Brian Yuzna
Brian Yuzna produced before he directed, and the production credits alone would justify the name: he put together Stuart Gordon's Re-Animator in 1985 and From Beyond the year after, which is as strong a two film start as the decade offered anyone working in horror.
His own debut as director, Society (1989), is the one that matters. A Beverly Hills teenager suspects that his family and their friends belong to something he has been excluded from, and the film spends most of its running time as a stilted paranoid drama before a final act that delivers one of the most extreme practical effects sequences ever attempted in a mainstream horror picture. The class satire is not subtle. The effects are the argument.
After that he settled into the sequel and franchise trade, running the Re-Animator series himself through Bride of Re-Animator and Beyond Re-Animator, taking over The Dentist for its second instalment, directing Return of the Living Dead III, and later making Faust: Love of the Damned and Beneath Still Waters. The quality is uneven, sometimes badly so. Return of the Living Dead III is the exception that should have changed his reputation: a strange, sad film about a boy, a girl and a military chemical, and much more controlled than its place as a third sequel suggests.
He also cameos in his own productions, as a cabbie in Necronomicon and an attendant in The Dentist.
Movies (15)
- The Dentist 2 (1998)
- Return of the Living Dead III (1993)
- Society (1989)
- The Dentist (1996)
- The Dentist (1996)
- Necronomicon (1993)
- Necronomicon (1993)
- Bride of Re-Animator (1990)
- Beyond Re-Animator (2003)
- Beneath Still Waters (2005)
- Faust: Love of the Damned (2000)
- Initiation: Silent Night, Deadly Night 4 (1990)
- 60 Seconds of Solitude in Year Zero (2011)
- Progeny (1998)
- Nightmares in Red, White and Blue (2009)
Where to start with Brian Yuzna
Society is the starting point and there is not much argument about it. The climax is why the film has the reputation it has, and it is best met with nobody having described it to you first.
Then Return of the Living Dead III, which is his most disciplined piece of direction and considerably sadder than a zombie sequel has any obligation to be. Bride of Re-Animator is the natural next step if Gordon's original worked on you, more gleeful and far less controlled, and Beyond Re-Animator closes out the trilogy on diminishing returns.
For the odds and ends: The Dentist is the Gordon film he produced and appears in, Necronomicon is the Lovecraft anthology with his cameo, and Faust: Love of the Damned is the comic book adaptation for anyone curious how far the excess goes.