‘Date. Mate. Re-animate.’
Bride of Re-Animator – also known as plafuk – is a 1990 American science fiction horror film produced and directed by Brian Yuzna (Society; Return of the Living Dead III); Necronomicon; The Dentist and sequel) from a screenplay written by Yuzna, Rick Fry and Woody Keith.
Bride of Re-Animator is the sequel to Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator (1985) and was belatedly followed by Beyond Re-Animator (2003). Richard Band supplied a playful musical score that was a slight variation on his previous Re-Animator soundtrack.
Cast:
Bruce Abbott, Claude Earl Jones, Fabiana Udenio, David Gale, Kathleen Kinmont, Jeffrey Combs.
Plot:
Eight months after the events of Re-Animator, doctors Herbert West and Dan Cain 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. However, when their medical tent is stormed by the enemy troops, West and Cain return home to Arkham, Massachusetts.
The pair resume their former jobs as doctors at Miskatonic University Hospital, and West returns to the basement laboratory of Cain’s house to continue his research…
Reviews:
“The over-the-top acting that Gordon encouraged in Re-Animator is continued here with Combs particularly adept at the darkly comic throwaway line. Overabundance of gore … will turn off mainstream viewers, however. Tall actress Kathleen Kinmont is a good choice for the monster, with her stitched together, see-through torso.” Variety
“The black humor is a bit cloying this time (”I don’t want to gamble with Meg’s heart” is meant all too literally), and the gore feels like bloody business as usual. Where the first film’s script was cut to the bone, Bride is overstuffed with silly tangents, like an awkward subplot involving a zombie cop.” Ty Burr, Entertainment Weekly
“Bride of Re-Animator is a silly film that is fun solely for the fevered performance of Jeffrey Combs. Unlike the original Re-Animator, Bride ’s script really suffers from a lack of cohesiveness and undeterminable character motivation.” Andrew Migliore and John Strysik, Lurker in the Lobby: A Guide to the Cinema of H. P. Lovecraft
“… a pointless and forgettable sequel” Peter Dendle, The Zombie Movie Encyclopedia
Cast and characters:
- Jeffrey Combs as Dr. Herbert West
- Bruce Abbott as Dr. Dan Cain
- Claude Earl Jones as Lt. Leslie Chapham
- Fabiana Udenio as Francesca Danelli
- David Gale as Dr. Carl Hill
- Kathleen Kinmont as Gloria
- Mel Stewart as Dr. Graves
- Irene Forrest as Nurse Shelley
- Michael Strasser as Ernest
- Mary Sheldon as Meg Halsey
Choice dialogue:
Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs): “Don’t let the little head rule the big head, Dan.”
Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs): “My God, they’re using tools.”
US trailer:
Australian trailer:
