Viking Night: Re-Animator
By Bruce Hall
February 11, 2015
BoxOfficeProphets.com
That's what I took away from Re-Animator, Stuart Gordon's mid-‘80s send up/reimagining of an H.P. Lovecraft series of tales. Lovecraft, of course, was a respected horror pioneer who went largely unappreciated during his lifetime. He lived surrounded by madness and gloom, and died in bewildering agony, not unlike some of the characters in his books. If you're not sure who he was, either Google him or better yet, mention him in a room full of pretentious hipsters and watch them fall all over themselves to be the first to tell you how many Lovecraft books they’ve read. You'll probably need to stab someone to end the fracas.
The characters in Lovecraft's stories were often men of science, equal parts arrogant and curious, and nearly always obvious victims of their own ambition. That's pretty much the deal with Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs), a brilliant young scientist who's introduced to us just as his mentor's eyes explode. When accused of murdering the man he defiantly (and proudly) declares:
"I GAVE HIM LIFE!"
I can't stress enough how fantastic Combs' delivery is. The first three pages of the screenplay (penned in part by Gordon) read like the opening to any conventional mad scientist yarn. But just like a West Coast offense is useless without the right quarterback, a story like this needs someone to do the heavy lifting as well. And Herbert West is the Joe Montana of mad scientists. He's short, reedy and handsome in that ruddy way nobody ever sees until you're already successful. As such he gets by on his innate brilliance, never having mastered any social skills. Having been ejected from school in Switzerland on account of the whole exploding face incident, he settles into a residence at Miskatonic University in New England.
Despite his slightly negative reputation, his arrival is keenly anticipated by Dean Halsey, who is always looking for fresh young talent to attract those lucrative Old Money grants. West immediately clashes with Dr. Hill (David Gale), the school's preeminent brain expert. Content with having made a mortal enemy his first 10 minutes on campus, West moves in with Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott), another aspiring student who happens to be schtupping the Dean's daughter Megan (Barbara Crampton). Dan and Megan are upstanding, hardworking types who look like they live in a shampoo commercial. So they ask few questions when West shows up with a wad of cash and a bunch of oddball medical equipment he wants to set up in the basement.
Things immediately get weird when Megan's cat disappears and turns up dead in West's refrigerator. It's never clear whether West killed it or "found it dead" the way he claimed. What's more important is the answer to the question "why was it in the fridge?" This answer is confirmed later that night, when Cain finds West wrestling with the formerly felled feline in the cellar. West explains that he and his late mentor (awesomely named Hans Gruber) had been researching life from death, with West himself having perfected a serum for the same. It works, with the only notable side effect being the fact that the re-animated patient suffers from homicidal rage. But Rome wasn't built in a day, right? Cain is sufficiently intrigued to approach Halsey with the discovery. Not only is he rebuked, but he and West are summarily expelled from school.
That's the bad news. The good news is there's no longer anything to lose, so the ambitious doctors are free to continue their hideous experiments. But they soon discover Cain still has access to the hospital morgue. This is good, because it turns out that the fresher the bodies, the better the result - except for that whole "homicidal rage" thing, which never quite gets ironed out. It’s actually kind of amusing - West is pretty juiced up over this whole “bringing the dead back to life” thing, but seems supremely unconcerned with the fact that everything he reanimates immediately tries to murder everything it sees.
You probably think you can figure out the rest of this, which is adorable because you're probably right - except the completely insane details I guarantee you're not anticipating. Re-Animator offers more than its share of body horror gross outs, and the effects, while obviously dated, are freaky enough to remain psychologically effective three decades on. You'll see this film billed as a "horror/comedy", and while I can't think of a better description, I need to point out that it's not "funny" so much as it is fantastically, almost blasphemously insane. Like a stage play, the action is limited mostly to the locations and characters I've already mentioned, while it tends to concentrate the madness like an overly strong pitcher of Kool-aid.
There IS a lot of incidental slapstick in Re-Animator, but it never overtly plays for laughs. The humor mostly lies in the fact that the story goes places that are so out of left field, you almost have to laugh. Halsey is so self-consciously obtuse that even when certain...things...happen, what should be terrifying and poignant leaves you snickering with guilty pleasure. But by far the most entertaining of the bunch are the duo of Combs, whose demented genius schtick never gets old, and Gale, who is creepy not just because his character is probably a closet sex offender, but also because he resembles John Kerry. Nobody could have known this at the time, but it’s impossible not to watch Re-Animator and imagine the current Secretary of State up to his elbows in blood, brains and insanity.
Re-Animator is one of those films that gets most of its love within the horror community. It’s probably not for you unless you count yourself part of that crowd. But even if you’re not, it’s a lot more fun, a lot zanier, and a lot more satisfying than you’re probably expecting. Even if you hate it, you probably won’t hate it enough to regret watching it. And if you decide you like it, remember that death is not the end. It’s just another chance to destroy your competitors, kidnap the woman of your dreams and attempt to seduce her with your own bloody remains. Re-Animator isn’t just a classic horror film - it’s an inspiring, can-do message from H.P. Lovecraft to everyone who’s ever doubted themselves.