Bride of Re-Animator is an American horror film released in 1991. It was directed by Brian Yuzna and was written by Yuzna, Rick Fry and Woody Keith. H. P. Lovecraft wrote the original series of stories, titled Herbert West: Reanimator, from which the characters were derived. The plot roughly follows episodes "V. The Horror from the Shadows" and "VI. The Tomb-Legions" of the original series. The film stars Bruce Abbott, Claude Earl Jones, Fabiana Udenio, David Gale, Kathleen Kinmont and Jeffrey Combs.
Bride of Re-Animator is the sequel to Stuart Gordon's Re-Animator (1985) and is followed by Yuzna's Beyond Re-Animator (2003).
Plot
Eight months after the events of Re-Animator, Dr. Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs) and Dr. Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott) are working as medics in the middle of a bloody Peruvian civil war. In the chaos of battle and with plenty of casualties to work on, they are free to experiment with West's re-animation reagent. When their medical tent is stormed by the other side's troops, West and Cain decide to return home to Arkham, Massachusetts. There, they resume their former jobs as doctors at Miskatonic University Hospital and West returns to a basement laboratory to continue his research.
Using parts pilfered from both the hospital's morgue and from the cemetery conveniently located next door, West discovers that in addition to whole corpses, his reagent can also re-animate body parts by themselves. He becomes determined to create an entire living person from disparate body parts.
West discovers the heart of Meg Halsey, Cain's fiancée who died at the end of the first film, in the hospital morgue. With the promise to use the heart to re-animate a new Meg, West convinces Cain to help him with his project. Also stored in the morgue is the rest of the evidence from the "Miskatonic Massacre" (seen at the end of the first film). Inside, pathologist Dr. Wilbur Graves (Mel Stewart) discovers a vial of West's reagent and the severed head of Dr. Carl Hill (David Gale) (the rest of his body is not seen, implicating that either the overdose of the reagent had destroyed his body or that West destroyed Hill's body to escape during the first film's climax). Using the reagent, he re-animates Hill's head.
Meanwhile, police officer Lt. Leslie Chapham (Claude Earl Jones) begins investigating West and Cain. He bears a grudge against the pair, as they were the only unaffected survivors of the "Miskatonic Massacre" in which his wife's dead body was re-animated into a crazed zombie. Chapham suspects West and Cain are responsible. When he stops by their house for a second time to question them, he discovers West's corpse-filled lab and the two get into an ugly confrontation. West tells Chapham that he knows he killed his wife in a domestic violence attack. A fight ensues and West ends up killing Chapham. West then re-animates the police officer with the intention of covering up his crime. Chapham violently wanders out of the house and into the cemetery next door.
Hill also bears a grudge against West, as West was responsible for his decapitation. Using his hypnotic powers, he commanded Lt. Chapham to force Dr. Graves to stitch bat wings onto his neck, giving him back his mobility. He also extends his mental control to all of the zombie survivors of the "Miskatonic Massacre", as well as newly-created zombie Chapham.
When one of Cain's patients, the beautiful Gloria (Kathleen Kinmont), dies, West collects the last piece he needs for his creation: her head. With a complete body stitched and wired together, West and Cain inject the re-animation reagent into Meg's heart. While waiting for the reagent to take effect, a package is delivered to their house. West retrieves and opens it. From inside, Hill's winged head flies out. Simultaneously, all of the zombies he controls break into the house. West retreats back to the basement lab, where his creation, the Bride, has awoken.
A catfight breaks out between the Bride and Cain's current girlfriend, Italian journalist Francesca Danelli (Fabiana Udenio), whom he met in Peru. Cain rejects the Bride's love and sides with Francesca. Heart-broken, the Bride rips Meg's heart out of her own chest and then literally falls to pieces. Clinical West diagnoses this as tissue rejection.
Hill and his zombies force West, Cain and Francesca to retreat through the wall of the lab and into a crypt in the neighboring cemetery. Inside, all of West's prior re-animated body part experiments arise and make their way towards him (stopping only when Herbert commands them to). The unstable crypt begins to collapse, trapping Hill, West and the zombies. Cain and Francesca manage to escape the debris and they claw their way to the surface of the cemetery together. Hill, stuck in the debris, laughs manically, while Meg's heart, still in the hand of the bride, stops beating.
Cast
The Re-Animated
- Marge Turner as Elizabeth Chapham
- Johnny Legend as Skinny Corpse
- David Bynum as Black Corpse
- Noble Craig as Crypt Creature
- Kim Parker as Crypt Creature
- Charles Schneider as Crypt Creature
- Rebeca Recio as Crypt Creature
- Jay Evans as Crypt Creature
Reception
Bride of Re-Animator was nominated for two awards by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films in 1991. It was nominated for "Best Horror Film" and Jeffrey Combs was nominated for "Best Supporting Actor".
Sequels
The film was followed by a third movie in the series, Beyond Re-Animator.
Stuart Gordon has been quoted on several occasions as expressing a desire to make a fourth installment in the series, entitled House of Re-Animator; this film would, he claims, be a political satire wherein West moves into the White House and re-animates the deceased Vice President. However, the project was supposedly canceled. The idea may not be totally dead as is hinted at in the final issue of the Hack/Slash vs. Re-Animator crossover where government agents approach West claiming his country needs him because the president is dead.
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