My heart is breaking because Jeffrey Combs just told SciFi Wire that we may be waiting a lot longer for the much-anticipated House of Re-Animator, the fourth in the Re-Animator series, and the second to be directed by its anarchist-comedian mastermind, Stuart Gordon. Apparently its political message, about a zombie Vice-President who runs amok, cuts too close to the bone. Studios are wussing out of doing some gory political satire. According to Combs:

The latest idea is too on the nose, because it's about a vice president who has a heart attack and dies, which is terrible, because he runs the country, and a kind of Karl Rove-ian character brings Herbert to the White House to revive him. All is well for a little while, and then, of course, havoc has its day. A lot of people they took the idea to didn't want to touch it. And, of course, the real power in it would be to get it out before they are out of power.

OK, why the fuck did Uwe goddamn Boll get to direct a gory political satire (the wretched Postal), but Stuart Gordon - who actually has a brain and some writing ability - doesn't? What the hell, people? I think the problem is that Hollywood doesn't want progressive politics in movies to offend the delicate white liberal sensibility. Politics should be sanctimonious, and no bodily fluids should be involved. Somebody like Michael Moore gets to make "funny" political movies because he's actually an irritating dogmatist who is boring to watch, but Gordon - who threatens to entertain us - is being told zombies are just too political for the B-movie crowd.

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