Rating: NR
Genre:
Horror
Theatrical Release: 10/24/1986(USA)
Release Date: 09/11/2007
SubTitles: English/French/Espanol
Dubbed: English
Sound: DD4.0
Run Time: 86 Minutes
Flags: Brief Nudity, Nudity, Adult Situations, Not For Children, Adult Language, Gore
Distributor/Studio: MGM
The production team responsible for the twisted cult classic
Re-Animator -- including director
Stuart Gordon and producer
Brian Yuzna -- returned the following year with this equally depraved (perhaps more so) follow-up, based once again (and very loosely) on the pulp-
horror fiction of
H.P. Lovecraft. Also returning to the fray is
Jeffrey Combs, here playing the mild-mannered
Crawford Tillinghast, apprentice to the dangerously obsessed
Dr. Pretorious (
Ted Sorel) and co-inventor of an enigmatic and ominous-looking device known as "The Resonator" -- a machine designed to stimulate the vestigial sensory apparatus contained within the human pineal gland. Such stimulation allows participants to "see" the slimy creatures which occupy a dimension parallel to our own, but with some chilling side effects -- the first of which being that the interdimensional vision works both ways. When a powerful sentient force devours
Pretorious and assumes his consciousness,
Tillinghast panics and destroys the Resonator -- soon to find himself in a padded cell, accused of his mentor's murder. Called to the case are
Dr. McMichaels (
Barbara Crampton, another
Re-Animator alum) and amiable cop
Bubba Brownlee (
Dawn of the Dead's
Ken Foree), who escort
Tillinghast back to the shattered laboratory in an attempt to corroborate his deranged account by re-creating the experiment. Their attempts are all too successful, and the
Pretorious-thing emerges to take control of the reactivated Resonator and draw the others into its hideous realm. Also called forth are the participants' darkest sexual desires -- another interesting by-product of pineal stimulation -- and, in
Tillinghast's case, an uncontrollable urge to devour human brains. Just when it seems it can't get any weirder...it does.
Gordon explores this demented scenario with relish, allowing nearly every scene to go completely over the top into surreal mayhem while retaining the dark brooding sense of menace characteristic of
Lovecraft's work. (It's not likely, however, that the author's dignified upbringing would have explored the psychosexual dimensions of the premise -- at least not in the kind of detail seen here.) All manners of perversities abound, accompanied by the wizardry of four dueling special-effects studios and the rich, creepy score by
Richard H. Band, bringing the film to a literally explosive climax and a chillingly poetic final shot.
~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide
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