Re-Animator

Dir: Stuart Gordon

1985

*****

What a wonderful world it would be if every horror film (or just every film in general for that matter) were made by Stuart Gordon and Brian Yuzna. The inspiration to make Re-Animator came from a discussion Stuart Gordon had with friends one night about the vampire genre. He felt that there were too many Dracula films and expressed a desire to see more Frankenstein films. It was this point where someone asked if he had read Herbert West–Re-animator by H. P. Lovecraft. Gordon was a huge fan of Lovecraft and had read most of the author's works, but not that story, as it had been long out of print. He went to the Chicago Public Library the very next day and read their copy. Originally, Gordon was going to adapt Lovecraft's story for the stage, but eventually decided along with writers Dennis Paoli and William Norris to do it as a half-hour television pilot. The original draft set the story around the turn of the 20th century but they soon realized that it would be far too expensive to recreate. They updated it to the present day and set it in Chicago with the intention of using actors from the Organic Theater company. They were told that the half hour format was not salable and so they made it an hour, writing 13 episodes. Special effects technician Bob Greenberg, who had worked on John Carpenter's Dark Star, repeatedly told Gordon that the only market for horror was in feature films, and introduced him to producer Brian Yuzna. Gordon showed Yuzna the script for the pilot and the 12 additional episodes. The producer liked what he read and convinced Gordon to shoot the film in Hollywood because of all the special effects involved. Yuzna made a distribution deal with Charles Band's Empire Pictures in return for post-production services and one of the most charming horror films of all time was born. At University of Zurich Institute of Medicine, Herbert West (cult favourite Jeffrey Combs) brings his dead professor, Dr. Hans Gruber (Al Berry – not Alan Rickman) back to life. There are horrific side-effects, however; as West realises that the dosage of whatever it was he gave him was too large. When accused of killing Gruber, West counters: "I gave him life!". West then arrives at Miskatonic University in New England in order to further his studies as a medical student. He rents a room from fellow medical student Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott) and converts the building's basement into his own personal laboratory. West demonstrates his reanimating reagent to Dan by reanimating Dan's dead cat Rufus. Dan's fiancée Megan Halsey (Barbara Crampton), daughter of the medical school's dean, walks in on this experiment and is horrified. Dan tries to tell the dean about West's success in reanimating the dead cat, but the dean does not believe him. When Dan insists, the dean infers that Dan and West have gone mad. Barred from the school, West and Dan sneak into the morgue to test the reagent on a human subject in an attempt to prove that the reagent works, and thereby salvage their medical careers. The corpse they inject comes back to life, but in a frenetic and violent zombie-like state. Dr. Halsey (Robert Sampson) stumbles upon the scene and, despite attempts by both West and Dan to save him, he gets killed by the reanimated corpse, which West then kills with a bone-saw. Unfazed by the violence and excited at the prospect of working with a freshly dead specimen, West injects Dr. Halsey's body with his reanimating reagent. Dr. Halsey returns to life, also in a psychotic, zombie-like state. Megan chances upon the scene, and is nearly hysterical. Dr. Halsey's colleague Dr. Carl Hill (David Gale), a professor and researcher at the hospital, takes charge of Dr. Halsey, whom he puts in a padded observation cell adjacent to his office. He carries out a surgical operation on him, lobotomizing him. During the course of this operation, he discovers that Dr. Halsey is not sick, but dead and reanimated. Dr. Hill goes to West's basement lab and attempts to blackmail him into surrendering his reagent and notes, hoping to take credit for West's discovery. West offers to demonstrate the reagent and puts a few drops of it onto a microscope slide with dead cat tissue. As Dr. Hill peers through the microscope at this slide, West clobbers him from behind with a shovel, and then decapitates him, snarling "plagiarist!" as he drives the blade of the shovel through Dr. Hill's neck. West then reanimates Dr. Hill's head and body separately. While West is questioning Dr. Hill's head and taking notes, Dr. Hill's body sneaks up behind him and knocks him unconscious. The body carries the head back to Dr. Hill's office, with West's reagent and notes. In his re-animated state, Dr. Hill acquires the ability to control other re-animated corpses telepathically, after conducting brain surgery on them. He sends Dr. Halsey out to kidnap Megan from Dan. While being carried to the morgue by her reanimated father, Megan faints. When she arrives, Dr. Hill straps her unconscious body to a table and strips her naked. She wakes up in the middle of this experience. Hill then sexually abuses her, including shoving his bloody, severed head between her legs. West and Dan track Halsey to the morgue. West distracts Dr. Hill while Dan frees Megan. Dr. Hill reveals that he has reanimated and lobotomized several corpses from the morgue, rendering them susceptible to mind control as Halsey is. However, Megan's voice reawakens a protectiveness in her father, who then fights off the other corpses long enough for Dan and Megan to escape. In the ensuing chaos, West injects Dr. Hill's body with a lethal overdose of the reagent. Dr. Hill's body mutates rapidly and attacks West, who screams out to Dan to save his work before being pulled away by Dr. Hill's mutated entrails. Dan retrieves the satchel containing West's reagent and notes. As Dan and Megan flee the morgue, one of the reanimated corpses attacks and strangles Megan. Dan takes her to the hospital emergency room and tries to revive her, but she is quite dead. In despair, he injects her with West's reagent. As the scene fades to black, Megan, apparently revived, can be heard to scream. It is one of the best examples of horror and comedy working in unison. Stuart Gordon and Dennis Paoli originally intended it to be 100% faithful to H.P. Lovecraft's story, but the film ultimately had little in common with the original, which was intended to be a parody of Frankenstein. Yuzna described the film as having the "sort of shock sensibility of an Evil Dead with the production values of, hopefully, The Howling". I would agree with that, although I’d say it was more Evil Dead II meets The Howling II because of the humour. John Naulin worked on the film's gruesome makeup effects and worked from photos borrowed from the Cook County morgue of all kinds of different lividities and different corpses. He and Gordon also used a book of forensic pathology in order to present how a corpse looks once the blood settles in the body, creating a variety of odd skin tones. Naulin said that Re-Animator was the bloodiest film he had ever worked on. In the past, he never used more than two gallons of blood on a film; on Re-Animator, he used 24 gallons. The biggest makeup challenge in the film was the headless Dr. Hill zombie. Tony Doublin designed the mechanical effects and was faced with the problem of proportion once the 9–10 inches of the head were removed from the body. Each scene forced him to use a different technique. For example, one technique involved building an upper torso that actor David Gale could bend over and stick his head through so that it appeared to be the one that the walking corpse was carrying around. The film did have money behind it but the effects are old-school and are still the best. It’s a cult favourite, everything from Richard Band’s Psycho-esque score to Jeffrey Combs’ intensity, and all the gore in-between, is perfect. I remember someone once called it ‘Pop Buñuel’ which I always thought was an apt description. It may be a cheap horror film to some but Re-Animator is art, masterful film making at its best. I also adore the homage to Saul Bass in the opening sequence. Charles Band was reported to have originally disliked the film before releasing it through his company, Empire International. Of course he took credit for it after its success. I can’t praise the film enough.