One of the rare successful blending of humor and horror, Stuart Gordon's
Re-Animator (1985) gave genre fans a much needed dose of originality in
the decade of nonstop slasher films. Re-Animator emerged with likable,
original characters - a clever screenplay (based on a H.P. Lovecraft work),
crunchy bizarre gore, and one of the most perverse scenes in the history
of film.
Re-Animator concerns a medical student Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs) who is perfecting a serum that brings the dead back to life. He moves
in with fellow medical student Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott) who reluctantly becomes involved with West's messy experiments. When his re-animating
serum proves successful, West teacher (Robert Sampson) plots to steal the serum, causing major mayhem.
Re-Animator goes for the juggler from scene one - we know Gordon isn't
fucking around here, ten minutes in we feel confident we're in for a
helluva ride. At a Zurich hospital, police and medical staff burst into
a room where Herbert is watching an esteemed doctor screaming as his
eyes blow out of his head! - all before the opening title kicks in!
Soon West is sticking his needle into dead cats (the cat gets hilariously
tossed against a wall leaving a nugget of brain momentarily stuck to
the plaster), recently diseased cadavers (a huge naked man that bites
off fingers and bashes heads before getting his chest drilled in), and
into the Dean of his school!
Herbert West's nemeses, the doctor teaching his classes, is played to
the hilt by Robert Sampson in a legendary performance. The Doc leers
at Dan Cain's (and the Dean's) sexy daughter (played by the extremely
cute and likable Barbara Crampton), tells off color jokes during autopsies
(as he peels away the skin from a head - "It's very much like peeling
a large orange"), is pompous as hell, and dangerously jealous of West's
superior mind. When he gets his head lopped off by a shovel and re-animated
the first thing that comes to his mind is eating out Cain's girlfriend!
The first time viewing the severed head sex scene in Re-Animator you
can't believe it's actually going to get that damn perverted. The Doctor
has the lobotomized Dean kidnap his own daughter and bring her to the
hospitals mortuary. As Sampson's head is sitting in a pan of blood,
the Dean begins ripping off her clothes. When Sampson's body lifts up
his head you're thinking - here comes the cut! But no way, not my man
Gordon. Sampson's severed head licks Crampton's face and body positioning
itself between her legs going in for the kill! How they were able to
talk the young Crampton into shooting this scene is beyond me. Amazing
stuff.
Other Re-Animator highlights include the hilarious scene where West
sticks the Doctor's severed head on a paper spike to steady it - a crew
of re-animated zombies pulling the Dean's body apart in a million directions
- the Doctor's body stumbling around while his head frustratingly rolls
his eyes ten feet away - and the ludicrous finale where re-animated
intestines attack West.
Jeffrey Combs is brilliant as Herbert West - he's a slimy, unethical
madman - but you can't help cheering for him to succeed. You actually
root for West to kill the Doctor when he begins his blackmailing scheme.
Combs would become typecast in numerous films playing basically the
same character (but hell, he's a shitload of fun to watch). Barbara
Crampton, a Debased favorite, is cute-as-a-button and luscious as hell
in this film. Add a brilliant score by Richard Band and you have one
of the most satisfying films of the 80's.
