It's rare that a sequel tops the original, but this one ties to come close. It also uses the same whimsical music and opening titles of anatomy drawings as the original film did.
Starts off 6 months after the first film ended with Drs. West and Cain (once again played by Jeffery Combs & Bruce Abbott) hiding out as medics during a war in South America. West thinks this is a great place to lie low and continue his experiments after all the heat that was placed on them during the first film.
After their quick little South American adventure, they return to Arkham Hospital as if nothing has ever happened. I can suspend disbelief at this obvious plot hole in the script because it gets better.
Gore highlights include:
West re-animating a corpse's eyeball with some fingers and watching it run around the house until a nosy Det. Chapman (Claude Earl Jones) splats it on the couch without realizing it. Not bad. Det. Chapman believes West has had something to do with his dead wife coming back to life. Chapman knows because he's the one who beat her to death to begin with.
Dr. Graves (Mel Stewart), Arkham Hospital's new chief pathologist, stumbles onto the purpose of West's green fluid and injects Dr. Hill's head (which has been exhibited for the last 6 months in a circus carnival) with some of the fluid thereby re-animating it. Hill then gives Graves some instructions that Graves will later regret.
Chapman goes down to the basement and after is struggle, is killed by West. West then re-animates Chapman and Chapman goes wild. He now looks a lot like his dead-alive wife and attacks West and then Cain, who has gone down there to see what's going on. West then chops Chapman's arm off and in the process Chapman gets loose. West then attaches Champan's arm to a dead dog. Hilarious!
West's big project is to sew various female body parts together and create a new 'bride' out of them. A Frankenstein's monster. Nice reconstruction scene as Cain and West sew the various body parts together. It's all done with excellent special effects by Screaming Mad George, who also did the special creature effects for PREDATOR.
In the meantime, Hill instructs Graves to sew bat wings onto his head so he can fly around. It's really funny and ridiculous as we see this head floating around with wings flapping underneath it. The zombies from the hospital are then set loose and they go over to West's house and mayhem ensues as they crawl and stammer around all over the place. The 'bride' comes to life and all kinds of freaky body parts from the graveyard next door come to life about the same time.
We even get some cool effects (again by Screaming Mad George) as the 'brides' body parts don't take and she falls apart with guts falling out of her torso as her head rolls off onto the floor. Then there's a cave-in and everybody gets buried in the underground tomb. Well...almost... You'll have to see what happens next because this is some really over the top stuff!!
This is a pretty surprising follow-up to the first film since I was expecting a disaster here, although the Artisan DVD is lacking the extras you'd expect from a sequel like this. It's also full-screen, non anamorphic without any widescreen option.
Still it's a worthy follow-up to RE-ANINAMATOR that far surpasses the lame-o FRANKENHOOKER which dealt with the same theme and was released around the same time as this one.
7 out of 10
Starts off 6 months after the first film ended with Drs. West and Cain (once again played by Jeffery Combs & Bruce Abbott) hiding out as medics during a war in South America. West thinks this is a great place to lie low and continue his experiments after all the heat that was placed on them during the first film.
After their quick little South American adventure, they return to Arkham Hospital as if nothing has ever happened. I can suspend disbelief at this obvious plot hole in the script because it gets better.
Gore highlights include:
West re-animating a corpse's eyeball with some fingers and watching it run around the house until a nosy Det. Chapman (Claude Earl Jones) splats it on the couch without realizing it. Not bad. Det. Chapman believes West has had something to do with his dead wife coming back to life. Chapman knows because he's the one who beat her to death to begin with.
Dr. Graves (Mel Stewart), Arkham Hospital's new chief pathologist, stumbles onto the purpose of West's green fluid and injects Dr. Hill's head (which has been exhibited for the last 6 months in a circus carnival) with some of the fluid thereby re-animating it. Hill then gives Graves some instructions that Graves will later regret.
Chapman goes down to the basement and after is struggle, is killed by West. West then re-animates Chapman and Chapman goes wild. He now looks a lot like his dead-alive wife and attacks West and then Cain, who has gone down there to see what's going on. West then chops Chapman's arm off and in the process Chapman gets loose. West then attaches Champan's arm to a dead dog. Hilarious!
West's big project is to sew various female body parts together and create a new 'bride' out of them. A Frankenstein's monster. Nice reconstruction scene as Cain and West sew the various body parts together. It's all done with excellent special effects by Screaming Mad George, who also did the special creature effects for PREDATOR.
In the meantime, Hill instructs Graves to sew bat wings onto his head so he can fly around. It's really funny and ridiculous as we see this head floating around with wings flapping underneath it. The zombies from the hospital are then set loose and they go over to West's house and mayhem ensues as they crawl and stammer around all over the place. The 'bride' comes to life and all kinds of freaky body parts from the graveyard next door come to life about the same time.
We even get some cool effects (again by Screaming Mad George) as the 'brides' body parts don't take and she falls apart with guts falling out of her torso as her head rolls off onto the floor. Then there's a cave-in and everybody gets buried in the underground tomb. Well...almost... You'll have to see what happens next because this is some really over the top stuff!!
This is a pretty surprising follow-up to the first film since I was expecting a disaster here, although the Artisan DVD is lacking the extras you'd expect from a sequel like this. It's also full-screen, non anamorphic without any widescreen option.
Still it's a worthy follow-up to RE-ANINAMATOR that far surpasses the lame-o FRANKENHOOKER which dealt with the same theme and was released around the same time as this one.
7 out of 10