call this - reverse necrophilia? In other words, the dead doc takes his head to - uh - do things to Megan's naked body. And I laughed.


The two whackos - you can't really call Herbert and Dan heroes after all - get to the morgue before Megan gets... ick I can't even say what he was going to do. The dead doc shows what he's been up to in that very short period of time (besides Megan). He's re-animated all the corpses lying around the morgue. Yup, we're an hour and twelve minutes into the movie and we finally get real zombie action. Complete with incomplete corpses, screeching corpses (Where is all that breathing coming from?), etc. and they are all under the dead doc's disembodied head's control (not bad special effects for the 80's). As Megan screams, her dead father, retaining some kind of memory of her, grabs the dead doc's head and smushes it. That's a technical term by the way. Smush. After that there is a zombie free-for-all as they just go for it, no longer under control. But Dr. Hill is far from done.


As Herbert is buried under very angry corpses, Dan and Megan escape to the elevator. But of course the door doesn't close fast enough and one zombie strangles her. He rushes her to the ER and we are back to gloveless treatment (eww) as they attempt to revive her. Nope. So Dan, apparently also being a genius moron decides to give the re-agent one more try. The movie ends while she screams. Gee, I guess that means it didn't work, huh?


So we have a silly but halfway decent treatment of a Lovecraft story. So of course they say 'Hey, let's take that piece of... film and redo it.' And so now you have:



The Bride Of Re-Animator: Really? I mean really? That's the best they could do? And to say that this is H.P. Lovecraft's BORA is massively pushing it. But oh well, here's the movie and you didn't have to watch it: Eight months after the events of Re-Animator, the genius morons Herbert and Dan (Why the hell did Dan stay with him?) are working as medics in the middle of a bloody Peruvian civil war. They use all the war casualties they can get their hands on to experiment with Herbert's re-agent (which apparently still doesn't work worth a damn). When their medical tent is stormed by the enemy troops, West and Cain return home to the exact same place they trashed before and yet somehow are allowed in as doctors there (I guess it's like a teaching hospital, except no one learns anything.). 

You're not going to, like, attach things to my doggy are you?

Using body parts from the morgue and the cemetery they so conveniently live next to, Herbert is re-animating stuff right and left. Literally. Hands to feet, eyes to fingers, etc. All the 'rejects' he apparently throws through a hole in the basement wall which connects to one of the crypts. He becomes determined to create an entire living person 'cause hey, we gotta get the title from somewhere. And he IS a genius moron after all. Herbert steals Megan's heart from the morgue, since none of the body parts from the first movie are decaying and promises Dan (It was his girlfriend from the first movie, remember?) to re-create her for him. Yeah, just for Dan he's doing this. And Dan, being a fellow genius moron believes him and helps him out. Why why why why??? Sigh. This movie starts to drag as they scheme getting different parts from... well lets just say a lot of time goes by with little happening. We do learn that there is a Lt. Chapham who wants them dead, and as the movie goes on it turns out it's because his wife is one of the re-animated corpses from the first film the hospital still 'keeps' in a padded room. Why why why why.... oops, sorry. We also learn later that she died of her head being slammed repeatedly by something... uh... hard. And the Lt. did it. And that's probably why he's pissed she's not totally dead. I dunno.

I saved this heart just for you.

Dr. Hill (first movie, only a head) is discovered in a sideshow and recovered and brought back to the morgue. Conveniently some of Herbert's re-agent is also still there so the bright (read really REALLY dumb) new morgue director decides to inject his head with it (After trying it on a bat - I mean really, where the hell does a morgue guy get a bat?). Once again, despite being 'dead' for almost a year, no vocal cords, no lungs, Dr. Hill can still talk, think and somehow conveniently control fellow zombies with his thoughts. Gee, get his head on a superhero body and put that boy to work! Dr. Hill vows to get his revenge on Herbert - the morgue director stupidly throws his head in the trash, thinking that'll be the end of that. Uh huh.

This looks totally real, right?

