RE-ANIMATOR (1985)
Starring Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton
A real classic horror-comedy that blew audiences away when it was released, unrated, in 1985, "Re-Animator" represented a pinnacle in a renaissance of horror during the Reagan era. At the time this was the goriest, most daring horror film in existence. First-time filmmaker Gordon decided to make it because friends told him horror films always made money. He found an H.P. Lovecraft tale, wrote a screenplay based upon it, and the rest is independent film history. "Re-Animator" was literally one of the most talked about movies of 1985. Critics who normally slammed horror films like "Friday the 13th" and "Maniac" embraced it, despite its high quotient of gore and sex. "Re-Animator" is one of the most important independent films ever made. While it wasn't a balls-to-the-wall blockbuster, it garnered tremendous attention and a cult following that has never abated. It's so politically incorrect that there is no way anyone would be able to make it today.
The
film came together when Stuart Gordon and producer Brian Yuzna decided they
wanted to make a profitable movie, and had heard that horror films were a
guaranteed way to make money in the film business. They searched for material
and came up with an H.P. Lovecraft tale that seemed to fit the bill they were
looking for. Made on a super-low budget "Re-Animator" takes place
almost entirely within a few rooms in a fictional hospital, but manages to be
genuinely scary and delivers some of the best gore effects that the '80s ever
saw.
Combs is marvelously anal and obsessive compulsive as Herbert West, a Frankenstein-type medical student who has invented a way to "reanimate" the dead. His medical student roommate, played by Bruce Abbott, gets sucked into his experiments and the two accidentally kill the father of Abbot's girlfriend, played by the gorgeous Crampton, a soap opera actress who dutifully went along with two nude scenes that the role required her to do. (Apparently, another actress had to turn down the part because of her refusal to appear in the buff.) The bad guy in the story is a power-mad doctor (played by David Gale) who is beheaded, reanimated, and walks around as a body holding a talking head.
Like
all great horror films, "Re-Animator" has a sense of humor that
doesn't detract from the story's overall creepiness. The score, by Richard Band,
flagrantly borrows from Bernard Herrmann's music from "Psycho."
Amazingly, in a decade in which critics blasted gore fests like
"Maniac" and "Friday the 13th," "Re-Animator"
would be hailed by critics as one of the best of the year. Combs and Crampton
would be launched into careers as 1980s and '90s horror movie icons, and Gordon
would go on to direct a slew of high-quality schlock, but nothing he ever made
would surpass "Re-Animator."
Producer Yuzna would direct the follow up, "Bride of Re-Animator."