My Trip Through the Re-Animator Movies: Re-Animator (1985), Bride of Re-Animator (1989), Beyond Re-Animator (2003), and Reanimator Academy (1992)

If there is one thing that I love about using Twitter, aside from the great people I’ve come to know through it, it would be the movies that I would never have seen otherwise.  The people I follow and the people who follow me are a great way for me to discover movies that I did not know about.  These same people push me into watching movies that I’ve never seen.  Movie watching has been made so much more interesting by getting to know people through Twitter.

Let me give you an example of what I mean.  There’s this one guy I follow on Twitter.  His name is Doug Tilley.  That’s Tilley with an e.  I’m not sure exactly how I started following him.  All I know is that it happened, and I listen to two podcasts he co-hosts.  The podcasts bring up movies I have never seen before.  Because of the podcasts, I have watched movies such as Rock, Paper, Scissors: The Fall of the Original Six, The Wild Bunch, and Blood Feast.  Just having him in my Twitter timeline has brought about watching movies I would otherwise have not seen as well.

Over the past two weeks or so, from the time of writing this particular sentence, Doug Tilley (with an e) has been pressuring me to watch a movie called Re-Animator.  I had never thought of watching this movie before, though I should have.  The movie was featured in the 100 Scariest Movie Moments television countdown, and I remember watching that countdown.  Since then, I’ve wanted to see the movies featured on the list.  For some reason, the inclusion of Re-Animator slipped my mind until the specific moment in the film that I remember being featured in the countdown.  It’s as though it was meant to be.  My following of Doug Tilley led to this point in time where I would watch the movie I had forgotten about for all this time.

It does pay to be a fan of movies that follows people who also like movies.  But that’s not all I am going to be writing about here.  Oh no.  In no way am I stopping right here.  This morning, I awoke to see Doug Tilley (with an e) demanding that I write about watching Re-Animator.  Not only will I do that, but I will raise him two sequels, and two spiritual sequels.  That is, if I can find ways to watch all of the movies.  Yes, there are two direct sequels to Re-Animator, titled Bride of Re-Animator and Beyond Re-Animator.  On Doug Tilley (with an e)’s podcast that he cohosts with a guy calling himself Moe Porne, No Budget Nightmares, one of the featured movies was Re-Animator Academy.  During the episode, the pair discovered a sequel to that flick, titled Re-Animator Academy 2.  I have made it my duty to find, and write about, all four of the sequels as well as the first movie.  And so begins the Re-Animator saga.

I didn’t know what I was getting into by watching Re-Animator.  Like I said earlier, I had forgotten all about its inclusion in that countdown and had thus forgotten about the movie altogether.  I knew very little going into watching it, aside from the fact that it existed, and the fact that the Re-Animator Academy movies had been made.  This allowed for a lot of pleasant surprise and/or disappointment to happen while watching the movie.  Let’s just say that it was mostly pleasant surprise.  When I started watching it and the title card showed that it was based on Lovecraft, I got a little bit excited.  I’ve never read any Lovecraft stuff but I know that he’s one of the most influential horror writers.  A movie based on his work seems like a safe bet.

Spoiling movies is something that I try to avoid as much as I possibly can when writing about them.  I’m going to do whatever I can to not spoil Re-Animator, but it’s going to be tough.  Consider this a warning.  Some minor spoilers may happen as I go into my writing about the movies.

As I expected from something based on Lovecraft, whom I have not read anything by, the story was one of the best parts of the movie.  If one was to have the power to bring the dead back to life, you would want to discover a way to harness that ability.  Re-Animator explores that while also being a fun horror flick.  I wouldn’t call this an amazing movie by any stretch, but it is loads of fun.  Fun is a good thing to have in a movie.  Why have movies that can’t be enjoyed?  Re-Animator is highly enjoyable.

