DVD Artwork
Beyond Re-Animator has a strange effect on me. Every time I watch the damn thing I seem to fall asleep. Doesn’t sound too promising does it? The first time was a couple of years ago, I had been out on the lash, so was feeling a little drunk but decided to watch it regardless. Well, I passed out eventually and never saw the end.
The same happened a few days back, but that was probably due to just being tired. However I was determined to watch it the whole way through at some point. Now I have, and if I’m perfectly honest I think I prefer the sleep option.
I mean, the first Re-Animator was a wonderful movie that I can watch time and time again. The sequel, Bride of Re-Animator was an okay affair, not great but watchable nonetheless. I really should have expected the third in the series to follow this downward trend. Actually I did, so on that front I was surprised, just a little disappointed.
The movie starts with a young Howard Philips watching his sister get murdered by one of Herbert West’s reanimated corpses. A rather impressive looking beastie it was too, lower jaw missing and tongue hanging out!
Anyway, this results in our Herbert (Jeffrey Combs) getting arrested and sent to the big house. You think the police might have caught on a little earlier wouldn’t you?
Thirteen years later and Howard Philips is now a doctor himself, and chooses a job at the very same prison that Herbert is incarcerated in. Why would he do this? Revenge maybe? Nope, he held onto a syringe of the reagent he found 13 years ago and now wants to work with Herbert on his never ending quest to reanimate the dead.
Add into this mix a sadistic warden, stupid prison guards, a nurse that is barely wearing her clothes, a sexy young reporter and an incredibly quiet prison population and what do you get? A bit of a mess really.
Beyond Re-Animator is a strange movie to say the least. It looks very good, even the CGI is quite well done, the blood and gore effects are wonderful, when they finally happen. Trouble is the whole thing doesn’t seem to gel properly. The script is not exactly great to start with, the mainly Spanish cast seem to have difficulty with their roles and worse of all it just doesn’t feel like a Re-Animator movie.
Of course though, Jeffrey Combs is the one piece of solid gold in this movie. He reprises the role of Herbert West as if pulling on his favorite pair of pants. The humor and wit is still there, as well as the wonderful mannerisms we all love. It’s just a pity Brian Yuzna couldn’t have come up with a better movie in which to use this iconic character.
The movie itself admittedly does start off promisingly enough, but about halfway through just descends into chaos. The last 20 minutes or so is just pandemonium, with no real direction and as a result I just wanted it to finish. Mind you when it did finish we get treated to a rat fighting a severed penis. I kid you not. Not the closing to the series I was hoping for. So please let us have the proposed fourth in the series, just so my last thoughts of this series aren’t of this movie.
As mentioned briefly above the acting on the whole is pretty poor, the exceptions being Combs, Simon Andreu (Warden Brando) and the aforementioned rat. The rest is fairly shocking, but this maybe be down to the language difficulties experienced by the local cast (Yuzna shoots most of his movies in Spain now).
The special effects, courtesy of Screaming Mad George, do help matters a little. But even they don’t match the effects witnessed in the first movie. Still they are impressive, if a little under used, until we draw towards the end.
Beyond Re-Animator is a perfect example of taking a movie series one movie too far. I have no problems with sequels whatsoever, I love to see my favorite characters come back for more. Just please try to maintain the quality of the script. Dennis Poali was sorely missed in the screen writing department here, and it shows on screen.
Oh well, a missed opportunity indeed. So, onto the extras then. Nothing remarkable here either, just a few trailers and a couple of featurettes. It was as if Lions Gate had about as much faith in this movie as I did.
Fans of Jeffrey Combs are probably the only people that will get much enjoyment from this movie. Me personally? I’ll just watch the first one again.
