Ré-Animateur

While many horror movies have strong doses of humour in them (from 'Bride Of Frankenstein' to 'Dawn Of The Dead', 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' to 'From Dusk Til Dawn'), there's very few actual horror-comedies I enjoy. 'Motel Hell' is one exception, Frank Henenlotter's movies, especially 'Frankenhooker' are others, but to my mind Stuart Gordon's 'Re-Animator' is by far the most original and entertaining one ever made in my opinion. This movie put Gordon on the map and also made Jeffrey Combs into a worldwide cult figure. Combs is absolutely brilliant as Herbert West, one of the most memorable mad scientists in horror history, and the rest of the supporting cast - Bruce Abbott, David Gale, and the lovely Barbara Crampton - are all excellent. Gordon uses H.P. Lovecraft's West stories as a jumping off point for some grotesque and genuinely funny moments that once seen are never forgotten, particularly THAT scene between Crampton and Gale, which is now the stuff of legend, though beware it is cut from some versions of the movie. Make sure you see the uncut version of 'Re-Animator' whatever you do! Gordon went on to make some other Lovecraft adaptations, some good, some not so good, but 'Re-Animator' was the first and is still in my opinion the best. Highly recommended fun which gets better and better as the years go by! This movie is an unquestionable horror classic!

This movie is certainly not for everybody, but it sure is one of the better mad scientists films around. Stuart Gordon injects black comedy with over the top gore and he gets a modern horror classic. Jeffrey Combs is outstanding as Dr. Herbert West, and there are scenes that you will never forget in this one. One of my personal favorite horror films.

Most of the cheap or not so cheaply made horror films these days are nothing more than a tedious exercise in how to bump off as many teenagers in as many different ways as one can imagine in ninety minutes or less. One need only watch recent films such as Wrong Turn or the remake of Texas Chainsaw Massacre to realize how far the horror genre has fallen. Once John Carpenter made the first Halloween film, we have been subject to an endless series of copy cat films whose only purpose seems to be finding an imaginative way to slice and dice the local teenage population. All of the Freddies, Jasons, and Michael Myers films combined don't come close to having an ounce of the entertainment and imagination of Producer Brian Yuzna and Director and Writer Stuart Gordon's Re-animator.

Professor Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs) is a scientist who has discovered a formula which brings the dead back to life by reanimating their tissue. After an experiment in Switzerland goes awry, he moves to Miskatonic University to continue his experiments. One thing Professor West isn't and that is modest. He even takes a few moments to ridicule a professor, Dr. Carl Hill (David Gale) when he disagrees with him about when death actually occurs. He eventually rents a room from fellow student Dan Cain (Bruce Abbot). Dan is dating Megan Halsey (Barbara Crampton) who is the daughter of the college dean, Alan Halsey (Robert Sampson). What Dan doesn't know is that the aforementioned Dr. Hill has a perverted eye on Megan also. We know this because of the sleazy stares Dr. Hill eyeballs her with when ever she's around. Think of Megan as being an overage Lolita and Dr. Hill as Humbert Humbert and you've got the idea. All of this is not window dressing as it would be in some other films. It all comes into play very nicely. It goes without saying that sooner or later, Dr. West will be making good use of his reanimation formula, in ways only those with the most grotesque sense of humor can imagine. To say any more than that would deny you of the true pleasures of this film.

How can a film that is so explicitly graphic and perverted in nature be fun? It's because every person involved in the making of Re-Animator was smart enough not to take it too seriously themselves. Everything in this film is so wildly over the top, that you can't help but chuckle right along with them as they wink their eye at you. There may be certain moments of the film that would normally sicken even the most hardcore horror film fanatic, but since Yuzna and Gordon never once let Re-animator sink into the tedious by the numbers game of other films of these nature, these same scenes become intentionally cartoonish and silly.

