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Details
Format: Blu-ray
Program Type: Movie
Other
Product Name: Bride of Re-Animator [Blu-ray] [1989]
UPC: 760137059585
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Rated 5 out of 5 stars
A great Blu Ray from Arrow
If it's not obvious enough from the title, Bride of Re-Animator (1989) owes a much bigger debt to the Universal horror films than Lovecraft's complex mythology of inter dimensional monsters. It's essentially a Frankenstein story with Dr. Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs) and Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott) continuing their ethically questionable experiments on body parts lifted from the hospital pathology lab.
Escaping any real fallout from the "Miskatonic Massacre" that ended the first film, Herbert is now creating a re-animated freak show in their basement lab, patching together limbs, digits and eyeballs with reckless abandon. Cain, meanwhile, still pines after his dead fiance, Meg (although Barbara Crampton doesn't return); so much so that he doesn't object too much when Herbert installs her heart into the latest conglomeration of body parts downstairs. But fate throws a monkey wrench into their scientific plans when the severed head of Dr. Hill (David Gale) plots his revenge, using several re-animated corpses and a grief-stricken cop to do the legwork.
If all that sounds a bit choppy and disconnected, director Brian Yuzna admits he feels the same way. Starting with an odd sequence in Peru where Herbert and Dan are mixed up in a civil war, Bride of Re-Animator feels more like a pitch session than a finished script. The film never has a chance to build momentum, moving from one gag to another - like the "finger-monster" created by stop-motion animator David Allen and Dr. Hill's grafted bat-wings that improbably allow his severed head to fly - with the aim of pleasing the Fangoria crowd.
And as a purely visceral re-cap of the first film, Bride of Re-Animator gets the job done admirably. Yuzna does a good job recapturing the slightly twisted tone, and Jeffrey Combs slips back into mad scientist mode without missing a beat. Even the constant barrage of practical effects - especially the quick parade of freaks created by Screaming Mad George - are sure to give an audience of like-minded fans their money's worth. But it's lacking the "spark" of the original, something that all the fluorescent green re-agent in the world can't seem to bring back.
Arrow Video's Blu-ray DVD limited edition is well worth the investment for those who disagree. Featuring a brand-new 2K restoration of the unrated version (and a second disc of the R-rated cut), the two-disc set comes with a pair of commentaries, new featurettes on the effects, an on-camera interview with Yuzna, a pair of deleted scenes, a ton of behind-the-scenes footage, liner notes and new cover artwork. A sweet set for an average film.
I love these Re-Animator movies. Despite the obvious ridiculous science behind it (part of why I love it!), it remains one of my favorite franchises from my childhood.
Posted by JonnyCage
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
Awesome
This movies a great one and it looks amazing in the restoration here from Arrow!
