Curse of the Reanimator is the third and final chapter in Full Moon’s Miskatonic U trilogy. Brilliant college student Crawford Tillinghast (Dane Oliver) makes an uneasy alliance with the evil Dean (Michael Pare) to restart the dangerous Resonator. Complicating matters is a grieving mother (Kate Hodge) who wants to use the machine to revive her dead son, and a sexy lesbian witch (Amanda Jones) that wants to control it and bring about the end of the world. Meanwhile, Herbert West (Josh Cole) continues to attempt to perfect his reanimation serum, with deadly results.
As you could tell by that plot description, Herbert West doesn’t get a lot to do this time out, despite what’s implied by the title. Although the film is much more of a conclusion to Tillinghast’s story arc, it does leave things open-ended for more West adventures down the road, which is a good thing. It does seem like a missed opportunity not to intersect Tillinghast and West’s storylines in a meaningful way, but overall, Curse of the Reanimator remains a decent enough flick. It just doesn’t quite live up to the promise of the first two movies in the series.
Cole is once again the reason to watch it as he injects a shot of adrenaline (in more ways than one) into the film whenever he’s on screen. If Jeffrey Combs refuses to do any more Re-Animator movies, then I’d say Cole is a fine substitute as he is able to breathe new life into the beloved character. He captures Combs’ voice and mannerisms quite well, but still puts his own spin on things, which helps make it feel like a separate entity from the original Re-Animator series. I also liked that they gave him a sex assistant (Christina Braa) this time out. Too bad they don’t get an opportunity to flesh out their relationship more. Hopefully, they’ll reunite somewhere down the road for future installments.
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