Jeffrey Combs

  • Necronomicon (1993)

    Necronomicon (1993)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, June 2021) Horror anthology films are a roll of the dice every time — not only are the films themselves a gamble, but so are their individual segments as well. Necronomicon has the distinction of focusing on adaptations of Lovecraft’s short stories, but that’s about all that the segments have in common. The framing device has Jeffrey Combs playing Lovecraft as he reads the Book of the Dead in an evil library — not a bad concept, but clearly not the meat of the film either. The rest is uneven. The first segment, “The Drowned,” has some marine chills and an authentic Lovecraftian monster as an antagonist. Follow-up “The Cold” is a more domestic piece that gets away from classic Lovecraftian mythos to deliver an ill-fated romance between a male prey and a female monster (although it does feature David Warner). Final segment “Whispers” is thankfully crazier, going back and forth between reality and fantasy and climaxing with an insane kind of revelation that’s both fun and makes the segment rather pointless. Behind the scenes, there are some impressive names in the crew, from Brian Yuzna to Tom Savini to Christophe Gans. But the result doesn’t quite match the intent — Necronomicon is watchable without being memorable, and there’s a feeling that the tight budget may have limited some ambitions. It’s likely that a modern attempt at the same would be closer to its intentions due to digital special effects technology. More substantially, there’s something regrettable in seeing that the “Lovecraftian” horrors conjured here are about the flash of gooey creatures more than the headier cosmic horror often found in the author’s work. But that’s evaluating Necronomicon based on later, loftier standards — it does remain a decent piece of 1990s horror, and one thankfully focused on supernatural creatures rather than psycho slashers.

  • Castle Freak (1995)

    Castle Freak (1995)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, April 2021) The story behind Castle Freak is unlikely enough to be amazing: When cult-horror director Stuart (Reanimator) Gordon noticed a “Castle Freak” poster (for an unproduced film) in shlockmaster Charles Band’s office, he quickly negotiated a half-million-dollar budget and an agreement that the final result would contain both a castle and a freak. In return, he got what many filmmakers would kill for: complete creative control within those constraints. The result is, well, low-budget but not completely awful: As an American family moves to a castle they just inherited, they certainly don’t expect the murderous creature lurking in the dungeons. There are added layers of psychological and genealogical complexity in the final script, and while the result doesn’t fly particularly high, it is interesting more in a Stuart Gordon way than a Charles Band way. There’s clearly something there trying to escape the confines of its budget. Gordon stalwart Jeffrey Combs plays the male lead role, perhaps courting cult approval more than the film actually deserves. Castle Freak does have its share of obvious problems, including a far too gory scene that should have been toned down to fit with the rest of the film. There are lulls, needless complications, and a premise that arguably runs out of gas well before the film’s 95 minutes are up. Still, it’s not quite as bad as feared, largely due to Gordon’s attitude at managing even a micro-budget. Fun fact: the castle in which the film was shot was actually owned by Band himself. No, I don’t know how a low-budget horror producer can afford a castle. I suspect that’s another amazing story by itself.

  • Beyond Re-Animator (2003)

    Beyond Re-Animator (2003)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (French, On Cable TV, January 2021) While I watch a lot of horror movies (I’d wager that in a given year, I see more horror movies than the total number of movies watched by casual cinephiles!), I’m not entirely eager to call myself a fan of the genre: Putting aside the formulaic and nihilistic nature of most horror films, much of the genre seems to attract a strange blend of fans—having attended a number of World Horror Conventions in my fannish heydays, I’m familiar with the gore-loving rough black comedic attitude of many aficionados, and I’m not nearly as attracted to that than by the thematic possibilities of the genre once it moves beyond just being about the monsters it portrays. But if you’re familiar with that tone, there are a bunch of horror movies out there that seek membership in a very specific semi-comic genre—not quite soul-suckingly bleak as other horror films, clearly more playful than straight-up monster slashers, and specifically talking to like-minded fans. This unforgivably meandering introduction is meant to place Beyond Re-Animator in its proper place—as a semi-comic, semi-gory, semi-ironic paean to the genre itself, riffing off the strengths of its previous instalments (mostly Reanimator—there’s not much here reminiscent of Bride of Re-Animator) in order to deliver more of the same. The plot has to do with a young doctor seeking the tutelage of Dr. Herbert West, now imprisoned after the events of the previous films. Thanks to new plotting devices, West is now able to reanimate dead bodies more efficiently, and the film plays out in a prison where death is frequent but not permanent. Beyond Re-Animator integrates lovingly crafted gory practical effects with a dollop of CGI to expand the cinematography of its predecessors, but otherwise doesn’t improve much on them. The humour is muted compared to the first instalment, and while the plot is slightly more interesting than Bride of Re-Animator, it doesn’t fly all that much higher. Still, the point here is for horror filmmakers like Brian Yuzna to deliver what horror filmgoers expect—Jeffrey Combs is easily the film’s main draw as the deranged Dr. West. Overall, though, it’s a somewhat average entry in its subgenre—a treat if you’re tracking down the Re-Animator films, but not something that will convert you to the subgenre if you happen to stumble on it without sympathy for what it’s trying to do. That’s fine—fannish audiences grow through stellar examples of the genre, but are sustained by average entries until the next big hit.

