Day 5 Re-Animator & Bride of Re-Animator!!!

When the Dean dies so you try to prove your serum works? You must Re-Animate!

When the teacher hates your guts and tries to steal your serum? You must Re-Animate!

When your roommate/classmate/friend's girlfriend dies? You must Re-Animate!

When the talking head of your angry mind controlling teacher goes down on a lady strapped to a table?

Well you're just watching Re-Animator....

I LOVE me some H.P. Lovecraft. But I also love me some Stuart Gordon and Richard Brand

For those unfamiliar. Re-Animator is about a young doctor who stumbles upon a serum which can grant life after death, sort of. No one believes him, until they do. Then they wish they didn't. Then they become awesome and blood thirsty and are glad they did!

Well that’s mostly it. I’ll elaborate.

Herbert West is a medical student who studied overseas under another doctor whom suffered an….unfortunate accident. Herbert now finds himself in need of a place to stay and a lab to continue his research. Which leads him to the all star jock of the medical school’s house! Complete with a nifty basement(like the Alamo). Unfortunately it’s a little awkward of a meeting as his new best friend and soon to be roomie was busy not moments ago playing doctor with the deans daughter. SHE doesn’t care for him, but Dan likes money. So he allows him to move in and take over the basement as he sees fit.

Which Herbert does and converts into his own lab of wacky weirdness. Also he unfortunately kills Dan’s cat. A sad loss for us animal lovers, but a strike for the fight in science!!

Which leads to one of the fun quotable moments in the movie. The cat goes missing, Dan’s girlfriend goes roaming around, snooping and discovers its body in the fridge of Herbert!! His explanation? “I was busy pushing bodies around as you well know. And what would a note say, Dan? 'Cat dead; details later'?“

Trust me, there are many wonderful quotes in this film, like: I did not kill him, I gave him life!, Don't know why they keep locked doors around here. Nobody wants in, and ain't nobody gettin' out, You'll never get credit for my discovery. Who's going to believe a talking head? Get a job in a sideshow.

All amazing.

So Herbert clashes with their professor over life and death, The professor clashes with Dan over his unhealthy obsession with the deans daughter, it can only go well from there. So it does! Naturally.

Herbert shares with Dan his magic life granting potion by bringing back his dead cat, which then attacks them, and he brings back again later a second time. They decide they need to try it out on a much fresher less animal corpse which leads them to doing so in the morgue on campus. Which leads us to seeing the stunt double for The Terminator bare dick naked. Full of rage and glow juice the zombie T-800 kills the Dean. Well how much fresher a corpse can you get than that!! So they bring back the Dean and…well it goes horribly wrong, traumatizing the deans daughter, complicating her relationship and getting the attention of the professor who tries blackmailing Herbert out of it. Which again, can only go well. It goes so well he loses his head. Or rather it’s taken from him.

Which leads to why I love the 80’s Lovecraft films, especially from this director. It goes from weird funny, to weirder, to ‘oh god they’re really going for it.

Of course the Professor is brought back. Well his head. And somehow his body. Which helps him to sit his head back onto his neck. Kind of.

So does the professor set out for simple revenge against Herbert?

HELL FUCKING NO!!!

Oh my god the quick run down? Is thus. The Professor, though they cut it out of the film for timing, practiced mind control, He got rather good at it. So he uses this to get the zombie dean on his side and…uses it on the cadavers in the universities morgue. To form an army of the undead to help him in his plans of domination. He also takes the deans daughter, straps her to a table, strips her and…..well. You almost have the worlds first severed head giving head. Almost.

The 80’s were a strange fun time.

Needless to say Herbert and Dan are going to brave throught his, sort of. And triumph in the face of re-animated evil. Kind of. Yes they defeat the undead, but at what cost!!! Well the deans daughter sadly. But how sad is death, when you have green glow stick fluid in a syringe!!!

Well after the events of the first film, they left it open for a possible sequel. Which isn't what the actual sequel is about. So how the sam hell does that make it a good thing? It just does!

The movie opens up with a fun message about it taking place 8 months and thousands of miles away from the first film. Herbert and his roommate/classmate/friend are working as field doctors during a civil war torn country, still working with his formula to perfect it. Eventually the filmmakers felt this wasn't fun enough so we head back to good ol Miskatonic University! Where a police chief is still investigating the crimes from the first film and STILL suspects Herbert and friend Dean of these crimes, why? Well they were the only people left unaffected by the massacre that's why. So after some stumbling around and a few squirts of magical neon green life giving serum, we have our villain and undead cunning linguist professor BACK..from the undead....dead. Again.....

But this time with WINGS!!!!

And that's not even NEAR the end of this NOR is it even the main object of awesome. Dr Herbert discovers that his serum can not only bring back the dead but, re-animate individual parts. So he sets out on the ultimate broquest to help out his buddy Dean. He discovers the heart of Deans fiance from the first film and decides, I'm gonna build you a fiance!

Does it work?

Absolutely horrifyingly yes!

So we have the flying bat winged head of his former nemesis, mind controlling people once again and readying an army. We have Herbert taking bits and pieces of people to form a fiance for his buddy. What else could this movie offer to help it stay on course with the original and try to out due it? IS there anything else it could do?! You bet there is!!

We still got a police chief to take care of, who ALSO gets juiced on the green stuff. We get a poor doggo that gets half torn and tossed, but brought back on the sweet green stuff. We have a full fledged battle of the undead-dead-re-animated-living, and. It. Is. Glorious!

There was a good deal of male and female nudity in the original and some damn funny still quotable lines, silly crazy gore and real 'oh god they went there' scenes. The sequel exchanges the nudity for more gore. A few more laughs and wtf am I watching scenes.

Is it as good as the original? Yes in all the right different ways it should be. Is it better? That's up to you to decide, not me. I know where my favorite is. But DO check these both out, They're both on Shudder at the moment, Another with Joe Bob Commentary, and they're also I believe on Netflix and Amazon. So, check it out!