Tag Archives: Brian Yuzna

Book Review: Naked Theater & Uncensored Horror

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Naked Theater & Uncensored Horror
Published by FAB Press, 2023. 360 pages
By Stuart Gordon

I’ve been wanting to get to this title ever since it arrived in the mail from FAB Press when it first came out. But like all things in life, something else always came up. Until a few days ago when I decided now was the time. It was a Sunday, and I didn’t have any real plans for the day, so I knew I could at least start it. 3 days later, I finished it.

I’ve known Gordon’s work since his debut film, Re-Animator (1985), hit the theater I worked at when it first opened. All horror fans immediately knew him as “the guy who did Re-Animator” and would watch for his next venture into the film world. The more films Gordon did, the more interviews and articles about him came out, the more we got a hint of his history. I knew very well that he came from theater background, even being here in Chicago for quite some time, but I really had no clue to the extent he had, or the impact that he made.

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DtH Episode 79 -Gordon, Yuzna & Paoli

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Re-Animator (1985), From Beyond (1986), and Dagon (2001)

Bringing the works of Howard Phillips Lovecraft to the screen is not an easy task. Much of the horrors Lovecraft talked about wasn’t described or explained too much, leaving it up to the reader. But when director Stuart Gordon, producer Brian Yuzna, and writer Dennis Paoli got together to adapt Lovecraft’s 1922 story “Herbert West – Re-Animator” for a movie, they changed cinema forever. Not only did they show us more than Lovecraft would ever dream of, they created a perfect blend of outrageous horror, gore, and bizarre imagery that would immediately put them in the horror history books.

The following year, they took another short story, “From Beyond”, first published in 1934, and showed even more strange, bizarre, and gooey things we’d seen before, going beyond then what the short story told us.

Then 15 years later, these three deranged creators returned to Lovecraft to take us to a fishing village filled with very unusual citizens, in 2001’s Dagon.

While Gordon’s filmography might not be filled with classic after classic, when he hit a home run, usually when he’s working with Yuzna and Paoli, they knock the cover off the ball.

Films mentioned in this episode:

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Arrow Re-Animates the Bride

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Bride of Re-Animator - ArrowAs we all know, it is very hard for a sequel to top the original, or even come close. And when you’re talking about the original Re-Animator, it would seem to be an impossible task even to think about. But producer turned director Brian Yuzna did just that with his 1989 film Bride of Re-Animator. And you know what…it’s actually pretty damn entertaining!

Okay, so we all know that it isn’t as good as the first one. Case closed. But as a sequel, filled with some incredible, crazy, and down right jaw-dropping effects, not to mention some humorous and wonderfully dark performances by Jeffrey Combs and the rest of the cast, this is well worth your time. Even on mutliple viewings, this is still a great film.

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Movie Review: Society

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societybluraySociety (1989)
Directed by Brian Yuzna
Starring Billy Warlock, Devin DeVasquez, Evan Richards, Ben Meyerson, David Wiley, Tim Bartell, Charles Lucia, Patrice Jennings, Ben Slack

This strange and simple little tale about paranoia, but told in a way you’ve never seen before. Young Bill Whitney somehow doesn’t feel that he fits in with his rich family, that he doesn’t really belong with the rest of society that his family and their friends are part of. He just can’t place it but just can’t shake that feeling. Plus, the nightmares that he’s having aren’t helping, neither are strange things that he thinks he sees, but just couldn’t be real. But soon Bill finds out just how different he is from these people…or really, just how different they are.

Brian Yuzna, a name very familiar to horror fans, mainly due to him producing Re-Animator (1985), made his directorial debut with this film. It was part of a 2-picture deal that he had made, with the second feature being the sequel Bride of Re-Animator. While Yuzna isn’t a great director, a fact that he’s more than ready to tell you himself, he still can make a decent film. Sometimes they are great, some not so great, but for the most part, they are entertaining. But what he gives us with Society is something that comes from a very dark and twisted mind.

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