{"id":10998,"date":"2025-02-01T20:06:24","date_gmt":"2025-02-02T01:06:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=10998"},"modified":"2025-02-01T20:06:24","modified_gmt":"2025-02-02T01:06:24","slug":"re-animator","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2025\/02\/01\/re-animator\/","title":{"rendered":"Re-Animator"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Re-Animator<\/strong> (1985)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Empire\/Horror-Sci-Fi-Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 86 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Unrated Version (extremely graphic violence and gore, full frontal nudity, sexual content, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Stuart Gordon\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Stuart Gordon, William J. Norris and Dennis Paoli\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Richard Band\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Mac Ahlberg\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: June 1985 (Philadelphia, PA)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Jeffrey Combs, Bruce Abbott, Barbara Crampton, David Gale, Robert Sampson, Gerry Black, Carolyn Purdy-Gordon, Peter Kent, Barbara Pieters, Al Berry.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $1.8M (US)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ****<\/p>\n

\u00a0Don\u2019t just think of Re-Animator<\/strong> as a mere horror movie. Think of it as a blood-drenched comedy of the macabre, one in which a severed head performs oral sex on a screaming naked chick. Based on a novella by H.P. Lovecraft, Re-Animator<\/strong> is one of those movies that people with weak stomachs avoid like a field trip to a slaughterhouse. It\u2019s part slaughterhouse, part funhouse and all great demented fun.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I had the privilege of seeing Re-Animator<\/strong> at the movies in June \u201985. School had just let out for the summer and I wanted to celebrate. I knew I had to see it when I saw it carried a \u201cNo One Under 17 Admitted\u201d policy instead of an MPAA rating. It meant there would be blood, lots and lots of it. For a gorehound like me, that automatically sealed the deal. I wasn\u2019t about to miss this one. Not a chance! That first night of summer vacation is one of the best I ever had. While I can\u2019t say that 86 minutes changed my life, it certainly gave me a cinematic thrill ride I\u2019ll never forget.<\/p>\n

\u00a0As implied by the title, Re-Animator<\/strong> deals with a mad doctor-type who\u2019s found a way to re-animate the dead. After he gets kicked out of a Swiss medical school, Dr. Herbert West (Combs, Frightmare) comes to Miskatonic University (Arkham, MA) to further his studies. He rents a room from fellow med student Dan Cain (Abbott, Bad Dreams) who\u2019s engaged to Megan (Crampton, Fraternity Vacation), the daughter of the school dean, Dr. Halsey (Sampson, City of the Living Dead). West immediately clashes with Dr. Hill (Gale, Savage Weekend), a professor he accuses of plagiarizing his old mentor\u2019s work.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Dan already thinks his new roommate is weird and creepy (so does Megan and everybody else), but doesn\u2019t understand just how weird and creepy until he finds out what West has been up to in the basement. He\u2019s created a serum that, when injected into the brain stem, brings a dead person back to life. Well, almost. They do return to life but in a psychotic, zombie-like state. Still, it\u2019s a start. When Dan tells Halsey about West\u2019s discovery, he doesn\u2019t believe him. In fact, he thinks both men have gone mad. They decide to test the fluorescent green serum on a human subject and that\u2019s when all bloody hell breaks loose.<\/p>\n

\u00a0It\u2019s been 40 years since Re-Animator<\/strong> came out so I guess it isn\u2019t much of a spoiler to tell you that Dr. Hill ends up dead, decapitated by a shovel after trying to blackmail West out of his amazing discovery. It gets even cooler. West injects both the head AND the body with the serum. Hill\u2019s head sits in a tray and talks to West. That is, until his body knocks West out and carries its own head away. It also bears mentioning that Hill has a creepy obsession with Megan which is why he has her brought to the morgue where he strips her naked and sexually abuses her. Yes, the infamous aforementioned oral sex scene. It\u2019s so depraved, it\u2019s hilarious. The gore and makeup effects are amazing, especially when you consider the movie cost only $900,000 to make. The climactic scene in the morgue is a true gory highlight. There\u2019s also a scene early on when West subdues a re-animated corpse by cutting a hole through its body with a bone-saw. The gore level in Re-Animator<\/strong> is extremely high and I love it for that.<\/p>\n

\u00a0As Dr. West, Combs does an outstanding job. It\u2019s the role that made his career. He\u2019s the ideal mad doctor; brilliant, arrogant and creepy. He also has a penchant for one-liners like \u201cWho\u2019s going to believe a talking head?\u201d and \u201cGet a job in a sideshow.\u201d Abbott is pretty good as Dan, the reluctant assistant who wants so badly to save lives as a doctor; he\u2019ll go along with West and his depraved experiments even though they\u2019re illegal and immoral. Crampton is good as Megan who\u2019s horrified by what her beau and his weird new friend are up to. It helps that she\u2019s easy on the eyes and has a nice body. Gale camps it up BIG TIME as Dr. Hill, the real villain of Re-Animator<\/strong>. I always joke that I voted for John Kerry in the 2004 Presidential election because of his resemblance to Hill. Watch this movie and tell me you don\u2019t see it. It\u2019s uncanny (and funny).<\/p>\n

\u00a0Re-Animator<\/strong> is a perfect example of an exploitation movie done right. It\u2019s trash and it knows it. It has fun with the genre without making fun of it. It\u2019s a great debut for director Stuart Gordon who would go on to make From Beyond, Dolls, Robot Jox and Fortress (the one with Christopher Lambert). It was released by Empire Pictures, the studio responsible for wacky low-budget delights like Ghoulies, The Dungeonmaster, Trancers, Troll, Eliminators, TerrorVision, Crawlspace, Rawhead Rex and Dolls. Gordon shoots for over the top and hits the mark dead-on! I wouldn\u2019t say Re-Animator<\/strong> is scary because it never takes itself too seriously. It\u2019s kind of like a Grand Guignol production made and performed by inmates in an insane asylum. It is a truly insane movie that richly deserves its cult status. Of course, I loved it before it was a cult favorite.<\/p>\n

TRIVIA TIDBIT: The name of Dr. West\u2019s mentor at the Swiss med school is named Hans Gruber. Does the name sound familiar? It should. It\u2019s the name of Alan Rickman\u2019s villain in the first Die Hard movie. I got a good laugh out of that when I rewatched it this past week.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Re-Animator (1985)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Empire\/Horror-Sci-Fi-Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 86 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Unrated Version (extremely graphic violence and gore, full frontal nudity, sexual content, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Stuart Gordon\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Stuart Gordon, William J. Norris and Dennis Paoli\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Richard Band\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Mac Ahlberg\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: June 1985 (Philadelphia, PA)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Jeffrey Combs, Bruce Abbott, Barbara Crampton, David Gale, Robert Sampson, Gerry […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11055,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-horror","category-scary-gory-wild-i-love-it"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Re-Animator-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10998"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10998\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11057,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10998\/revisions\/11057"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}