Herbert West Returns

Film: Beyond Re-Animator
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!

For horror fans, the first time you see Re-Animator is one of those pivotal moments. It either solidifies exactly why you are a horror fan or you start to question your decisions. Needless to say, as a horror fan, it’s a film that I genuinely love. It’s disgusting, disturbing, transgressive, and funny. It’s clearly a horror film that is happy to have comedic moments without really being a horror comedy. So it’s not surprising that there’s actually a Re-Animator trilogy. Most people know Bride of Re-Animator (the natural name for a sequel to a Frankenstein-esque story), but Beyond Re-Animator is far less known.

Sadly, that’s probably for a good reason. Of the three movies in the series, this is clearly the least of the three, and not merely because it’s the third film in the trilogy, which is traditionally where a series tanks. The issue here is that it deviates from some of the established rules of the franchise.

Ten Days of Terror!: Return of the Living Dead III

Film: Return of the Living Dead III
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!

The original The Return of the Living Dead did the seemingly impossible. It was a spoof of a horror classic (the George Romero Living Dead classics) and actually made not only a watchable film, but added to the lore in a significant way. The trope that zombies like to eat brains comes from this series, not Romero’s. The second movie in the RotLD series was a huge step down in quality, mainly because the comedy didn’t work. The third film, Return of the Living Dead III (or Return of the Living Dead Part III if you prefer) is kind of a return to form. There are a lot of changes, though, the biggest being that this third and final film in the series doesn’t really attempt the comedy.

We do have to stick with the series, though, so we’re going to pick up five years after the previous film. Young Curt Reynolds (J. Trevor Edmond) and his girlfriend Julie (Melinda “Mindy” Clarke) steal his father’s access key card to the military base he works on, and the two go exploring. While there, they discover that Curt’s father (Kent McCord) is in charge of experiments that involve re-animating the dead. However, the experiment goes wrong, and because of this, Curt’s father is reassigned.

Imagine the Bachelor Party

Film: Bride of Re-Animator
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on the new internet machine.

When someone is cast perfectly, it’s a thing of beauty. You know what I mean; you can’t think of anyone else in the role, like Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones, Frances McDormand as Marge Gunderson. There are few castings more appropriate than Jeffrey Combs as Herbert West. I tend to like Jeffrey Combs in whatever he’s in, but he has never been as perfect for a role as he is for Lovecraft’s obsessive doctor who is desperate to dive deeply into the world of Dr. Victor Frankenstein. He was perfect in the role in Re-Animator, and he hasn’t lost a step for the sequel, Bride of Re-Animator.

We pick up eight months after the end of the first film. Dr. Herbert West (Combs) and his roommate/assistant/partner Dr. Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott) have fled Miskatonic University for the revolutionary battlefields of Peru, where they are working as medics. Why? Because the battlefield allows them plenty of raw material for West’s experiments regarding the source of life. What we learned in the first film is that West’s glowing green reagent works…kind of. It does reanimate dead tissue, but doesn’t really reanimate it correctly. Despite the problems caused by the war, West has discovered that a local iguana might be the secret to improving his reagent. As their camp falls to the enemy, Herbert and Dan flee, returning to Miskatonic to work in the hospital and continue their work. How do they get their jobs back? Don’t worry about it.

Gingivitis

Film: The Dentist
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on basement television.

One of the problems of a giant list of movies is that it’s not always easy to find all of them. Imagine my delight to discover the streaming service Tubi, which has a ton of free movies streaming if you’re willing to put up with a few ads. Since it has a lot of otherwise difficult-to-find films, I’ve found that I don’t really mind the ads at all. Such a film is The Dentist, which remained as one of the more elusive films on my original horror movie lists. Well, here it was, ready to be watched and for me to come up with as many tooth-related puns as I could think of.

I’ll be blunt, though; The Dentist is not worth my punning effort. The film makers didn’t put that much effort into writing this movie or making it interesting. Why should I bother putting that much effort into coming up with clever puns to use to enhance the review? In fact, the only thing I was really entertained by here is the fact that, of all people, Mark Ruffalo shows up in this looking about 18.

Wednesday Horror: Society

Films: Society
Format: Internet video on laptop.

Jeez…where do I begin? I honestly don’t know if we’re going to get anywhere coherent with Society, but I think we’ve got to try. This is body horror on steroids, the kind of thing that David Cronenberg might think up but wouldn’t actual consider putting on the screen in a thousand years. There’s a kernel of a story here, a message that really wants to be understood. The problem is that there are massive gaps in the screenplay that make even the willing suspension of disbelief something that doesn’t cover everything that needs to be taken in by the audience. Society has real problems with the way it all fits together. It’s audacious and monumentally weird and worth seeing for how far it goes, but it’s worth noting at the outset here that coherence is not a strong suit.

The easiest way to explain Society is that it is a riff on They Live without the special glasses and with a lot more body horror. The other movie I’m reminded of here at least in part is Slither, although this clearly would be the influencer in that respect and Slither the one being influenced. If you’ve seen all of these movies, you know exactly what I’m talking about here. If you haven’t, I guess I still need to explain as best I can.

Ten Days of Terror!: Necronomicon:The Book of the Dead

Film: Necronomicon: The Book of the Dead
Format: Internet video on laptop.

One problem with one of my horror lists is that it goes for the obscure. Actually, that’s sort of the point of that list—it’s worthwhile horror movies that most people have managed to miss. What this means is that some of these are a bitch to find, so when I locate one online, it’s generally a good thing, because that’s the only way I get to see it. With Necronomicon: The Book of the Dead (sometimes known as just Necronomicon), finding a copy online was exciting; this is a film I’ve been looking for since I added that list to my site.

I didn’t realize, but should have based on the name, that Necronomicon is an anthology. There’s naturally a framing story and three other shorts that combine into a film just a touch longer than 90 minutes. The framing story consists of H.P. Lovecraft (Jeffrey Combs, who is sporting a fake chin a la Bruce Campbell) entering an ancient library and sneaking off to a forbidden room to read through the Necronomicon. Each of the three stories all take place in more or less the present despite Lovecraft’s story being in the past. Evidently, this means that the stories in the book are either predestined or somehow prescient. Anyway, the framing story appears briefly between the stories as well and then comes up at the end to close the film.