Beyond Re-Animator

First, if you haven't seen /Re-Animator/, you really missed something. It has an energy few films, particularly Lovecraft films, possess.The actual sequel, /Bride of Re-Animator/, was, to my taste too much like /The Bride of Frankenstein/.This is the third film in the series. Dr West is arrested at the start, and the film takes place in a maximum-security prison. And its energy level is only exceeded by the original, if by that.Basically, Dr West recreates his serum, adds a new factor, starts experimenting and, in the meantime, a prison riot starts. Which leads to a lot of action, fighting, and gore. It may or may not have any elements of Lovecraft's stories in it, but it definitely captures the main character and continues his career!

Director Brian Yunza once again breathes life back into the Re-Animator series with this third installment, Beyond Re-Animator (2003). Shot on location in Spain, the only character to make it from the original movies was Doctor Herbert West (Jeffery Combs). While neither of the sequels was nearly as good as the first, this one, I thought, was a bit better than the last.The film picks up where the last left off, with one of West's experiments attacking a young woman, which is witnessed by her younger brother. The movie then fast-forwards 14 years, and we see West as an inmate in Arkham prison, performing strange experiments on rats, ones not involving bringing them back from the dead, but having something to do with removing strange energies from their bodies. Seems West is trying to develop a means to not only re-animate the dead, but to also return the subjects back to their normal, mental states. You see, the re-animation formula does work, but the subjects are usually mindless murder machines once brought back from the dead. With his new research, West hopes to counteract this effect, and truly return his once dead subjects back to their normal, pre-par tem selves. The young boy who so long ago saw his sister attacked by one of West's experiments is now a doctor, and has taken up residency at the prison where West is incarcerated, requesting that West be assigned to assist him. This seemed like a set up so that the doctor could avenge his sister's death, but that wasn't how it was played out, which seemed weird to me. Anyway, West, with the help of his new benefactor, begins his re-animation experiments anew, with a slight twist in his development of returning sentient consciousness to his subjects.The movie does follow the format of previous films, with West blindly pushing forward with his experimentation, while his reluctant partner follows meekly along, and also a woman getting into the mix. There were some new elements thrown in, but most of the movie stayed similar to the first two. The script was a bit on the weak side, but director Yunza manages to keep things interesting with a copious amount of gore and splatter, but I am sure fans of the visceral would have wanted more. West is always fun to watch, a man driven by his unrelenting desire for knowledge despite the consequences. As the movie progresses, the inevitable prison riot breaks out, and various 're-animated' test subjects do many nasty things. No big surprises in the end, but a suitable ending leaving the door open for another sequel. There is some nice eye candy (women) to look at in this nearly all Spanish cast, but the acting skills in some of the cast members, men and women, are pretty poor. The special effects, provided by Screaming Mad George, are nice and thoroughly grotesque, and the story does move along, so I would call this movie a successful sequel to the last one, especially since I really didn't have high hopes after seeing Bride of Re-Animator (1990) and hearing another sequel was on the way.Special features include a director's commentary, a 'making of' featurette, a somewhat goofy music video featuring a techno song and some interesting visuals. There are also a few trailers included, one for this movie and a couple more for other Lion's Gate releases. All in all, not a bad follow up to the sequel, but still nowhere as good as the original film. I do wish someone would release some of Brian Yunza's other films to DVD, like From Beyond (1986) or Crying Freeman (1995).Cookieman108