But more than anything, this film owes it's life to it's cast. Jeffrey Combs as Herbert West should serve as the model for anyone wanting to make a film involving a mad or semi-mad scientist. Given this kind of role, there is many an actor who would have been tempted to ham it up and alas in many horror films they do just that. However, when Combs seems to imply that he is the smartest man on the planet and the rest of us are Neanderthal, we don't hate him for this implication at all. He is so good at making us believe he is the smartest man since Einstein and we are all nothing but Cro-magnon man by comparison that we love him for it just the same. He may be crazy, but he's a fun kind of crazy.

David Gale as the smarmy Dr. Hill, is a joy to watch also. He has some of the most ridiculous scenes in the film yet somehow manages to keep a straight face through it all. He gives new life to the old saying about not losing your head over a piece of tail.

Bruce Abbot as Dan Cain is the perfect contrast for West. He is a straight arrow, is madly in love with Megan, yet somehow lets himself become involved in West's experiments. Abbot also is smart enough to know that the center of this film is West, and never once overplays his role to try and overshadow him. As for Barbara Crampton, she should have won some kind of award, just for the abuse the producers put her through as Megan. Is there an award for most abuse of a female by the walking dead?

Re-animator was made on a budget of less than a million dollars which is truly remarkable. There isn't a film budget in the world though that can replace the imagination and daring rampant through out Re-Animator. And when a horror film is that well done, and is something all the Freddies, and Jasons, And Michael Myers can only dream about, I have no choice but to give it my grade which for Re-Animator is an A.

When i first saw re-animator in 85, i was aghast and appalled. i just didn't get it. i was a classic horror fan; so when i heard the obvious rip from psycho's theme, it irritated me even more.

well, now i'm an older, wiser horror fan. i just saw it again for the first time since 85 and i laughed my bum off! homage, homage, homage! honouring everything from hitchcock to raimi, from day of the dead to frankenstein. this in-your-face send off is a great double feature with dead alive. jeffery combs' over the top performance is reminiscent of colin clive and cronenberg found his very own ash in bruce abbott. so sit back, relax (as much as you can...) and enjoy re-animator.

Considering the 70's was a decade of monumental proportions as far as films went, it was a shame the 80's had to produce such dreck, especially where horror films are concerned. In the 70's we had "The Exorcist", "Halloween", "Texas Chainsaw Massacre", "Phantasm"-just to name a few. The 80's did produce a small but stellar group of classics, however, including "Evil Dead" 1 & 2, "A Nightmare On Elm Street", "An American Werewolf In London" and, of course, "Re-Animator". Like "Werewolf" and the "Evil Dead" films, part of "Re-Animator"'s success and notoriety is the film's deliciously sinister blend of horror and humor. Wait let me correct that-perverse horror and sick humor. In accordance with the decade that birthed it, this film is typically over the top and totally gratuitous, pulling out all the stops at every turn. Jeffrey Combs heads a great cast as Herbert West, a strange and eccentric but brilliant young doctor/scientist who has perfected a syrum that can reanimate the dead. Circumstances get out of hand when a medical student and his fiance (Bruce Abbott & Barbara Crampton) get involved in West's work and a plagarist rival doctor (David Gale) plots to steal his idea. Horror and hilarity ensue from there on, thanks to imaginitive visual effects coupled with clever dialogue. For nitpickers like myself there are a few minor inconsistencies in the screenplay, but it does very little to hinder the film. Ironically, several scenes that wound up on the cutting room floor (included on the dvd) would have fleshed out those minor story flaws, but they were excised-and probably rightly so-in the name of pacing. Besides, any flaws in writing are easily forgotten about thanks to the terrific performances. Here is a cast that really brought the characters "to life" so to speak; Combs as the nerdy scientist and Gale's lecherous Dr. Hill are both standouts. And Stuart Gordon's strong direction holds the whole thing together even when the film threatens to be crushed by it's own outlandishness. For those interested, check out the sequel "Bride of Re-Animator" that followed 4 years later. It doesn't hold a candle to this one, but it's plenty of fun in it's own right.