Okay let's make this painfully long movie a little shorter: The murderous Lt. is killed and reanimated (which REALLY pisses him off) and so Dr. Hill has control of him as well as the three intact zombies left in the hospital. Massive duh but I'll try to speed this up. We have a brief respite from this when Dan, who wants Megan back but apparently doesn't want to wait, has an affair with a journalist he met in Peru, Francesca (Fabiana Udenio who I recognized from the icky film Summer School, coming soon to a blog near you, and sorry, it's obviously a body double, no goodies showing here). So things come together, badly, we have more 50's style sci fi slapstick type of horror, they smush (technical term, remember) a woman together of a bunch of parts and use Megan's heart to start her up. And we have blatant Bride Of Frankenstein type moments, including the woman's hairdo becoming wilder with each second she's moving around. But Francesca shows up. And so do all the zombies, after rampaging through the hospital (never go to a hospital in Arkham) and the town. Somehow, Dr. Hill got hold of the bat wings the morgue dude was playing with and he's flying around laughing maniacally. MASSIVE duh. Best line of the movie? Herbert saying (as zombies use implements to break down the door), "My God, they're using tools."  That's it. Sorry.


Skip ahead skip ahead the Lt. and wife co-zombies beat on each other more than anyone else, there's fighting, body parts flying, Herbert's 'rejects' crawling around everywhere (maybe I should just call him a moron at this point) and in the middle of it all, the 'woman' wants Dan to love her. But Dan has realized (NOW he's realized?) that Megan is dead and he wants Francesca. This kind of pisses 'Megan' off. There's a catfight which goes on forever until Dan tells 'Megan' she's dead - and her body 'rejects' all its tissue parts. Oh this makes total sense. Not. Dan and Francesca crawl through the collapsing crypt and dig through the earth to emerge in the cemetery. Dr. Hill, stuck in the debris, laughs still, while Megan's heart, still in the hand of the bride, stops beating. And Herbert? Oh, he goes on 13 years later to star in:


Beyond Re-Animator:  (This is described as a Spanish horror film for some reason. Maybe this Country didn't want to own up to it.) We open with two kids having a sleepover in an outside tent. One hears a noise and goes inside to check it out. In the house he witnesses a horror: a monster with no lower jaw is killing his older sister. She's way dead by the time the police get there. Dr. Herbert is in the back seat of the police car, obviously still being massively duh with his re-agent. So 13 years later, Herbert has been serving his prison sentence. Since he only has what he can scavenge, he's been practicing on rats (he should have thought of that first). When a young doctor named Howard Phillips (Jason Barry) comes to work at the prison, he teams up with Herbert to take his re-agent to the next level and help him with his experiments. Why? He was the kid brother of the teenage girl killed at the beginning. So why the hell isn't he strangling him? Because we'd have no movie, now shut up.

I'm gonna be posing with this syringe for YEARS dammit!

Herbert the moron has discovered "NPE" (Nano-Plasmic Energy), an energy that can be extracted from the brain of a living organism through an electrocution-like process, to be stored in a capsule resembling a small light bulb (the 'soul in a jar' idea has been used in more than a couple of horror films). The capsule can then be connected to a corpse and used in conjunction with Herbert's re-agent. The NPE supposedly will keep his 'experiments' human and not zombie. Oh damn, what were we watching this movie for?

The warden makes the DUH of intruding and Herbert kills and reanimates him (somebody had to replace Dr. Hill). However, Herbert the moron uses the NPE from a prisoner's pet rat, causing some unexpected side effects in the warden's behavior. There's chaos in the prison and the re-agent gets out. The prisoners see it as a cool new drug and spread it all over. We now don't know who's alive or dead (And in a prison, can you really anyway?). Dr. Phillips (Dead sister's brother, remember?) gets his new girlfriend (A journalist conveniently there on his first day - he's known her for what, a couple of hours?) killed, decapitated even, and the guards, thinking him insane, take him away. Herbert finally shows a little bit of brain power, stealing Dr. Phillip's ID and since this is a movie-prison, is able to use it to get away. But, so far, not to make another one of these.