35 years on, Bride of Re-Animator's special effects still cast a spell

Stuart Gordon’s 1985 Re-Animator set a tone of campy excess, riffing on H.P. Lovecraft’s Herbert West with tawdry special effects and a B-movie sensibility. Brian Yuzna’s 1991 sequel, Bride of Re-Animator, preserves Herbert’s obsessive drive but lacks some of the original’s innate charm; it’s been 35 years since the sequel’s direct-to-video release.

The story resumes eight months after the first film, with Herbert West and his reluctant assistant Dan Cain working as medics during the Peruvian civil war and harvesting corpses to test the reanimation reagent. Back at Miskatonic University Hospital Herbert shifts toward creating new life, convincing Dan to let him use the heart of Dan’s dead fiancée, Megan, and assembling the Bride from salvaged body parts.

Chaos follows: the re-reanimated severed head of Dr. Carl Hill returns and a dozen zombies break into the lab, while the film delights in grotesque set pieces such as an eyeball with a cluster of fingers that scuttles about. The horror effects are the film’s centerpiece.

Peru

re-animator, re-animator sequel, stuart gordon, brian yuzna, herbert west, dan cain, miskatonic university, special effects, b-movie, carl hill