Funny how the world works sometimes. We headed out to see the animated film Wall-E at the multiplex this weekend, but when we saw the crowds of very young kiddies waiting in line, we decided to gorge ourselves on lunch at the soon-to-be-closed Don Pablo's Mexican restaurant, then went home where we discovered we were getting an HD on-demand channel called FearNet; so instead of an animated movie, we watched a movie called Beyond Re-Animator! Wild, eh?
I loved the first Re-Animator from 1985, a tongue-in-cheek gorefest based very loosely on an H.P. Lovecraft story. Jeffrey Combs made the perfect intensely deadpan mad doctor who has invented a serum to re-animate the dead, but unfortunately, when they come back, they come back pissed-off and bat-shit crazy, and when you try killing them again by, let's say, dismemberment, their body parts remain twitchily alive. The gore is ridiculously over-the-top, especially in the scene when all the bodies in a morgue come back to life, but it also had lots of sly humor, mostly courtesy Combs and David Gale as a slightly less mad but more sinister doctor. The blandly handsome hero was well played by Bruce Abbott, and Barbara Crampton made a sexy damsel in distress. A fun cult item, one that can be re-watched from time to time and still be entertaining.
Beyond Re-Animator, from 2005, is actually the third in the series (the immediate sequel, Bride of Re-Animator, despite the cute title, was totally forgettable, and I can in fact remember almost nothing about it). It's quite a comedown; the gore is still there, with exploding heads, skittering eyeballs, and twitching entrails, as is Jeffrey Combs, looking not at all 20 years older, as the same mad doc, this time doing his experiments in prison. But the humor is lame and the acting, except for Combs, is below par. The "hero," Jason Barry (pictured above behind Combs), would be good looking if you ran into him on the streets of your hometown, but he's no Bruce Abbott. Elsa Pataky is downright terrible (and a touch too trashy looking) as the love interest. Most of the acting here falls somewhere between porn and bad soap-opera; frankly, it's sort of fun to see modern, honest-to-God B-movie acting once in a while, but most of these folks need a little more practice to get up to B. A jokey bit with a detached penis threatens to be amusing, but goes on way too long (despite the incredible temptation to start a string of phallus puns, I will resist). Glad to see Jeffrey Combs having some fun (I hope), but this isn't much fun for the audience.
I loved the first Re-Animator from 1985, a tongue-in-cheek gorefest based very loosely on an H.P. Lovecraft story. Jeffrey Combs made the perfect intensely deadpan mad doctor who has invented a serum to re-animate the dead, but unfortunately, when they come back, they come back pissed-off and bat-shit crazy, and when you try killing them again by, let's say, dismemberment, their body parts remain twitchily alive. The gore is ridiculously over-the-top, especially in the scene when all the bodies in a morgue come back to life, but it also had lots of sly humor, mostly courtesy Combs and David Gale as a slightly less mad but more sinister doctor. The blandly handsome hero was well played by Bruce Abbott, and Barbara Crampton made a sexy damsel in distress. A fun cult item, one that can be re-watched from time to time and still be entertaining.
Beyond Re-Animator, from 2005, is actually the third in the series (the immediate sequel, Bride of Re-Animator, despite the cute title, was totally forgettable, and I can in fact remember almost nothing about it). It's quite a comedown; the gore is still there, with exploding heads, skittering eyeballs, and twitching entrails, as is Jeffrey Combs, looking not at all 20 years older, as the same mad doc, this time doing his experiments in prison. But the humor is lame and the acting, except for Combs, is below par. The "hero," Jason Barry (pictured above behind Combs), would be good looking if you ran into him on the streets of your hometown, but he's no Bruce Abbott. Elsa Pataky is downright terrible (and a touch too trashy looking) as the love interest. Most of the acting here falls somewhere between porn and bad soap-opera; frankly, it's sort of fun to see modern, honest-to-God B-movie acting once in a while, but most of these folks need a little more practice to get up to B. A jokey bit with a detached penis threatens to be amusing, but goes on way too long (despite the incredible temptation to start a string of phallus puns, I will resist). Glad to see Jeffrey Combs having some fun (I hope), but this isn't much fun for the audience.
3 comments:
Love me THE RE-ANIMATOR, one of the few really funny horror movies. I was hoping Jeffrey Combs' career would take off, but it never really happened, did it?
Well, he may not have hit the big time, but if you check his page at IMDb, he has almost 100 credits, largely in TV and made-for-video flicks, 13 in the past two years. He's also in a new remake of Dunwich Horror (with Dean Stockwell, who was in the 1970 version) due out on Halloween, and he's signed up to be in another Re-Animator movie. Like Anthony Perkins, he may have gotten stuck in a "madman" slot, but it seems to be paying his bills.
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