News
Bride of Re-Animator is Violently Underrated
The amount of times I’ve seen 1985’s Re-Animator is insurmountable. It’s a staple in any conversation of greatest horror movies, whether or not we’re speaking Lovecraftian films or just flat-out greatest horror movies. The general consensus is that the film is amazing, and I can attest to that. But what about the sequel?
In all of my years of watching, reading, or finding any other possible way to consume horror, I’ve not heard much about Yuzna’s sequel to the film. Bride of Re-Animator, released four years later in 1989, has passed by generally undetected for a very, very long time. Despite this, Bride is actually an astounding display of gore and terror. It has its own unique set of quirks, and the tone is substantially different from the original. While they’re both different, they work very well as companion pieces to one another.
Jeffrey Combs and Bruce Abbott return to their respective roles as Herbert West and Dan Cain. West is up to his old tricks once again and plans to reanimate the perfect woman. Using the heart of a dead lover of Cain’s, the results are, as one may imagine, disastrous. All the while, the two scientists are being pursued by both the head of Dr. Hill and a detective hot on their trail. To make matters even more complicated, the irresistible Dan Cain has gotten involved with another woman who is oblivious to the insidious experiments being performed in the basement of West and Cain’s house. What could possibly go wrong?
The effects are top-notch, as one would expect in a sequel to such a phenomenal film, and there are more than a few scenes which are cringeworthy – but I mean this in the best of ways. The sequences which involve the titular bride, in particular, are stomach-churning. Her body, a mutilated amalgam of discarded human body parts, is a much more gory version of the unforgettable Elsa Lanchester in Bride of Frankenstein (1935). The film almost serves as an updated version of the 1935 film. It once again reiterates the point that maybe man was not meant to play God after all.
Bride of Re-Animator finds its true strength towards the end of the film when the re-animated shit begins to hit the proverbial fan. All of West’s experiments are unleashed at once after being discarded as rejects. They are monstrous, disfigured, confused, and angry. In a fearful display, the end result is what one may imagine the darkest depths of Hell to look like. Oh, and there’s also this little guy:
I can offer quite a few reasons as to why I believe the sequel seems to be so under appreciated. One is that the first was so quirky and original that anything less than astounding would be sure to be buried underneath the weight of its predecessor. A genuine horror comedy, Re-Animator was darkly silly while reaching levels of blood and surreal gore rarely seen in cinema before. Bride of Re-Animator lacked a strong humorous component. While it still was very much a goofy movie, it was much more subdued. From start to finish, it plays as a much more tongue-in-cheek affair than the first film.
Jeffrey Combs seems much more sinister in this film. Beyond curiosity, West no longer seems to have the slightest regard for the life he is reanimating. The lives he ruins in the process appear to be nothing more than collateral damage. This is illustrated perfectly in the beginning of the film when Cain and West are seen volunteering in a foreign civil war as doctors. Except, instead of tending to the wounded soldiers, West uses the bodies as raw material for his experiments. It’s a bizarre introduction with not much explanation and serves only to help create a bizarre tone for things to come.
Though I am quick to praise the film, I would be lying if I said that Bride of Re-Animator was as groundbreaking or simply entertaining as its predecessor. It’s a great film – especially the dark descent into madness at the end – but much like The Exorcist, nothing that follows could ever compare*. It’s an uphill battle that can never be won. Still, it’s one that’s worth mentioning, and a double-feature of the two films would make for a very fun and extremely gory night in.
*no, I’m not talking about The Exorcist 2, ya dummy. That movie sucks. The Exorcist 3, though? Now we’re talking.
'Civil War' Review: Is It Worth Watching?
Follow our new YouTube channel "Mysteries and Movies" here.
Movies
‘Evil Dead’ Film Franchise Getting TWO New Installments
It was a risk for Fede Alvarez to reboot Sam Raimi’s horror classic The Evil Dead in 2013, but that risk paid off and so did its spiritual sequel Evil Dead Rise in 2023. Now Deadline is reporting that the series is getting, not one, but two fresh entries.
We already knew about the Sébastien Vaniček upcoming film that delves into the Deadite universe and should be a proper sequel to the latest film, but we are broadsided that Francis Galluppi and Ghost House Pictures are doing a one-off project set in Raimi’s universe based off of an idea that Galluppi pitched to Raimi himself. That concept is being kept under wraps.
