"And god created woman."
— Dr. Herbert West
The 1989 sequel to Re-Animator directed by Brian Yuzna, which also has Jeffrey Combs, Bruce Abbott and David Gale reprising their roles.
Eight months have passed since the events of the first film, and Herbert West and Dan Cain, now both doctors, continue experimenting with the Re-Agent formula to perfect bringing the dead back to life. Dan, growing uncomfortable with Herbert's experiments, decides that he will move out of the house that he and Herbert share. To convince him to stay, Herbert takes the heart of Dan's deceased girlfriend Meg and offers to create a body for it. Subplots include the return of Dr. Hill and a detective investigating the massacre at the end of the first movie.
Bride has examples of:
- Ancient Tomb: Herbert and Dan's basement shares a wall with an old cemetery.
- And Show It to You: When feeling rejected by Dan, The Bride rips out her heart to show it to him, followed by total disablement of her entire body. Dr. West's diagnosis to this: "Tissue rejection".
- Bat Out of Hell: Dr. Graves first tries the reagent on a dead bat, which starts attacking him. Dr. Hill later adopts this by forcing Dr. Graves to graft bat wings on his severed head, allowing him to fly.
- Big Bad: After brought back to life by a curious doctor, Dr. Hill resumes this role again.
- Blasphemous Boast: Dr. West upon getting called blasphemous"Blasphemy? Before what god? A god repulsed by the miserable humanity he created in his own image? I will not be shackled by the failures of your god. The only blasphemy is to wallow in insignificance. I have taken refuse of your god's failures and I have triumphed. There! There is my creation!"
- Bloody Hand Print: Left by one of the surviving reanimated corpses from the first film when it escapes from the mental ward holding it.
- Cat Fight: An unusually bloody one between Francesca and the Bride.
- Creepy Mortician: There’s clearly something off with Dr. Graves, who loves to make morbid, unfunny jokes that have to do with his profession and injects Dr. Hill’s head with Re-Agent despite not knowing what it is for shits and giggles, among other things,
- Deadpan Snarker: West's reaction to Dan flirting with Francesca.Dr. West: Don't let the little head rule the big head, Dan!
- Domestic Abuse: After Chapham confronts West about his experiments, including the reanimating his late wife, West confronts him about the fact how she was beaten to death.
- Dramatic Thunder: Begs for attention during the finale of the film.
- Flying Face: The now-pterocephalic Dr. Hill has reached his ultimate form.
- Funny Background Event: At the end of Bride, West is knocked into the crypt containing many of his rejected experiments. In their midst is a white kitten puppet peeking over a corner.
- Gorn: The Bride's death scene by self-mutilation is one of the most lovingly crafted pieces of special-effects gorn ever filmed.
- A Head at Each End: One of the cobbled-together undead from the sealed tunnel consists of two upper torsos fused at the waist, with a head and arms on each end.
- Hero Antagonist: Subverted by Lt. Leslie Chapham, who is investigating West and Dan because his wife was one of the reanimated. However, this is just a way of covering for the fact he beat her to death.
- In Case You Forgot Who Wrote It: Like the previous film. (H. P. Lovecraft never wrote more than one Herbert West–Reanimator story, but the two movies approximately adapt half of it each.)
- Losing a Shoe in the Struggle: Francesca loses her shoes while fighting zombified Chapham and spends the rest of the movie barefoot.
- Machete Mayhem: West saves Dan from an attacking soldier with a machete during the prologue, and does the same thing again when the freshly reanimated Chapham is attacking Dan.
- Man Bites Man: Dr. Graves tries to shut Dr. Hill up by putting his hand over his mouth, and gets bitten in response.
- Mix-and-Match Man: The Bride is constructed from parts of various dead women in order to recreate Dan's dead love Megan.
- Non-Indicative Name: The Bride is not for Herbert West, the Reanimator, but rather his friend Dan, whose girlfriend died in the last movie.
- Of Corpse He's Alive: Dan and West use this tactic to smuggle a body out of the university's crematorium, wheeling out as if it was someone living.
- Remember the New Guy?: Chapham's wife was amongst the resurrected during the climax of the first film, despite never been seen present.
- Replacement Goldfish: In-Universe, this is the purpose of the Bride, built around the dead Meg's heart. However, on a meta level, it's Francesca who plays the Meg role in the sequel.
- Revenge of the Sequel: Of the "Bride of..." variety.
- Sequel Escalation: Instead of just bringing dead bodies back to life with his reagent formula Dr. West now does more experiments with it, creating several creatures with random body parts put together, which extends to title bride herself.
- Series Continuity Error: West references seeing Dan holding Meg's dead body after failing to reanimate her. A deleted scene shows the actual failed reanimation, as well as West handwaving Hill failing to kill him as "He didn't have the guts."
- A possible explanation to the later exists in a deleted scene of the first movie in which West shows to regularly inject himself with a dilute dose of his Re-Agent which could make him harder to kill in the long run.
- Shout-Out:
- There are several to Bride of Frankenstein; the eponymous bride's jerky movements and scarring mimic those of Elsa Lancaster's bride, the oft-repeated phrase "she's alive" and, of course, the title of the film.
- At one point Dan comments, "sounds like rats in the wall", referencing another H. P. Lovecraft story.
- Shovel Strike: After upsetting Chapham about his abusive tendencies, West attack him with a shovel.
- Truer to the Text: While it's still very much a loose adaptation, there are a few details included that weren't in the first film. Most notably, Dan and Herbert joining a war effort to gather fresh corpses, a hole in the basement wall leading to the cemetery, as well as the climax where West finds a box on his doorstep containing his rival's severed head, and seemingly meets his end at their hands.
- Unexplained Recovery: There's no explanation as to how West survived the end of the last film nor how Dr. Hill's head was restored, seeing as how it lost its eyes before getting crushed and tossed aside at the end of the last film.
- Whatever Happened to the Mouse?: Dr. Graves is never seen again after Dr. Hill and the other Reanimates lock him in a freezer. Also it's never addressed what happened to Hill's body after the end of the last film, last seen attacking Herbert West with its large intestine-turned tentacle caused by an overdose of the reagent.
