Beyond Re-Animator

After causing the Miskatonic University Massacre,Dr.Herbert West has been serving a prison sentence for the past 14 years.Far from overcoming his scientific obsession with bringing dead organisms back to life,he has had no choice but to continue his experiments on the only specimens he can find in his cell:rats.When Howard,a new young doctor,comes to work as the prison MD and requests his assistance,Dr.West discovers that the young protege has something he left behind 14 years ago..."Beyond Re-Animator" is an enjoyable horror flick that offers plenty of gore.It's nice to see Jeffrey Combs again as Herbert West.The acting is okay and and there is a lot of zombies running around plus a nice dose of black humour(a bitten-off re-animated penis which has a rather hilarious fight with a re-animated rat).This film is surely not as good as "Re-Animator",but if you want to be entertained give it a look.7 out of 10.

Any movie that includes a character named after the Great Lovecraft himself is bound to attract the attention of quite a few enthusiasts, even though in this case said character is dull and mostly thinly constructed, yet this is a sequel to the epic of Doctor West and his uncanny obsession, as such it was bound to create a certain momentum.

Which it does, up to a certain time. The opening scene is quite unexpected if not remarkably brilliant and although the movie seems to lag off during its middle sections, encompassing a completely unnecessary and mostly painful romance, it gains strength as it marches towards a complete onslaught of mangled bodies re-animated, a sinister warden now possessed with the spirit of a nasty rodent, an exploding junkie and a forest of not quite-dead bodies merrily twitching away.

Obviously, there is no plot worth mentioning, and only West's zeal to proceed through the insanity and protect his work manages to cause some impact in terms of psychologically rendering a character above a simple stereotype.

As it has already been mentioned, in this movie insanity reigns supreme, until it seems clear the director was more interesting to enjoying the pandemonium than anything else.

***Spoiler***

A perfect example of this is the rat-fighting-penis scene, perhaps one of the most hilarious and strangely concocted images to have surfaced the big screen ***Spoiler****

Also, a few scenes are reminiscent of some horror cult icons, which further stress that Beyond Re-Animator, like the whole series, is a product to and for the genre that fostered it, without trying to reward any viewer not in sync with the dictates of horror from the gory kind.

***Spoiler***

I found it most satisfying that West makes it through it all simply to walk away at the end of the movie, clearly all other characters were somewhat perfunctory and it would seem too much anti-climax to dispatch the good doctor or not grant him his liberty ***Spoiler***

Overall, a very amusing piece of horror that is not the work of a genius but is far from being completely without worth.

Beyond re-animator is the final installment of Stuart Gordon's "Re-animator" series that began in 1985 and like most late installments, comes off as unnecessary and a failed attempt to cash in on a popular title. In the fashion of "Jason goes to Hell", "Freddy's dead: The Final Nightmare" and "Halloween: H20", Beyond Re-animator attempts to restart the series by trying to retcon certain plot elements while pretending to be a legitimate sequel. The result, as usual was a colossal mess of inconsistencies, leaving only the most superficial elements from the original two films without the heart of what made those films so beloved in the first place. We find our protagonist Herbert West imprisoned in a federal jail after his former assistant Dan Kain apparently turned him in to the authorities for his illegal experimentation. We never find out why Dan, a prominent character in the original films would do such a thing and Beyond Re-animator brushes off any details as unimportant. We're also provided with no explanation as to how West escaped the cliffhanger conflict at the end of the last film "Bride of Re-animator". Jeffrey Combs reprises his role as the mad scientist, who continues his devilish experiments on whatever subjects he can gain access to within the confines of his small prison cell. However, everything changes for West when Dr. Howard Philips (Jason Barry) takes over as the prison physician. Philips had witnessed the power of West's reagent serum as a child and has since become obsessed with the science of re-animating the dead. Handing West his iconic syringe containing the glowing green reagent, it's only a matter of time before West restarts his old experiments, and the entire prison is thrown into chaos. The film plays out in the typical fashion that we've come to expect from this series. Characters die only to be used as test subjects for West and Philips who bring them back to life as vicious, murderous monsters. The style blends graphic body horror with ridiculous slap stick comedy. While entertaining at times, Beyond Re-animator does little more than copy it's predecessors and fails to further the story of Herbert West in any meaningful way. The absence of Stuart Gordon is obvious as the film feels more like a what if scenario, rather than a genuine attempt to further an existing mythos. The story is convoluted as the majority of scenes serve little more than excuses to get from A to point B. For example, there's an ongoing joke about one of the inmates having a pet rat. We see West experiment on the rat which serves as an all to predictable foreshadowing of the rat being re-animated as one of West's experiments and eventually attacking his former owner. The characters in this film, save for Herbert West, were all one dimensional and failed to establish meaningful identities for themselves. Herbert West is deranged and lacking in social graces as always, making him the sole source of entertainment. By comparison, the scenes without West were uninteresting and took up far to much of the film's run time. It was fun seeing Jeffrey Combs reprise his most famous role one last time. However, the unoriginal plot and hollow performances by the rest of the cast simply couldn't keep up with him and ultimately dragged him down along with them and the rest of this film. Beyond Re-animator attempted to bring new life to the Re-animator series. Unfortunately, this experiment was a failure.

