Bride of Re-Animator (Brian Yuzna, 1989)

Re-Animator is one of my favorite 1980s horror movies, holding up over several re-watches (the most recent being a few months ago), and was a real mind-blower when I first saw it at age 11 (it's important to see this stuff young so you get warped in the right ways). For whatever reason, though, I'd never seen Bride of Re-Animator until last night. Maybe it was harder to find than its predecessor, maybe I was avoiding the diminished-return problem plaguing most sequels, but I missed it. Too bad, because Bride of Re-Animator is big, weird fun that maintains the look and tone of the original. Yeah, it's not as good as the first movie, but it gets pretty close, and the ending is even wilder.

Bride benefits from the return of several people involved in Re-Animator. Jeffrey Combs, Bruce Abbott, and David Gale reprise their roles as, respectively, Dr. Herbert West, Dr. Dan Cain, and the severed head of Dr. Carl Hill (only Barbara Crampton is sadly missing from this one; yeah, her character died but that's not necessarily the end of the road in a Re-Animator movie), and composer Richard Band supplies another memorable score that borrows heavily from his music for the original. Stuart Gordon, the writer/director of the first film, was not involved in the sequel, but his frequent writing partner and producer Brian Yuzna successfully picked up the baton and continued the freaky relay. Yuzna had a hell of a horror movie year in 1989 (which I will refer to from now on as the Year of Yuzna), directing this film and his masterpiece, Society (an absolutely bonkers, uniquely unsettling, hilarious, disgusting, and prescient sci-fi/horror/high school comedy/political and social satire), and producing Warlock and, uh, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (more on that later). Yuzna co-wrote the Bride screenplay with Society screenwriters Rick Fry and Woody Keith.

A momentary Honey, I Shrunk the Kids digression. After the indie-film and VHS rental success of Re-Animator (directed and written by Gordon, produced by Yuzna), From Beyond (co-written by Yuzna and Gordon, produced by Yuzna, directed by Gordon), and, to a lesser extent, Dolls (directed by Gordon, produced by Yuzna), Hollywood came calling. In that classic Hollywood blend of perversity and capitalist exploitation, the fat cats decided the guys behind some of the craziest psychosexual gore films of the '80s would be the perfect choice to write, direct, and produce a mainstream children's movie, though there is some practical reason for this. Gordon and Yuzna were great with actors (Gordon worked in Chicago theater for years before making movies, and frequently returns to it), understood the traditional three-act structure, and knew how to assemble a special effects team capable of amazing work within a limited budget. Gordon and Yuzna were hired to write Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, with Gordon directing and Yuzna producing. Unfortunately, before shooting could begin, Gordon became seriously ill (he made a full recovery) and had to step down as director. Hollywood being Hollywood, the suits fired Yuzna since Gordon and Yuzna were hired as a team. Gordon and Yuzna vowed to stay independent after that Hollywood screwjob, and they have, though they managed to retain writing and producing co-credits on the film and story-by credits on many of the sequels and spinoffs, so they at least made a little bank from the fiasco. None of this answers the question of when Yuzna was able to get some sleep in 1989.

Bride of Re-Animator opens, strangely enough, in Peru. After the disturbing events in the first film, Drs. West and Cain get the eff out of Dodge and volunteer as medics in the heart of the Peruvian Civil War, though West is his same intense self who cares more about his reanimation experiments than the altruistic possibilities of the job. Dr. Cain cares about his patients, man, and he also cares about another volunteer, the sexy Italian woman Francesca (Summer School's Fabiana Udenio). After things get too intense in Peru and Cain is injured, the docs return to their old jobs at Arkham and room together in a Gothic-looking old house in the country that used to be a mortuary and adjoins a cemetery. West continues his experiments in a lab in the basement but is also doing some secret Frankenstein-esque experiments on the sly, including attaching a woman's leg to a man's arm and making a crawling critter out of four fingers and an eye. Cain really should have figured out by now that West is a deeply shitty roommate and a cockblocker extraordinaire. "Hey, my roommate is a deeply arrogant mad scientist with a God complex, zero boundaries, rampant misogyny, and a writhing collection of reanimated creatures who will probably cause the death of your pets. Why don't we schedule our romantic rendezvous at your place instead," is some dialogue Cain really should have learned years ago.

Body parts start disappearing from the hospital, and a detective, Lt. Chapham (Claude Earl Jones), starts sniffing around West and Cain. Meanwhile, Francesca arrives in Arkham to get sexy with Cain, and the severed head of Dr. Hill finds its way back to Arkham to get freaky with everybody. Cain gets a little too fixated on a terminal cancer patient he associates with his dearly departed Megan (Crampton's character in the first movie), while West has saved Megan's heart and wants to use it as the heart in a woman he Frankensteins together from the stolen parts of deceased hospital patients. He convinces a troubled Cain to go along with his plans to create life, Frankenstein-style, as long as the heart is Megan's. Meanwhile, another doctor at Arkham, Graves (Mel Stewart), is doing a little experimenting of his own with West's reanimation serum. Everything converges at the West/Cain place in a truly over-the-top finale, with a truly inspired special effect involving Dr. Hill's head.

I've already called 1989 the Year of Yuzna™, but I think we also need to refer to it as the Season of Screaming Mad™ in honor of the special effects wizard behind Bride of Re-Animator and Society, Joji Tani, better known as Screaming Mad George. He and his team pulled off some insanely ridiculous, wildly awesome shit in these two films. Hats off, Screaming Mad George.

The once-in-a-viewing-lifetime impact of the first film can't be replicated the second time around, there's some standard-issue '80s movie sexism, and some of the minor details don't make much sense, but, on the whole, Bride of Re-Animator is one of those rare horror sequels that holds up as a satisfying experience in its own right. It's inventive, fun, ridiculous in all the best ways, bloody, slimy, and a worthy continuation of the story. 

Yuzna's last film credit was in 2011, but he worked steadily as a writer, director, and producer of horror films before his recent absence. His other directing credits include Initiation: Silent Night, Deadly Night 4, Return of the Living Dead III, Necronomicon, The Dentist and The Dentist 2 (with Corbin Bernsen as a homicidal dentist), Progeny, Faust, Rottweiler, and the final film, so far, in the Re-Animator series, Beyond Re-Animator.