RE-ANIMATOR (1985), aka H.P. LOVECRAFT'S RE-ANIMATOR

Director: Stuart Gordon

Writers: Dennis Paoli, William J. Norris, Stuart Gordon, based on H.P. Lovecraft’s serialized story “Herbert West—Reanimator”

Producer: Brian Yuzna

Cast: Jeffrey Combs, Bruce Abbott, Barbara Crampton, David Gale, Robert Sampson, Carolyn Purdy-Gordon, Peter Kent, Ian Patrick Williams, Al Berry, Gerry Black, Craig Reed, Bunny Summers, Barbara Pieters, Velvet Bebois, Lawrence Lowe, Robert Holcombe, Mike Filloon, Jack Draheim, Robert Pitzele, Annyce Holzman, Derek Pendleton, Gene Scherer, James Ellis, James Earl Cathay, (and uncredited cast) Kim Deitch, Greg Robbins, John Forker 

In Arkham, Massachusetts, Miskatonic Medical School student Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott) accepts newly transferred student Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs) as a roommate in his rented house. The intense West is obsessed with his own medical research and believes that the dead can be restored to life. West has developed a serum to reanimate dead tissue and involves Dan in his increasingly dangerous experiments. 

The Flashback Fanatic movie review 

Chicago, Illinois native Stuart Gordon had a background in theatre. First at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, then back in Chicago with the Organic Theater Company that he founded, Gordon directed and produced controversial and confrontational plays. When he decided to make a film, horror was not only the genre most marketable for beginning filmmakers; it was also the genre that would allow director Gordon to keep pushing boundaries. 

Gordon had first considered making his Lovecraft adaptation a production for the stage, then as a series of episodes for television, and finally as a feature film. Gordon found the perfect ally in producer Brian Yuzna, who was also a fan of horror and the writings of H.P. Lovecraft. Yuzna convinced Gordon to shoot the film in Hollywood and arranged the distribution deal. The initial scripts for the television series proposal were pared down into a concise feature film screenplay with more outrageous ideas added. 

Lovecraft’s writings were usually concept-driven and concerned with creating an atmosphere of awe and dread. Many of his tales dealt with the terror of man’s insignificance in a universe full of other beings and forces beyond our power to understand or control. Lovecraft’s stories did not dwell on their characters’ relationships. The protagonists of Lovecraft’s stories were usually driven only by an obsessive goal or an unearthly influence. Like the film adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories, movies based on Lovecraft’s work usually needed his plots to be elaborated upon with additional characters, if one believes that movie plots should be character driven. 

While Re-Animator is not much more faithful to the prose it is based on than many other Lovecraft adaptations, it seems to have one of the best reputations of all Lovecraft-based films. Lovecraft’s serialized story, “Herbert West—Reanimator,” was written to be published in six parts, each of which needed to have a climax. It was more frantic than some other Lovecraft works, while having a less cosmic and a more grisly spectacle to it. As such, this lesser known Lovecraft yarn lends itself to the excesses of a mid-eighties fright flick. Stuart Gordon’s film takes the basic premise from Lovecraft’s tale and runs wild with it. 

Re-Animator is that exploitation rarity that gives the horror buffs all they are craving while still being surprisingly well received critically. Along with the gore and sex, there is a demented sense of fun to be found in the performances and the escalating madness of situations getting further and further out of control. The horror and humor are perfectly balanced so that the film never lapses into spoof territory. It keeps delivering the shocks while the performances keep us involved and amused. 

The story works so well because there is always a sense of intimacy to the horror. Aside from a few establishing shots, the action all takes place in a handful of interior locations. We have time to settle into this environment and with the small cast of main characters clashing with each other. Yet things never really seem to slow down and relax. Everything further bonds us with the characters or lays out the goals and values they have which cause most of the conflict. There is never a sense of the story marking time. It also seems like there is no limit to how much further the horror and chaos can go. 