“Francis Galluppi is a storyteller who knows when to keep us waiting in simmering tension and when to hit us with explosive violence,” Raimi told Deadline. “He is a director that shows uncommon control in his feature debut.”
That feature is titled The Last Stop In Yuma County which will release theatrically in the United States on May 4. It follows a traveling salesman, “stranded at a rural Arizona rest stop,” and “is thrust into a dire hostage situation by the arrival of two bank robbers with no qualms about using cruelty-or cold, hard steel-to protect their bloodstained fortune.”
Galluppi is an award-winning sci-fi/horror shorts director whose acclaimed works include High Desert Hell and The Gemini Project. You can view the full edit of High Desert Hell and the teaser for Gemini below:
'Civil War' Review: Is It Worth Watching?
Follow our new YouTube channel "Mysteries and Movies" here.
Movies
‘Invisible Man 2’ Is “Closer Than Its Ever Been” to Happening
Elisabeth Moss in a very well-thought-out statement said in an interview for Happy Sad Confused that even though there have been some logistical issues for doing Invisible Man 2 there is hope on the horizon.
Podcast host Josh Horowitz asked about the follow-up and if Moss and director Leigh Whannell were any closer to cracking a solution to getting it made. “We are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” said Moss with a huge grin. You can see her reaction at the 35:52 mark in the below video.
Whannell is currently in New Zealand filming another monster movie for Universal, Wolf Man, which might be the spark that ignites Universal’s troubled Dark Universe concept which hasn’t gained any momentum since Tom Cruise’s failed attempt at resurrecting The Mummy.
Also, in the podcast video, Moss says she is not in the Wolf Man film so any speculation that it’s a crossover project is left in the air.
Meanwhile, Universal Studios is in the middle of constructing a year-round haunt house in Las Vegas which will showcase some of their classic cinematic monsters. Depending on attendance, this could be the boost the studio needs to get audiences interested in their creature IPs once more and to get more films made based on them.
The Las Vegas project is set to open in 2025, coinciding with their new proper theme park in Orlando called Epic Universe.
'Civil War' Review: Is It Worth Watching?
Follow our new YouTube channel "Mysteries and Movies" here.
News
Jake Gyllenhaal’s Thriller ‘Presumed Innocent’ Series Gets Early Release Date
Jake Gyllenhaal’s limited series Presumed Innocent is dropping on AppleTV+ on June 12 instead of June 14 as originally planned. The star, whose Road House reboot has brought mixed reviews on Amazon Prime, is embracing the small screen for the first time since his appearance on Homicide: Life on the Street in 1994.
Presumed Innocent is being produced by David E. Kelley, J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot, and Warner Bros. It is an adaptation of Scott Turow’s 1990 film in which Harrison Ford plays a lawyer doing double duty as an investigator looking for the murderer of his colleague.
These types of sexy thrillers were popular in the ’90s and usually contained twist endings. Here’s the trailer for the original:
According to Deadline, Presumed Innocent doesn’t stray far from the source material: “…the Presumed Innocent series will explore obsession, sex, politics and the power and limits of love as the accused fights to hold his family and marriage together.”
Up next for Gyllenhaal is the Guy Ritchie action movie titled In the Grey scheduled for release in January 2025.
Presumed Innocent is an eight-episode limited series set to stream on AppleTV+ starting June 12.
'Civil War' Review: Is It Worth Watching?
Follow our new YouTube channel "Mysteries and Movies" here.
-
News6 days ago
Original Blair Witch Cast Ask Lionsgate for Retroactive Residuals in Light of New Film
-
Movies6 days ago
Spider-Man With a Cronenberg Twist in This Fan-Made Short
-
News3 days ago
Perhaps the Scariest, Most Disturbing Series of The Year
-
Movies5 days ago
New F-Bomb Laden ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ Trailer: Bloody Buddy Movie
-
News5 days ago
Russell Crowe To Star in Another Exorcism Movie & It’s Not a Sequel
-
Lists3 days ago
Thrills and Chills: Ranking ‘Radio Silence’ Films from Bloody Brilliant to Just Bloody
-
Movies5 days ago
‘Founders Day’ Finally Getting a Digital Release
-
Movies4 days ago
New ‘The Watchers’ Trailer Adds More to the Mystery
You must be logged in to post a comment Login