I loved the first Re-Animator movie. "Bride of Re-Animator" was OK. This one is over-the-top, completely twisted, and just plain clean, gory, bloody, guts spattering about, eyeballs crawling around, penis-attacks-rat fun.

This isn't a movie that takes itself seriously, and you shouldn't, either.

Jeffrey Combes is wonderful, as always, as Dr. Herbert West. Dr. West has figured out (or so he thinks) what was missing in his previous "experiments." Needless to say, it doesn't work as planned (hey, it's "just a theory"), and much mayhem ensues. Much. Much more than in the first two movies. Think "Attica" meets "Night of the Living Dead" meets "Freaky Friday." Yes, it's that far off the deep end.

I would recommend this film highly to anyone who enjoys a humorous splatter flick. If you're not a deranged gorehound, you probably won't like this one. Speaking as a longtime deranged gorehound, however, I can safely say that this is one of the finest films ever made in its genre, and certainly worthy of several Academy Awards.

I did mention that I was deranged, right?

Yeah, I did. And if you are, too, see this movie. And don't forget to watch the absolutely classic "Move Your Dead Bones" video that also comes on the DVD. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll like it better than "Cats."

Kudos to Brian Yuzna!

As a big fan of the Re-Animator series, I was quite excited when I found out that a second sequel was being made. Unfortunately, however, due to poor distribution in the UK; it has taken me over a year to find a copy. But now that I've finally seen it, I am pleased to report that Beyond Re-Animator doesn't disappoint! It is now 13 years after the infamous massacre of the second film and Herbert West has found himself in jail. However, you can't keep a good re-animator down, and being in jail doesn't stop his experiments, especially when a new doctor; Dr Howard Phillips arrives on the scene.

Jeffrey Combs returns as the insane scientist, Dr Herbert West. Unfortunately, Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott) from the other two films doesn't return, but Re-Animator was always Combs' series anyway, so although it's a loss; the show must, and most certainly does go on. Jeffrey Combs was made for the part of Herbert West; his portrayal of the character is absolutely wonderful. He catches just the right atmosphere of a man obsessed by his work in all three films. He also manages to tie a lot of humour in, which is obviously a good thing for a tongue in cheek movie such as this. The rest of the cast acts as a support to Combs, and succeeds fairly well in that respect but none really impress much on their own. Jason Barry (who had a small role in the rubbish movie; Titanic) acts as Dan Cain's replacement and Herbert West's new understudy; Howard Phillips. He never really impresses in the movie and it would seem that his main objective in the movie is to make West look more insane, and through his subdued performance; he does that well. Elsa Patasky looks good as the lady of the film, but her performance is terrible; even embarrassingly bad at times. Simón Andreu is the only member of the cast other than Combs that really impresses, and he plays the prison warden; the villain of the piece.

Gorehounds won't be disappointed with this film, I can guarantee you that! Re-Animator became infamous for it's heavy amounts of overly gory sequences, and this movie features lots of them too; from an exploding chest to a severed torso that walks on it's hands; this movie has it all. Many sequels, particularly horror sequels just recap the original with more gore, but the Re-Animator sequels haven't so far, all have something new. In Bride of Re-Animator (Re-Animator 2), a new idea about animated different parts of a dead corpse emerged, and in this film the new idea is adding the 'soul' to the re-animated body. It is admirable for the series to take that route as for a film of this ilk, more gore could simply be added and it's fans would almost certainly happy, but here you get a story to chew on aswell.

The last two films ended with a riot, which has become a part of the Re-Animator tradition, and this film doesn't break that great tradition. The last 30 minutes or so are absolutely insane, with many things going on all at once and that is sure to please fans of the original movies. Overall, Beyond Re-Animator is an incredible gory ride and is recommended to anyone with the stomach for this sort of movie.