Judging by Internet critics' scores (93% on Rotten Tomatoes and 7.2 stars on IMDb for "Re-Animator" (1985) compared to this sequel's respective judgements of 44% and 6.3, as of this writing), I suppose I'm in the minority in considering "Bride of Re-Animator" to be an improvement upon the original film. Allow me to defend this contrarian view. From the beginning--probably even H.P. Lovecraft's book--the Re-Animator franchise was largely a pastiche of Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein." Mad scientists reanimating corpses, who become violent. "Re-Animator" also took from "Dracula" and the Kharis mummy movies, as well as perhaps a bit from zombie flicks, with Dr. Hill's mesmerizing eyes and perverted kidnapping of the damsel-in-distress. Moreover, from early on, with the 1931 "Frankenstein," but especially its sequel, "Bride of Frankenstein" (1935), cinematic adaptations of Shelley's story have heavily relied upon camp and the grotesque. This continued on into the days of splatter horror, with copious amounts of gore and gratuitous nudity: Hammer's Frankenstein series, "Lady Frankenstein" (1971), "Flesh for Frankenstein," "The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein" (both 1973), "Frankenhooker" (1990) and "Re-Animator." "Bride of Re-Animator" capitalizes on this history but returning to the root of the matter by largely lifting from "Bride of Frankenstein," which I happen to think is also the best of the over 50 Frankenstein films I've now seen--so, if nothing else, at least they ripped off the right movie.
The benefits are blatant cinematographically methinks, with the canted angels and quicker cutting imitating the 1935 James Whale picture. Instead of the undead being a half-hearted mix of Frankenstein's creature, vampires and zombies, this time we get a more coherent copying from other Frankenstein films of the assemblage of body parts. There's even a storm with lightning on the fateful night, although the mad doctors still use their patented glow-in-the-dark embalming fluid "reagent" for reanimation, instead of electricity (the smoke machine gets a workout, too, rather inexplicably). After an amusingly absurd opening that finds our doctors working in a war zone, for reasons that have nothing really to do with the plot--exotic lizard embryonic fluid aside--the reassembling of body parts also has the advantage of some grotesque creations, which come to life via stop-motion animation. When these abominations inevitably arise from the grave, there's a hint of Tod Browning's "Freaks" (1932) in the way they surround Dr. West. I half expected them to start chanting, "One of Us!" Additionally, with the return of Dr. Hill's disembodied head, his connection to Dracula and vampires in general is furthered by his head being attached to bat wings. If you can't appreciate this sort of grotesque camp, I don't know how you made it as far as this sequel.
What puts this one firmly over the top (and the first film), to my mind, is its more reflective approach to its inherent misogyny. Now, despite being written by a woman, Shelley's "Frankenstein" mythologizes a parthenogenetic creation of life solely by man, absent the role of woman. Try finding a fully developed female character in that classic of Gothic horror; she doesn't exist. Gay himself, Whale was the first to explore the homosexual undertones of this in "Bride of Frankenstein." We don't really get that here, as Dr. West finds it necessary to remind Dr. Cain to think with his "big head" and not his "little head," as Cain simultaneously dates one, living woman, seems ambiguously attracted to another terminal patient, while also trying to reanimate the heart of his dead fiancée from the last film. What we do get here is the ultimate realization of these men's destructive objectification of the opposite sex.
After they inject her with their phallic needle full of semen-like reagent, which is made all the more suggestively sexual by the men's embrace and passion, and breath life into their bride (literally, Cain performs mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on her), she pathetically attaches herself to Cain. When he rejects her, she only turns up the sexual aggression, including getting in a cat fight with Cain's naturally-born girlfriend, and begging him what he wants of her. Once alive, removed from the mere objectivity of assorted body parts and endowed with subjectivity, he wants nothing from her, apparently. All of the gratuitous shots of naked female chests in this series--even the heart within it--may be even rather forgivable given this blunt admission of the protagonists' misogyny. Only "Frankenhooker," rather bluntly, and the also-underrated installment in Hammer's series, "Frankenstein Created Woman" (1967) have been as reflective on the madness of what it means for their men to remove women from the process of life. Sure, "Bride of Re-Animator" is mostly a silly guilty pleasure, but it offers some surprising, even philosophical, musings on sex that's quite faithful to the series' ultimate source of Shelley's story.
The benefits are blatant cinematographically methinks, with the canted angels and quicker cutting imitating the 1935 James Whale picture. Instead of the undead being a half-hearted mix of Frankenstein's creature, vampires and zombies, this time we get a more coherent copying from other Frankenstein films of the assemblage of body parts. There's even a storm with lightning on the fateful night, although the mad doctors still use their patented glow-in-the-dark embalming fluid "reagent" for reanimation, instead of electricity (the smoke machine gets a workout, too, rather inexplicably). After an amusingly absurd opening that finds our doctors working in a war zone, for reasons that have nothing really to do with the plot--exotic lizard embryonic fluid aside--the reassembling of body parts also has the advantage of some grotesque creations, which come to life via stop-motion animation. When these abominations inevitably arise from the grave, there's a hint of Tod Browning's "Freaks" (1932) in the way they surround Dr. West. I half expected them to start chanting, "One of Us!" Additionally, with the return of Dr. Hill's disembodied head, his connection to Dracula and vampires in general is furthered by his head being attached to bat wings. If you can't appreciate this sort of grotesque camp, I don't know how you made it as far as this sequel.
What puts this one firmly over the top (and the first film), to my mind, is its more reflective approach to its inherent misogyny. Now, despite being written by a woman, Shelley's "Frankenstein" mythologizes a parthenogenetic creation of life solely by man, absent the role of woman. Try finding a fully developed female character in that classic of Gothic horror; she doesn't exist. Gay himself, Whale was the first to explore the homosexual undertones of this in "Bride of Frankenstein." We don't really get that here, as Dr. West finds it necessary to remind Dr. Cain to think with his "big head" and not his "little head," as Cain simultaneously dates one, living woman, seems ambiguously attracted to another terminal patient, while also trying to reanimate the heart of his dead fiancée from the last film. What we do get here is the ultimate realization of these men's destructive objectification of the opposite sex.
After they inject her with their phallic needle full of semen-like reagent, which is made all the more suggestively sexual by the men's embrace and passion, and breath life into their bride (literally, Cain performs mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on her), she pathetically attaches herself to Cain. When he rejects her, she only turns up the sexual aggression, including getting in a cat fight with Cain's naturally-born girlfriend, and begging him what he wants of her. Once alive, removed from the mere objectivity of assorted body parts and endowed with subjectivity, he wants nothing from her, apparently. All of the gratuitous shots of naked female chests in this series--even the heart within it--may be even rather forgivable given this blunt admission of the protagonists' misogyny. Only "Frankenhooker," rather bluntly, and the also-underrated installment in Hammer's series, "Frankenstein Created Woman" (1967) have been as reflective on the madness of what it means for their men to remove women from the process of life. Sure, "Bride of Re-Animator" is mostly a silly guilty pleasure, but it offers some surprising, even philosophical, musings on sex that's quite faithful to the series' ultimate source of Shelley's story.