Jeffrey Combs became a horror film immortal with his insolent and probably mad medical student, Herbert West. This character’s wit and sociopathy never fail to make me smile. He strikes me as the 1980s American answer to Peter Cushing’s Victor Frankenstein of the British Gothic horror classics from Hammer Films. West’s single-minded devotion to restoring the life of the dead spurs him on ever further into greater risk-taking and mishaps. Combs’ performance is a joy to watch for any horror fan. 

The hapless hero that we identify with is Bruce Abbott’s Dan Cain. He seems like a decent sort just trying to make it through medical school and get on with his life. Dan provides a measuring stick of normalcy against which to gauge the recklessness of his ruthless roommate, Herbert West. Unfortunately, Dan is just a bit too enamored of West’s medical achievement and gets entangled in the complications created by West’s experiments. 

Another important aspect of Abbott’s performance is that his Dan Cain is traumatized by the horrors he encounters in the story. This was deliberate on director Gordon’s part. He stated that his audience would not be frightened if his characters weren’t. This is an important technique that maintains Re-Animator’s delicate balance between humor and horror. Too many films of many genres forget to honestly depict how normal people would behave in dire situations. 

Like Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton also became a legend in the horror genre for her role in Re-Animator. She would join Combs in more Stuart Gordon-directed horror films. As Gordon has stated, Crampton was a real trooper going above and beyond the call of duty providing this film its sex appeal. It doesn’t hurt that she is also a fine actress going through an entire range of extreme emotions while always remaining likable and relatable. 

With beautiful Barbara Crampton as Dan Cain’s co-ed girlfriend, Megan Halsey, some could envy Dan too much to have sympathy for him. However, we really learn to like both of these simply drawn characters during the few intimate moments we get to spend with them. That means that the rest of the morbid and madcap time, we care about them, which really sets up a touching, ironic, and unsettling payoff. 

I remembered Robert Sampson best for his appearance in “The Mutant,” an episode of the great, sci-fi, television series The Outer Limits (1963-65). Sampson was an experienced actor guest-starring in a multitude of television programs for three decades by the time he was cast as the dean of Miskatonic Medical School, Alan Halsey. Although Sampson had a supporting role in Italian director Lucio Fulci’s typically very moist horror film City of the Living Dead (1980), here he becomes a key player in the gruesome goings-on. At first, his character of Megan’s conservative and dignified father seems like the establishment type just meant to complicate things for our young couple. He really ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time and unwittingly helps the cause of mad science. 

If anyone in this cast seemed custom-made for the horror genre, it was David Gale. With his angular features, deep voice, and piercing gaze, he projects authority, intelligence, and evil effortlessly. His ambitious and underhanded Miskatonic professor, neurosurgeon Dr. Carl Hill, is yet another unprincipled proponent of mad science. Hill’s supercilious pupil, Herbert West, almost has us empathizing with him, but it does not take long before the not-so-good doctor reveals his loathsome nature. Dr. Hill’s shenanigans with Megan Halsey are Re-Animator’s most notorious highlight. 

There you have it: the five characters that push around this gory gurney called Re-Animator. Aside from some bit parts in this film, everyone else is dead, which could mean that they have a lot more to do, courtesy of Herbert West and his hypos of reagent serum. 

Re-Animator was a surprise hit at the Cannes Film festival, winning a Special Prize. When presenting the film for theatrical release in the US, director Gordon thought that getting the R rating was possible, but the MPAA had become less permissive in recent years and would have gutted the barely feature length film. Producer Brian Yuzna and Gordon made the gutsy decision to release the film unrated. This earned Re-Animator a bit of notoriety, while the critics still noticed the craft and wit of a film pushing its genre limits. Cuts were made to the film to get an R rating for another theatrical release the following year. That R-rated version included some previously deleted footage to add to the less gory cut’s runtime. Re-Animator found its greatest success on home videotape releases that usually used the unrated version. Fortunately, producer Yuzna was able to secure the rights again to get Re-Animator restored in all of its unrated, gory glory for 21st-century DVD releases. 

Due to this success of what Stuart Gordon considered a blessed production, he continued to direct and write more films. While he would dabble in other subject matter, Gordon would often return to the genre he is most associated with. If Gordon had never made another film after his first, he would still be a revered horror filmmaker. His Re-Animator is a cult film that has become a classic.