  • Bride of Re-Animator (1990)

    Bride of Re-Animator (1990)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, October 2020) While Bride of Re-Animator does build up to a suitably high-energy finale, it does take a lot of time to get to the Bride of Frankenstein reprise: Much of the film is spent getting the pieces in the correct order, even flying off the face of the logic established by the first film or its aftermath. Held together once again by the over-the-top performance of Jeffrey Combs as mad scientist Herbert West, Bride of Re-Animator does idle a lot of the time, only going for broke in its last half-hour with gory effects, grotesque creatures and a heart-ripping finale. It’s certainly a letdown from the first film, even if it clearly plays in the same playground with a bit more technical polish. The not-that-serious tone does help a lot in not entirely dismissing the result—if you’re even remotely interested in comic(ish) gory horror, Bride of Re-Animator is going to be good enough even though it’s clearly a second-tier effort despite some late-film energy.

  • From Beyond (1986)

    From Beyond (1986)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2020) I should like—no, I should love From Beyond. In theory, it’s everything I like best about 1980s horror films—off-the-wall premise, Lovecraftian plot elements, wild use of practical effects and makeup, go-for-broke weirdness, over-the-top melodrama, nudity, a sense of fun bigger than the gore, Stuart Gordon directing, Brian Yuzna writing, Jeffrey Combs starring, multidimensional terror and body horror packaged as one, some comedy, some science fiction. If I had to put together my ideal fictional 1980s horror film, it would look a lot like From Beyond. And yet, the result just isn’t where it should be. The pacing is off, the horror seems almost too restrained, and it doesn’t quite seem funny enough for the material. I mean—I still enjoyed From Beyond (it does get admirably gloopy toward the end, not bloody), it’s just that it didn’t feel as if it made the most out of its ambitions. Still, it’s rather over-the-top fun if that’s your thing—and it is my thing.

    (Second Viewing, In French, On Cable TV, February 2021) It hasn’t been that long since I first saw From Beyond, but my willingness to see it a second time has as much to do with it being caught on my DVR as it has with an underappreciated facet of 1980s horror films. The more I watch some of the wilder horror films of the decade, the more I’m struck by how, even limited by practical effects, those movies weren’t afraid to go for pure inspired madness. In From Beyond, we have a wild concoction of body horror, science-fictional nonsense, slimy gloopy creatures, nudity, gore, mutated horrors, dark comedy and explosions and I have to wonder — Have I been watching the wrong movies, or has this streak of utter madness disappeared from the current horror corpus? Why aren’t we using CGI to have some more of that fun? I’m not generally an advocate for gore, but gore is the least of what made films such as From Beyond (or Reanimator, or Evil Dead, or Braindead, or…) — it’s rather the goofy sense of fun with horror/SF tropes, the generous heaping of nudity and humour, the demented scientists and likable protagonists. I feel as if the latest crop of horror films is either far too serious for its own good, unadventurous in its use of special effects despite near-infinite capabilities, and just plain boring in how it simply goes back to the same sources of inspiration. Maybe those films exist and they’ll re-emerge as cult classics in a few years. But there’s a reason why From Beyond and its close equivalents have aged so well for horror fans: in many ways, they’re simply not making them like that any more.

  • Howard Lovecraft and the Kingdom of Madness (2018)

    Howard Lovecraft and the Kingdom of Madness (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2020) It’s weird enough that there would be one animated kid’s movie featuring a boy H. P. Lovecraft and his pet Cthulhu as a sidekick, let alone three. Howard Lovecraft and the Kingdom of Madness further delves into Lovecraftian lore by featuring an “uncle” who looks a lot like the adult Lovecraft, and his pet “Spot” being explicitly renamed Cthulhu as the main antagonist. A character is named Jeffrey West, another is voiced by Jeffrey Combs, and the film eventually leads us to Antarctica’s mountains of madness. Even as a third entry in the series, Kingdom of Madness is visibly a very low-budget film, although some of the voice talent (Hamil, Plummer, Wolfhard) is well known. Other annoyances from the previous films persist: the eye-shadow-heavy character design is still grotesque, but why change now? More serious is a lack of harmony between the grotesquerie and the cuteness I would expect from a kid’s movie—the visual design does not reach a pleasant middle ground, and that certainly limits the visual appeal of the result. On the other hand, some things are better this time around: The all-star reunion of Lovecraft’s characters (including Armitage) clearly underscores the grander nature of this trilogy-capping instalment, while a lot of nightmarish imagery, world-ending prophecies and characters getting slapped to the ground seem unusually intense for a kid’s film. Kingdom of Madness is also more engaging than previous instalments in that the plot is more interesting, and it allows young Lovecraft to confront himself and become somewhat less glum in the process. Still, this does feel like a series of films with a fuzzy audience: is it meant as an ironic romp for Lovecraft-loving hipsters? Is it for Lovecraft-loving parents to show their kids? Is it even for kids?

  • Re-Animator (1985)

    Re-Animator (1985)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, December 2018) There’s a self-acknowledged B-movie quality to Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator that makes the movie about ten times as much fun than if it had tried to play things dramatically. Working from an H. P. Lovecraft premise, this is a film that has fun with the idea of hideous resurrection, clearly made in the same horror/comedy vein as Evil Dead 2. That doesn’t mean it’s an easy watch for those who aren’t used to the gore or the casual disregard from decency—Re-Animator is clearly destined to a specific hardened public. In between the gallons of blood, practical makeup effects and unbridled imagination, the hospital sequence that makes up most of the third act is wild enough. Jeffrey Combs has some fun as the lead actor playing the epitome of a mad scientist, and this carries through to the entire production. There are a lot of wannabe horror/humour hybrids, but few of them manage the magic combination of elements that Re-Animator stitches and cobbles together. This being said, it’s worth reiterating that this is not for everyone—it’s best watched by seasoned horror fans who have developed the macabre sense of humour that the film is going for.