35 Years Ago, Jeffrey Combs Was Cemented As The Ultimate Mad Scientist

Whether developing an oxygen-powered, rocket-launching motorbike in Cyclone, building a consciousness-altering machine in From Beyond, or creating a substance that revives the dead in Re-Animator, Jeffrey Combs cornered the mad scientist market in the ‘80s. He then continued to defy the laws of physics, nature, and reality as we know it in his first film of the ‘90s, which first grossed out audiences 35 years ago today.

A scheduling conflict had initially ruled Combs out of Bride of Re-Animator, a follow-up to Re-Animator’s infamously blood-splattered horror-comedy take on Lovecraft. But when the filming of another Stuart Gordon gorefest, The Pit and the Pendulum, hit a stumbling block, the actor was able to reprise his most famous role.

Herbert West was presumed to have been dragged to his demise by sentient intestines in Re-Animator’s gonzo finale, but in one of several retcons, its sequel opens eight months on with the crazed doctor and his assistant Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott) holed up in a Peruvian medical tent during wartime. Saving wounded soldiers isn’t their goal, however. Instead, they’re using all the casualties to perfect their luminous green substance that can bring back the dead.

Although an enemy ambush forces them to flee back home to Massachusetts, West continues to play God in the basement of their shared home, harvesting limbs and organs from the cemetery next door and the morgue of the local hospital where they first ran amok. It’s in the latter where he finds the heart of Cain’s late fiancée, Megan, proving her last-minute zombie transformation in the original didn’t end well. And having also discovered that disparate body parts can be reanimated to create an entirely new Frankenstein’s monster, he realizes he now has the ideal central piece.

West had always been a man far more concerned with experimentation than ethics. Still, in exploiting his partner’s grief with the promise that he can revive the love of his life, Bride of Re-Animator emphasizes how low he’ll stoop. Combs proves just as magnetic when playing the master manipulator as he is the beady-eyed maniac, his disarming “handsome geek” appearance combined with a fearless intensity explaining why his powers of persuasion are so strong.

Of course, director Bryan Yuzna – who’d just helmed another squeamish body horror, Society – still gives Combs plenty of chances to go unhinged. West racks up his body count by murdering (and then reanimating) inquisitive cop Chapham (Claude Earl Jones) in a bid to cover his tracks, hacks the head off a patient practically the moment she dies, and, in a development which will horrify animal lovers, combines a revived dog with the human arm it was beaten dead with.

He’s also much more power-hungry. “They’re all equal now, nothing but cast-off remnants of meaningless existence,” comes just one megalomaniacal declaration after showing off his bastardization. “I created what no man's mind nor woman's womb could ever hope to achieve,” is another. Forget that the Bride (Kathleen Kinmont), despite the film’s title, is only briefly shown after more than an hour in. The monster here is West’s ego.

But Combs impressively avoids drifting into mwah-hah-hah villainry, imbuing the character with depth and even garnering a tinge of sympathy. His great intellect clearly masks a limited social understanding: “Your welcome does not extend to this part of the house,” he awkwardly tells Cain’s Italian reporter girlfriend, Francesca (Fabiana Udeni), as she first enters the basement of horrors. As in the original, the lack of a love life, plus his complete disdain for Cain’s, hints at a simmering sexual repression.

Inevitably, all his butchering and stitching proves to be in vain. Distraught that Cain prefers the fully intact Francesca to her hastily assembled frame, the Bride cries out about the futility of her life before literally ripping out her borrowed heart. It’s an emotionally crushing response which, like so many monster mashes, leaves you feeling sorry for the creation and contemptuous of their creator.

West, however, isn’t the only character toying with mankind. Having stumbled across both the magical serum and the disembodied head of Re-Animator’s main villain, Dr. Hill (David Gale), pathologist Dr. Graves (Mel Stewart) is brainwashed into doing some tinkering of his own, most notably attaching bat wings to the former. This culminates in a frenzied climax where Hill sneaks into the lab, summons every zombie to follow suit, and frogmarches our human leads into a crumbling crypt. While Cain and Francesca manage to claw their way to safety, West and all the undead look to be fatally crushed.

But as you probably guessed, the former lives to see another day, namely the 2003 follow-up Beyond Re-Animator, where, despite being imprisoned on behalf of his murderous zombies, he’s still trying to improve his unique form of resuscitation. By this point, Combs had also played similarly crazed brainboxes in the likes of The Guyver and The Attic Expeditions. But Bride of Re-Animator is where his mad scientist genius truly came alive.

Bride of Re-Animator is available to rent or purchase on Fandango at Home.