Beyond Re-Animator

Set mostly in a prison, Beyond Re-Animator is fun, gory, bloody, insane, and awful all at the same time. It is however, a step up from the Bride of Re-Animator.

Jeffrey Combs is back, in what must be his favorite role, playing Dr. Herbert West. During the past 13 years West has been in prison for crimes related to his insanely gory, but always entertaining experiments. One would believe that being in prison would stop West’s experiments, but as we should know by now, West isn’t an ordinary mad doctor.

West has managed through a series of clever inventions to continue working on his experiments, though he has been downgraded to using prison rats that he catches. He discovers a new type of energy that will supposedly help re-animated subjects not go crazy and kill everything in sight.

A young doctor lands a job at the prison and recruits West to help him run the day-to-day needs of the prison hospital. The young doctor also lands a hot girlfriend, but she is a nosy bitch who digs around too much – AKA a journalist. The doctor is actually the same boy, all grown up now, that watched his older sister die at the hands of one of West’s experiments during the opening credits. The doctor reveals his true intentions, do whatever he can to help West take his experiments to the next level.

Eventually, West and the doctor use the new energy and the old green juice to revive a mouse and some prisoners. Initially, everything works well. The dead regain functions and act mostly human, with a few minor peculiar effects.

All hell breaks loose in the prison and West continues to re-animate damn near everything that dies – to the point that no one can even tell who is dead and who is alive. You gotta admire West’s complete lack of scientific control around his experiments. He is just out to play God and damn with anyone that gets in his way.

It has all the makings of a re-animator movie which immediately makes this flick worth a view. I wonder how this film will hold up over the next 10-15 years. Only time will tell.

Snore Factor ZZ

IMDB 2003