After spending time in Peru as doctors during wartime over there (while conducting controversial experiments on the sly), Dr. Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott) and his diabolical associate Dr. Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs) return home to work as interns at the local hospital from the original “Re-Animator”. The socially awkward West is still ruthless in his pursuit of reanimation of the dead, but this time is interested in re-animated body parts. The idea is to create a whole being made of different people’s body parts to then revive them at the same time. Cain wants nothing to do with this idea, but West has an ace up his sleeve to get Cain on board: The new re-animated corpse will feature the heart of Cain’s deceased love, Megan (The piecemeal corpse, when fully assembled, is played by Kathleen Kinmont). Flies in the ointment here come in the form of a dogged police lieutenant (played by Claude Earl Jones), who has a personal beef to settle after his wife was turned into a zombified corpse, and bizarro Dr. Graves (Mel Stewart), who has found some leftover re-animation fluid, as well as stumbling on a certain severed head (David Gale).
Although a step down in quality from the first film, it’s still hard to tell Stuart Gordon had absolutely no input in this 1989 sequel from director/producer Brian Yuzna (“The Dentist”, “Beyond Re-Animator”) unless you look at the credits. The storytelling and editing are a little clumsy, but it’s certainly close enough in spirit and style to the first film. That head with wings was brilliant (courtesy of John Carl Beuchler), and am I the only one who thought the ‘Bride’ looked alarmingly like the late Karen Black? There’s a lot of famous makeup and FX guys involved in this one (KNB EFX, David Allen, Screaming Mad George, etc.), and on the whole their work is impressive and often really, really weird.
Some of the acting from supporting players is a bit rough, with Fabiana Udenio being rather bland, and both Claude Earl Jones (who is white and absolutely no relation to James) and Mel Stewart are howlingly bad. However, Bruce Abbott seems a bit more comfortable in the lead this time around. He is still, however upstaged by the fantastic Jeffrey Combs and David Gale, but at least he has improved a bit. Cult favourite Combs is in top Dan Duryea-meets-Peter Lorre form as the pompous and cold-blooded Herbert West, and John Kerry doppelganger Gale is as hilarious as ever. These two alone make the film worth seeing at least once. Of course it makes no sense that he’s back here after what happened in the first film, but if you’re calling BS on that, you’ve surely overlooked his very existence as a disembodied head in the first damn place. It’s a silly, gory horror movie, OK? The screenplay is by Yuzna, Rick Fry (Yuzna’s “Society”), and Woody Keith (Yuzna’s “Silent Night, Deadly Night 4”). H.P. Lovecraft is once again cited, but the stronger influences here are clearly James Whale and Mary Shelley (“Bride of Frankenstein”).
OVERALL SUMMARY
Not as good as the original nor as funny, this is still very watchable, completely insane stuff for those who can handle the gore and macabre sensibility of the whole thing. Hardly the worst 80s horror sequel you’re likely to see, it needs a lot more David Gale with wings, though.
