BEYOND RE-ANIMATOR

What seems to be a night of fun turns into tragedy for young Howard, as one of the dead reanimated by Dr. West attacks and kills his sister. Following the incident, West is arrested. Thirteen years later, West continues to conduct his experiments in prison, on mice, until Howard, now grown up and graduated in medicine, is hired as the new prison doctor. The boy has kept some of the liquid that West used thirteen years earlier for his experiments and brings it with him, fascinated by the practices of the reanimator doctor. From that moment on, experiments on humans will resume and be taken to a next stage, since West has found a way to give consciousness back to the reanimated. "Beyond Re-Animator" is the third chapter of the saga about the corpse reanimator Herbert West, a character created by Howard Phillips Lovecraft and brought to the screen for the first time in 1985 with the beautiful film by Stuart Gordon. This third episode comes thirteen years after the second film and is directed by the producer of Gordon's film and director of "Re-Animator 2", Brian Yuzna, who directs and produces this film in what can be considered his productive "rebirth" period, that is, with the founding of the Spanish Fantastic Factory together with his colleague Julio Fernandez. "Beyond Re-Animator" picks up exactly where the second film ends, with one of the zombies reanimated by West in his crypt laboratory wandering around the neighborhood; in this film, the co-protagonist of the saga, Dr. Dan Cain (played by Bruce Abbott) is lost and no mention is made of the wicked Dr. Hill (David Gale). Instead, a new character is introduced to accompany Dr. West, Howard Phillips (coincidentally, Lovecraft's first name), a young doctor obsessed with West's studies. Phillips, played by the not very interesting Jason Barry (Titanic), evidently wants to mimic Dr. Cain from the first two films, including the romantic subplot in which he is involved and destined to end in tragedy. The prison setting gives a touch of originality to the story that intelligently does not attempt to repeat the one already narrated in the previous films, although at the center of the action are always the reanimation experiments. In fact, a new element is introduced, the neuroplasma, a science fiction electric substance that Dr. West manages to extract from still living bodies and that could give consciousness to the reanimated. But the element of originality constituted by the prison setting is also one of the film's limitations: having a restricted geographical space and little equipment at disposal, Dr. West cannot act freely as he did in the two previous films and thus the film has several drags and several empty passages that dangerously slow down the action; not to mention then the poverty and ugliness of the sets. The cast, with the exception of the always excellent Jeffrey Combs as Herbert West, is not the best and to the already mentioned Jason Barry are added a series of mediocre actors who bring to life too stereotyped characters. There is the sadistic and malicious prison director, played by Simon Andreu (Occhi di cristallo), the beautiful journalist who falls in love with the little doctor, played by Elsa Pataky (I delitti della luna piena), and a series of inmates ranging from the religious guy to the one who has made a friend a mouse. The real strong point of "Beyond Re-Animator" are the excellent artisanal special effects created by Yuzna's faithful collaborator, Screaming Mad George (his are the horrible melting men of "Society" and the make-up effects of "Nightmare 3 and 4") that bring to life human torsos, explosions of guts and even the fun scene where a mouse fights with a reanimated severed human penis! With "Beyond Re-Animator" Yuzna signs the most successful of his films in at least ten years, but at the same time also the weakest of the episodes dedicated to the saga of Dr. West. Must-see only for fans of the saga, others can do without it. Rounded down rating.