Re-Animator: Why more films like this should be made

It's a bit embarrassing to admit that I just saw Re-Animator (1985) for the first time last Saturday. 


One of the most popular and must-see cult classics of all time. It's up there with The Evil Dead, The Return Of The Living Dead, and Braindead (Dead Alive) in the honors section of this type of genre. That small group of films that exploit all fear of cadavers and turning that fear and trepidation into a potent mixture of schlock, gore, and black humor not commonly seen in more mainstream Hollywood drivel these days.

Prior to seeing it I have already seen and are familiar with most of director Stuart Gordon's movies. Mostly adaptations of HP Lovecraft's shorts, that were given unique film treatments. Gordon has a knack for transforming Lovecraft's stories---difficult reads I must admit; given to long, drawling narratives that rely all-too heavily on the reader's own imagination---into compelling films that have so much visual impact that it lingers with you even after a while when you first watched it. 


The first film I saw was his 1987 adaptation of From Beyond, Lovecraft's take on stimulating the pineal gland via a machine called a resonator, which enables people to see otherworldy creatures existing in another plane of existence or dimension not readily visible to man's average senses. That was also the first film I saw frequent Gordon collaborator Jeffrey Combs, who played the tragic protagonist Dr. Crawford Tillinghast who eventually had his pineal gland pop out of his head like a gross, bloody insect antennae with a mind of its own due to the constant stimulation and exposure to the machine.


For an 80s horror film, it stood out from the rest that jumped in on the whole slasher craze that swept the horror genre. It's Lovecraft, for one. The late author's fascination with interdimensional existence, beings, as well as the Elder Gods and the notorious Old Ones gave rise to the Chtlulhu Mythos that no more than a few members of the society actually believe to be true. Add in Gordon's natural talent in conjuring celluloid shock material that include morbid sexual fetishes, gore, and humorous/shocking ways of watching people get killed. That was put into good use again with the lesser-known but equally disturbing Dagon (2001), this one an adaptation of the author's Shadow Over Innsmouth---about a race of hybrid human/aquatic creatures that worship one of the notorious deities allied with Chtlulhu that resides in the black abyss of the sea.


But among all of Gordon's outputs, Re-Animator has got to be the most widely known and, to some of the squeamish members of the society, reviled. It's the kind of R-18 film where even adults are driven to nail-biting discomfort, specially when that famous cadaver with the severed head decided to molest a woman in some of the sickest ways a celluloid zombie could ever think of.


It starts off with the introduction of Herbert West (Combs), a medical student kicked out of a European school for his radical theories on brain death and re-animating dead tissue via his special re-agent formula he discovered with a deceased mentor. he transfers to the fictional Miskatonic University Medical School where he met and befriended the other half of the film's two protagonists, student Dan Cain (Dark Justice's Bruce Abbot).

Jeffrey Combs as the notorious Herbert West, re-animator

What follows is the standard partnership between the brilliant, but weird partner and the other grounded, mediocre, and more socially popular one. It was only a matter of time when both people's experiments on re-animating cadavers goes out of hand (like what happens to all horror movies that involve 'experiments') and the fun really goes into overdrive. 


For one thing this is not the typical zombies the George Romero school of zombie-making has taught us. And that's how I view and expect to see how reanimated corpses would behave. Gordon's corpses are different in a way that they are also deadly homicidal monsters but not with the same motivations as standard zombies (sorry, living dead) usually do. The Walking Dead, this isn't.


But for all its gore and ample shocking footage of violence, the most surprising aspect of the film is its ability to make you laugh and cringe at the same time. Mostly in the space of one frame. One second a character does something totally hilarious like bumping over things while holding his own severed head, and the next moment become an evil diabolical mastermind that rivals all other film villains in existence. Not to mention adding a lecherous side to the heavily-cliched portrayals of the living dead.


It's over the top entertainment, for sure. But it won't reach cult status if it wasn't any good.