The Re-Animator films have never been ones that are grounded in good taste, but still the quality of the story in HPLovecraft has been a great touchstone. Jeffrey Combs has essentially been the face of Herbert West, and Stuart Gordon hasbeen the directorial heart. Combs has read the HPL stories on audiobooks, so I presume he knows the material well. Theother important factor is that Combs has the acting skill to convey West to and for the audience. Whilst the film directedby Yuzna is mostly good, it is not up to Gordon's par, since Yuzna specifically goes outside of the HPL universe with onlyHerbert West as the anchor. Combs delivers West as per usual. The only other big plus is the practical FX by screaming madGeorge. The extras are revealing but in a not so great way. It is worth a watch for the Re-Animator fans , but the finesseGordon delivered is lost by Yuzna. The mostly spanish crew deliver a great body of material for a good director to workwith, unfortunately Yuzna is at the helm, and the so-called humour is ham-fisted when not delivered by Combs. I can onlylook forward to the Original films re-worked forspecial editions.5 Stars for Combs, the work by Yuzna barely goes above3.Also, there is a shot in the first ten minutes that looks like it was taken out of FRIGHTENERS, beat for beat, it wasquite a surprise to see.

Herbert West (Jeffery Combs) still conducts his experiments but unfortunately as one of his experiments murders of a young boy's sister that sends him to prison. 13 years later, he is still studying about life and death as he makes special soul stealing energy batteries that can be put in other bodies just like his re-agent as Dr. Howard Philipps ( Jason Barry) who was the young boy who witnessed his sister's death is fasinated by Herbert West's theories and the old re-agent that he found on that night. West and Philip begin to experiment on animals including some prison inmates for both his re-agent and soul snatcher but unfortunately it becomes like old times in creating zombies.Entertaining and enjoyable sequel to the 1985 horror comedy cult masterpiece! Brian Yuzna ( co-producer of the original Re-Animator) does it again with his sensibilty in this Spanish-US production with decent acting even by Jeffery Combs but unfortunately no Bruce Abbot, as usual this has a good amount of splatter and dark humor including one really nasty castration scene (ala, Cannibal Ferox) and good special effects. Not as great as the original but just as fun as "Bride of Re-Animator", hopefully part 4 will be coming soon.This DVD has a nice commentary by Brian Yuzna and only two features which is a Spanish Music video and a behind the scenes feature with the trailer including other Lion's Gate release trailers.

PLOT...Finally being held accountable for his catastrophic experiments in re-animating the dead, Dr Herbert West finds himself incarcerated at a maximum security penitentiary. With the arrival of a new prison doctor who happens to be an enthusiastic student of West's work, the medical deviant is afforded the opportunity to resume his grisly studies, this time on his fellow inmates, with predictably hair-raising results.This is the third movie in the series, just as bonkers as the others if not more, Dr West up to more crazy experiments injecting his illuminous serum into the dead with disastrous and hilarious consequences. This movie is an absolute must for horror fans especially of this great series of movies. The effects as usual look fantastic, plenty of gross-out practical gore and blood, top cast including the very eccentric Jeffrey Combs who is a terrific horror star. and Elsa Pataky (Fast and furious 5,6,7,8) and directed by horror master Brian Yuzna (Return of the Living Dead 3, Re-Animator 2, Progeny) great music score too with plenty use of the classic theme, this is a must pick up horror to watch is you love plenty blood and black comedy gross-out moments too. The new Arrow films release is brilliant.Great HD picture on the Blu-ray (Arrow Films)Features are plentiful as usual with lots of great interviews and featurettes and a commentary. plus lots more.Region B, Running time 96mins, 2003/2021. Language English, Subtitles English.Make sure you get an order in early for the limited booklet and very nice slipcase with a nice smooth texture to it plus slight embossing around the text and image. reversible sleeve too.

