B Plus Movies

On the one hand, it’s the day before Valentine’s Day and I’d like to review a love story for it. It’s also Friday the 13th which pushes me towards reviewing a horror film. What’s a movie geek to do?

The answer is review both. If you have already read the title, then you know the movie that covers both genres is Bride of Re-Animator.

To understand this movie, though, I must say a few words about the Lovecraft inspired, classic 1985 horror film Re-Animator. The movie revolves around Herbert West, a brilliant doctor who constantly seems to teeter on the edge of genius, threatening to pitch himself headlong into villiany. West has developed a glowing green fluid which, injected into dead bodies, brings them back to life. The problem is that they don’t always come back as reasonable as they were alive.

Also we meet Dan Cain who discovers West’s side project and agrees to help him. Their efforts go terribly wrong, however, leading to a bloody and twisted chain of events that grow more horrible with each turn.

While I won’t go into the end of Re-Animator, the fact that both main characters manage to survive must be revealed or else it would be impossible to speak of the sequel. In Bride of the Re-Animator, we find Cain and West working in Peru, using a civil war as a way to collect new bodies and new body parts to continue their experiments. Eventually, the two return to the states, where West begins collecting pieces to attempt something new: A composite being, a woman made of various bits of other human beings including the heart of Cain’s slain girlfriend.

Cain sees this as a chance to be reunited with his true love. West sees it as a way to further his experiments. Of course, it’s gets complicated and bloody.

The heart and soul of these films is the performance of Jeffery Combs, the actor who brings Dr. Herbert West to life. He plays this character so well that you at times find yourself rooting for him, at others hating him and in some ways feeling sorry for him. He’s an obsessed man, single minded in taking his science and pushing it to its logical conclusion. Because of his blindness to everything not immediately important to his work and his willingness to do everything it requires to see his work to it’s fruition, you can’t help but want him to succeed, even when he does the horrible or the unethical to meet his goals. The horror that erupts around him seems to be not just an accident or even a consequence of his actions but a visible representation of the twisted vision ever present in the character’s mind.

The other actors do well. Re-Animator is a classic for a reason and even being a low budget horror film from the 80’s, it met with critical acclaim upon release and is still one that horror movie fanatics seek out today. Its first sequel was by no means a lesser film, preserving the creepy, gory feel of the first movie while telling its own distinct tale.

These movies are not for the faint of heart or easily offended, pushing the bounds of good taste in places and being outright gross in others. That warning aside, I can recommend these movies to those who appreciate the weird and disturbing and give both Re-Animator and Bride of Re-Animator the coveted B+.

Though, of a note, if you use either one of these as a Valentine’s Day date movie, I cannot be held responsible for the ass kicking likely to follow. You have been warned.

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