Editor’s Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on January 6, 2004, and we’re proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
It’s one of those horrifically awkward moments that you just know will happen someday if you do enough interviews in public places. The setting is a fine seafood restaurant in Philadelphia, where star Jeffrey Combs, director Brian Yuzna and a Lions Gate publicist are sitting down to talk Beyond Re-Animator, which is making its U.S. premiere at the Philadelphia Film Festival. But before the interview proper begins, the group is chatting about assorted other movies, and the talk turns toward the sequel trend. The waiter serving the group, who has shown no reluctance to involve himself in the conversations whenever he has come to the table, opines that sequels are always lousy—but then, most of the originals don’t seem to have found favor with him either.
No matter what examples are brought up, the guy accentuates the negative. One film series, of course, is discreetly avoided—but then, with horrible inevitability, the subject of Re-Animator ultimately comes up. “The second one, that’s the one that starts with the war, right? I didn’t like that one. And the first one sucked.”
Oh well—you can’t please everybody. The audience for the first showing of Beyond Re-Animator, on the other hand, greeted the film with laughs and screams and hoots of approval, and a closing round of applause for the third in the over-the-top horror franchise (now on video from Lions Gate). Combs is pleased with the response, especially given the amount of time that has elapsed since the previous Bride of Re-Animator—not to mention the original, which is closing in on its 20th anniversary. “It’s been 18 years,” the actor says, and Yuzna adds, “We had to introduce Herbert West again. He had to be introduced to an audience that, perhaps, didn’t know him.”
“Like last night,” Combs continues, “there were two people coming in who were there to see another chapter, but they had two people in tow who were like, ‘What are we seeing?’ So Beyond had to appeal to both. I believe we found our peace when we said, ‘Look, we can’t top the untoppable, so let’s just tell a really good story, create the dynamics that need to be created to allow us to revisit that place, but let’s relax about trying to go beyond where we can’t go.’ I like the title of this movie, because it kind of freed us up. We could do what we wanted.”
Combs believes the new film does go Beyond its predecessor in terms of quality. “With the second one, we got off track; we were off our game,” he says. “But with this one, we’ve gotten back onto it. One of the reasons is that we had a lot of time to think about it—I would argue too much time in some respects—but enough to ferment our ideas and really be clear about what the story was, what the characters were and what we wanted to say.”
As those who have seen the movie know, the characters save Combs’ obsessive Herbert West are all new, as is the setting, a prison where the incarcerated doctor is still seeking the secrets of life and death. Yuzna was initially concerned about the confined environment (“We worried a lot about how much West could be West behind bars. You know, how much does he lose?”), but Combs had no such apprehension. “Actually, that’s what I was really relishing,” he admits. “I was looking forward to it. It was that challenge of West being West with all of these restrictions. In the original script, you saw him right away, and I said to Brian, ‘Let’s hold off on showing him. Let’s show what some hands are doing, and an experiment is going on, but we haven’t seen yet who it is. And that way, we build up sort of an anticipation of West making his appearance, whether you know him or not. It piques your interest.”
The good doctor does first appear at the end of Beyond’s first scene, sitting in the back of a police car following a rampage by one of his reanimated creations. “That was a tricky thing for me,” Yuzna says, “if the audience doesn’t know the [previous] movie.” Combs adds, “You go, ‘Who is that guy?’ if you’ve never seen him. But if you step back—if the audience doesn’t know—they go, ‘Well, I guess that’s the guy who’s responsible for this. And he dropped a needle…’ That’s all they really need to know to be introduced to him. Actually, the hard part was for me to look like I did 13 years ago!
“Something that occurred to me watching the movie last night—and I wasn’t even really aware of it at the time—was my handling of props,” Combs continues. “West takes things, uses them and discards them a lot. You know, shoves doors open, grabs things and drops them when he doesn’t need them anymore. I woke up this morning thinking about that. It is all about attitude and how you approach and use things. And that’s why it works even behind bars—West can be West anywhere. He is superior, whether he’s in a subservient position or not. If you know you’re better, then it doesn’t matter what your hindrances are. Imagine 13 years of not being able to be your superior self.”
Combs even added certain bits of dialogue that help convey his character, most significantly one which reveals that the prison’s sinister Warden Brando (Simón Andreu) had kept West in solitary confinement for three years. The actor came up with the line on set, “because I thought that the warden needed to be my nemesis, but there was nowhere in the script where it was implied, or conveyed distinctly, what our backstory was. And I wanted to put something in there where we had had some sort of confrontation in the past.”
“We always thought, ‘How could West be in prison without creating some waves?’ ” Yuzna chimes in.
“And not getting into trouble?” Combs continues. “So he did, and went into solitary for three years. Did it change him or alter him? Absolutely not! [He tells Brando] it was some of his best work, and he thanks him for it!”
Sometimes, on the other hand, dialogue isn’t even necessary. “A lot of the West character comes out in the performance,” Yuzna says. “That’s really tricky, because when you’re writing the script, you tend to put in a lot of obvious stuff, and then Jeff gets in there and your realize, no…”
“With a look, I can say…” Combs picks up.
“ ‘I didn’t do it!’ ” Yuzna finishes the thought.
Speaking of things they didn’t do, Combs and Yuzna reveal that an abandoned concept for Beyond gave West a very specific reason for being in jail, one that involved the return of Dan Cain (played by Bruce Abbott in the previous two films). “The story basically started with Herbert West being sentenced to prison, and Dan has turned state’s evidence,” Combs explains. “And therefore, he gets the serum and the notes—that’s his deal. So I go to prison and he goes off to great success as a preeminent transplant surgeon. But that only lasts 10 years or so, and then he runs out of the serum, and he doesn’t know how to make any more. So he conspires to get me out of jail, and then the story had this political thing going on.”
“The woman who was the assistant DA who made the deal with Dan is running for election,” Yuzna picks up the tale. “She has a lover who was killed, so the idea is to bring the girl back, ’cause if she’s reanimated, she’ll go and finger who killed her. And I think in that one, you actually kill Dan.”
“Yeah, and then I put the [consciousness] of the killer—the bad guy—into Dan!” Combs concludes.
Yuzna still enjoys the idea of bringing Dan back, and even considered trying to get the rights to recreate the late actor David Gale (as original villain Dr. Hill) with digital technology—“You know, really reanimate an actor!” Both he and Combs, however, are hesitant to leap into another sequel before the time and inspiration are right. “Talking about a fourth one right now,” Combs says, “is like, ‘Oh my God! Don’t you need the space and time for everything to coalesce and settle?’ It’s not like we have an outline lying in a drawer somewhere. It’s a daunting prospect, ’cause I would hate for it to fall off, you know what I mean?” No doubt a certain waiter would agree…