OK I wish I'd re-watched my old DVD before forking out £17.99 for a disappointing second sequel to one awesome original and another not quite as good first sequel.The story is OK but we could have done without yet another pointless romance, especially considering the lead female character Laura was just so unlikeable. I mean come on, she came across as a schemer, liar, slut and quite frankly deserved everything she got. I felt absolutely no sympathy for her whatsoever.As for Elsa Pataky who played Laura, clearly she wasn't paid enough to go naked or at least topless. In the love scene it is quite clear she is topless as you can see her ample left breast pressed against the doctor's body. Clearly he was the only one to get any benefit out of this scene. To get to the nitty gritty - more pointless nudity. If you're not going to show it, don't film it. They could have filmed that scene with the sheets pulled up and I wouldn't have felt so cheated. Elsa Pataky certainly didn't win a fan here.At least Barbara Crampton and Kathleen Kinmont respectively had no issues going topless or nude in the previous films. All I can say is thank you to Raquel Gribler who played the nurse and certainly had no issues with her topless scene.Getting back to the main film there was a completely un-necessary comedy moment when a rat found it's way into a prison guards uniform, despite the fact the guards shirt was completely buttoned up. I'm still trying to figure that one out. Then to really top that we get a totally unbelievable moment when half a corpse comes flying towards Herbert West as if propelled by rocket power...no way. At least Reanimator and The Bride kept it fairly straight.Arrow's release looks great but quite frankly whether I keep it or not is up for grabs. Like I said, maybe I should have revisited first before splashing the cash

This is a revised version of a review I first published on my blog as there's no way Amazon would publish it in its original form. There are also spoilers with regards to the ownership of body parts. If you don't like spoilers, skip this review.I printed a couple of photos in the blog and went on to say that unfortunately I couldn't find any more striking images such as the bisected man swinging along bars chasing after our anti-hero because he stole, killed and re-animated his pet rat. Or of the fight between the rat and the re-animated severed sausage. (It isn't a sausage.)It opens with one of Dr Herbert West's failed experiments (no lower jaw but he still tries to drink from a carton of milk with messy results) killing a young woman and watched her younger brother who picks up a syringe of the glowing green re-animator serum dropped by West as he's hauled away by the police.Fifteen years later a young doctor (the grown up younger brother and played by Jason Barry) arrives at a seedy prison (which looks suspiciously like Spain where the movie was actually made) to be the new doctor but actually to work with doctor prisoner West (the inimitable Jeffrey Combs) to refine the re-animator serum and help the world. The inmates are a bunch of psychos (who look rather Spanish which is not to say the Spanish all look like psychos) and the warden -an authoritarian lecherous sadist- is far worse than any of them -and a fine vile performance indeed from Simon Andreu who sensibly sails over the top at every opportunity. Also on the scene is Laura Olney (the talented Elsa Pataky, a well-known Spanish actress) a young journalist trying to do a piece on the prison. She starts out relatively mousy and ends up, let's just say it's a little reminiscent of Barbara Crampton in bondage gear in From Beyond. In between, she and the young doctor become close. (Surprise fact: she's married to the younger Chris Hemsworth aka Thor.)Needless to say, anything involving the purely self-serving Herbert West goes disastrously, comically, violently, and gorily wrong. Just about everyone in the prison ends up injected with the re-animator serum and the serum which was designed to, but doesn't, stop the side-effects. Blood and body parts litter the screen. Our heroine develops a secondary psychopathic personality and if you wondered how the re-animated sausage ended up on its own with only a hungry rat for company I think you can make a good guess. The warden, partly infused with a rat, roams around alternately beating people to death and trying to do rude things to the heroine and if you wondered who the sausage belonged to... And everyone gets their deserts, both just and unjust except, for guess who who wanders off into the night in search of another sequel.So you can see why I enjoyed it. Okay, so it isn't as good as the first two but it's equally a long way from being a disappointment.The DVD from Arrow comes with a 50 minute interview with Brian Yuzna about the series, a booklet which features an interview Jeffrey Combs, and other bits of stuff. Nice package. And don't forget to watch the end credits

Went into this one open minded not expecting much from it but I actually enjoyed this one more than bride, the Dr is back and in typical re-animator style he's still mad but brilliant this time from jail some great laughs and gore good old family fun from Brian yuzna

Not reviewing the arrow edition which I dont own just The film itself...I'm a massive Re-Animator fan but this is pure drivel. It features forced wooden actors; terrible dialogue; a stupid narrative; a barely dressed nurse whose only purpose is to have her clothes removed and a "comedy" drug addict who is just pathetic. It picks up near the end but it really is not Yuzna's finest hour. What a shame to waste such an opportunity to really let rip with West.