Re-Animator
The horror genre is a tricky. While it is easy to throw in copious amounts if blood, ghosts and dead people, it is still imperative within the genre to come up with a good storyline that is scary yet original. So when Re-Animator came out in 1985, with a whole sleuth of horror tales to live up to, it had to be fresh and dynamic. Emulating the classic tale of Frankenstein and based on a H.P. Lovecraft story, Re-Animator is a high energy horror that splices terror and comedy in an almost genius manner.
Re-Animator stars Jeffery Combs as Herbert West. West, a medical student in Zurich, stumbles upon a fluorescent formula that brings people back from the dead. Testing it on his deceased professor, something goes wrong but West is accused of murder and he flees to further his studies in America. Finding a room with fellow student Dan Cain and his girlfriend Megan, West conducts his experiments in secret, hoping to find the secret to life after death. However, his research is hunted by the villainous Dr. Hill and while the dead do come back, there are horrific side effects...
Re-Animator’s success really relies on the brilliant and stellar acting of Combs. Here as the almost mad and determined West, Combs becomes as iconic as Anthony Perkins. Eliciting a chilling portrayal that is neither solely good nor bad, Combs, though small in stature, becomes this bigger than life character. Ambition, science and discovery have twisted West to the brink where nothing is truly going to stop him from perfecting his serum. Combs give West this insane energy and becomes a figure of unforgettable madness.
In similar vein to movies such as Evil Dead and Frankenhooker, Re-Animator plays fast and loose with its horror, adding spices of humour with the galleons of blood. Re-Animator has some truly terrifying and gory moments, yet adds some slapstick routines. In other movies, this wouldn’t work, but mixed up with the trials and errors of science, it does with Re-Animator. A definitive cult classic, Re-Animator pushes the boundaries. One minute it is showcasing twisted special effects with galleons of corn syrup. The next it is showing a headless corpse use a plastic skeleton as a head. Funny and scary, Re-Animator has nearly combined both for an effective horror.
So it is almost a shame that Re-Animator falls into the same old shtick that horror movies always do; sexual violence. Not only is Megan, our only main female character, a vapid high pitched screaming woman who chases the men in her life around crying at possible moments, but Re-Animator straps her naked to a bench, becoming victim to Dr. Hill’s obsession. While, don’t get me wrong here, Dr. Hill’s sick fantasy with Megan isn’t entirely worth cutting from the movie, it is an obsession that crops up randomly in the movie, only seemingly written as an excuse to show her nude. It’s a fine line in horror, is it really necessary in this movie? It is a classic case of underwriting the one female character then subjecting her to unneeded abuse in order to perverse the audience. In Re-Animator, it is jarring.
It’s a shame really because Re-Animator is truly brilliant up until that moment. Jeffery Combs really tackles a complex, frightening anti-hero here and has now created an iconic character with Herbert West. Director Stuart Gordon makes Re-Animator, for the most part, a fantastic thrill ride. And if its aim was to truly make the audience squirm causing lifeless bums to wiggle, then it succeeded.
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