The biggest parts of helping with the enjoyment of Re-Animator are the camera work and the editing.  There are some decent practical effects in Re-Animator, but a lot of the things that would need top notch effects work are masked by the camera work and editing.  It helps to make the moments in which the effects are needed have better effects, rather than to have more moments that need effects have effects that aren’t of the same solid quality.  It involves showing less, but having what is shown look better.  A movie tends to be stronger when a filmmaker approaches it in that way.

All in all, I liked the first Re-Animator.  It was a fun horror ride that entertained me for an hour and a half.  How would the rest of the series fare?  We are now moving into the territory of the second movie in the Re-Animator series, Bride of Re-Animator.

When I started Bride of Re-Animator I noticed one big difference right away.  The look of the film is a lower quality.  This was kind of off putting and should have been foretelling of the rest of the movie.  I’ll get to that later.  There is a different cinematographer on the first film than there is on Bride of Re-Animator which could easily be the reason for the worsened look.  I’m not sure that’s the case.  I feel that it had something to do with moving from film to video.  I don’t know if that was actually a move made between films, but it seems that way when watching the movies.  Everything seems darker and less sharp.  It is unpleasant to the eye, and not in a good artistic choice sort of way.

That’s not the only issue I had with the underwhelming sequel.  As I said above, there were a few off-putting elements throughout the movie.  The first and foremost was the look of the film, which as I already said, was not nearly as good as the first one.  Think what you want, but I didn’t like the look of this one.  The other major off-putting thing about the sequel was the tone.  Re-Animator was a horror film with dark humor, but a lot of horror.  In Bride of Re-Animator, the effects were brought to the forefront, and it made the humor less dark and more playful through the effects.  Sure, certain horrific images in the movie were enhanced through the additional effects in the sequel, but there were also moments where it hurt the movie.  Most notably is a scene in which some fingers are attached to an eye and brought to life.  The image of this creature running around the room is laughable and brings in a style of comedy that seems out of place with the material.

There are things to like as well.  The fact that they have three of the main cast of Re-Animator returning for Bride of Re-Animator is great.  It brings a sense of stability to what would otherwise be a ludicrous sequel.  Even if it doesn’t make complete sense, storywise, to bring all of them back, it is nice to have them there.  The general storyline is not bad either.  It is an interesting story.  The problem is that some of the elements within the story do not make sense.  This can be overlooked in the service of the overall story, but still seems a little bit odd.  Whatever.

Going into the third movie, Beyond Re-Animator is going above and beyond Doug Tilley (with an e)’s expectations of me.  It is something I felt needed to be done, regardless of what everyone else felt.  Why did I feel this way?  I don’t know.  It was a gut feeling and sometimes you just have to go with your gut.  What fun is life if everything has to be completely logical?  Let the dice roll.  Have some fun.  I have not seen the Re-Animator movies until now, so I’m going through them all.

I did not expect to get much out of Beyond Re-Animator.  After the disappointment I felt in watching Bride of Re-Animator, I thought that the series was just going to continue its downward spiral into nothingness.  What I got was a surprisingly fun little horror flick.

The biggest improvement that I saw between Bride of Re-Animator and Beyond Re-Animator was the quality in the look of the movies.  The decade in between each is probably accountable for that.  The look of Beyond Re-Animator is cleaner.  It’s lighter.  It’s easier to see what is going on in Beyond Re-Animator than Bride of Re-Animator.  Aside from the lighting and the cinematography being a vast improvement, there was also an improvement in the costuming department.  I’m not sure if the person in charge of the costumes was the same or different as either of the preceding movies, but the costumes in Beyond Re-Animator worked very well for the movie.  I was impressed by the work that was done on that.

It’s difficult to completely describe how I felt about Beyond Re-Animator.  I had fun with the movie.  The horror mixed with the hints of dark comedy really worked in this movie.  Compare that to Bride of Re-Animator.  Bride of Re-Animator used many of its special effects in a comedic way, while still trying to have them be frightening.  It worked in some instances, but in many instances it fell flat.  Beyond Re-Animator stayed away from that and had the dark comedy happen through the characters.  It seemed less slapstick and more fitting with the material.  In my opinion, that’s a great way to tighten up the movie.  It works.  I liked it.

That just about sums up what I have to say about the three official Re-Animator flicks.  As a series, I liked it.  It was a fun watch.  For the most part, it was a fun watch.  But I’m not done watching Re-Animator movies.  There are still the two Re-Animator Academy movies that I have to watch before I am done my trek into my own dark soul.

I’ve said before that there are two Re-Animator Academy movies.  This isn’t necessarily correct.  Doug Tilley (with an e) has informed me that it is impossible to find them separated from each other, and that they rely upon each other in order to make sense.  So they are essentially two parts of one whole.  They are basically one movie.  Thus, the next bit of writing will be about both of them at the same time.  It might get confusing.  From what I know, Re-Animator Academy is confusing.  Just stick through it.  I’m sure we can make it out alive.

The first thing that I need to say about Re-Animator Academy is that it is one movie, and not two as I had come to believe.  There is only one movie, though halfway through, it tries to make you believe that there is a second.  Both parts just go together to make one movie.  The other big detail that I need to say before I get into the meaty writing about Re-Animator Academy is that it is actually Reanimator Academy.  There is no hyphen in it.  So that’s that.

Reanimator Academy was made in 1992 as a spiritual sequel to Re-Animator.  Made on a shoestring budget, it tells the story of a man who makes a serum to bring people back from the dead.  Add in some gangsters, a hooker, and a talking burnt head, and you have the movie.  The question is: is it good?  I would argue no, but it’s fun enough for the hour and ten minutes it plays.

There is a lot that separates Reanimator Academy from the movie that it was made as a reaction to.  The first and foremost is the budget.  Reanimator Academy has almost no budget to it.  It was shot on video.  That is clear.  There were amateur actors, and very little effects.  Most of the horror was removed from the material, with comedy put in its place.  First and foremost, Reanimator Academy is a comedy.  Sure, there are beheadings, and reanimation, but the majority of the time is devoted to jokes.  The majority of the jokes don’t completely land.  That does not matter.  The earnest way in which the jokes are made makes up for the lack of laughs.

I enjoyed the time that I spent watching Reanimator Academy.  I’m not sure what it is about the no-budget nightmares that I’ve seen thus far.  They haven’t been terrible.  Maybe it’s my expectations.  Reanimator Academy is not something that I would recommend seeking out, but there are movies with budgets that I have enjoyed much less.  This isn’t the worst thing I’ve ever seen.

So I’ve spent the last few weeks, amongst all my other movie watching and television watching and working, watching the Re-Animator movies.  I’ve watched the three within the main franchise, and I’ve watched Reanimator Academy.  I’ve come out a changed person.  I quite liked three of them, and was slightly on the liking side of indifferent with the other.  I’d call that a fairly good record for the movies.  There’s something about the material that just keeps me invested in what’s going on.  Whether it be the horror or the comedy, if done right, I can have a good time.

I’ve enjoyed this but it’s time to bring it all to an end.  Would I recommend these movies to other people?  If you couldn’t tell from the large amounts of writing above, I would recommend Re-Animator and Beyond Re-Animator to anyone seeking out some good horror type fun.  They’re good watches and worth the time you spend watching them.  I like Reanimator Academy, but I could completely understand the quality of the filmmaking to be completely off-putting to some.  As for Bride of Re-Animator, it didn’t work for me.  There was something missing in the tone, and the look of the film was a little bit dark.

That’s all I have to say about the Re-Animator movies.  It’s been a fun ride, but I have to move onto something else now.  There are more movies to be watched and I’ve only got so much time to watch them.  I’d like to give one final thanks to Doug Tilley (with an e) for telling me to watch the first movie, and sparking my voyage into all four of them.  I found some things to like in there, and I am grateful for that.

It’s been fun.  I’m out.