Re-Animator
Tags: comedy, cult, violence, horror, insanity, humor, suspenseful

Plot synopsis:
At University of Zurich Institute of Medicine in Switzerland, Herbert West brings his dead professor, Dr. Hans Gruber, back to life. There are horrific side-effects, however; as West explains, the dosage was too large. When accused of killing Gruber, West counters: "I gave him life!"
West 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 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 fiancee Megan, who already thinks West is creepy, walks in on this experiment and is horrified.
Dan tries to tell Dr. Alan Halsey, who is Megan's father and dean of the medical school, 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 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, but the sight of her seems to awaken some kind of memory in her reanimated father, who while still crazed, appears to suddenly feel a kind of regret.
Dr. Halsey's colleague Dr. Carl Hill, 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 decapitates him with a shovel, 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.
Exercising mind control over Halsey (in a deleted scene Hill is revealed to have psychic/hypnotic abilities; in the finished film, Halsey's submission is explained as a result of the lobotomy), Dr. Hill sends him 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 kills Megan. Dan takes her to the hospital emergency room and tries to revive her, but she is dead. In despair, he injects her with West's reagent. As the scene fades to black, Megan, apparently revived, can be heard screaming.

Review: Re-Animator is one of those fun horror movies that is so over the top that it is just a lot of fun to watch, kind of like the spectacular Evil Dead films, although not quite to that same level of skillful horror/comedy mix.
It's amazing to me that Richard Bond, the music composer, didn't think anyone would notice him plagiarizing one of the most famous movie soundtracks in cinematic history, but luckily everyone else in the production was right on the mark.Jeffrey Combs delivers a wonderfully crazy performance as Herbert West, the scientist in the movie who is determined that he has discovered a scientific method to beat death, and is desperate to try it out on a human being rather than small animals, on whom he has had remarkable success.
Maybe his intentions are good after all, but for the purposes of the film, he just wants to get his hands on some fresh corpses, which is a great premise for a horror film.The movie operates in its own world, like the Evil Dead films did.
All of the Freddies, Jasons, and Michael Myers films combined don't come close to having an ounce of the entertainment and imagination of Producer Brian Yuzna and Director and Writer Stuart Gordon's Re-animator.Professor Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs) is a scientist who has discovered a formula which brings the dead back to life by reanimating their tissue.
The score was heavily inspired by the famous Psycho score, a classic by Bernard Herrmann.The movie, inspired by H.P. Lovecraft's `Herbert West: Re-Animator', follows a simple plot.
Herbert West (played to precise pitch perfection by Jeffrey Combs who, like Bruce Campbell, is a B-Movie legend) is new at Miskatonic Medical University.
Dan tries to resist the temptation of power inherent in the re-animating fluid, but is sucked into Herbert's mad world of life giving.There is a turn of events about halfway through the film (which I would be crazy to spoil) that almost screams to the viewer, `We aren't playing by the rules here.' The storyline twists its way to the famous conclusion that, if you haven't heard of it, will leave you breathless.
It also has huge doses of black humor and the whole cast blessedly plays it straight...it they had winked at the camera once it would have destroyed the film.The film also has a tight, well-written script (it runs 86 minutes), is well directed by Stuart Gordon and has a great cast--David Gale (sadly no longer with us) was fantastic as the evil Hill.
West thinks so, and with his reagent serum he might just prove to the world how right he is."Re-Animator" ranks at the very top of my all-time favorite horror movies.
For me, the film is paced perfectly, has plenty of gore, a fair amount of nudity (and a scene of sexuality you won't find elsewhere), some black comedy and a simple plot premise (a variation on the Frankenstein story).This is the film that gave Jeffrey Combs his place in cult film history.
I have yet to find one that combines the gore of the uncut version with the plot of the R-rated one (which I think really drives home the story and fleshes out the motives and power of Dr. Hill).But the sheer fun of the film makes up for the flaws.
Jeffrey Combs is clearly having plenty of fun, and the way they approach such things as the reanimated cat and the use of the reagent as an intravenous drug tells me they knew that the key was just letting a good time fly.The people involved with this film (Combs, director Stuart Gordon and producer Brian Yuzna) went on to make a variety of other Lovecraft-inspired films.
Jeffrey Combs heads a great cast as Herbert West, a strange and eccentric but brilliant young doctor/scientist who has perfected a syrum that can reanimate the dead.
Combs is absolutely brilliant as Herbert West, one of the most memorable mad scientists in horror history, and the rest of the supporting cast - Bruce Abbott, David Gale, and the lovely Barbara Crampton - are all excellent.
Gordon uses H.P. Lovecraft's West stories as a jumping off point for some grotesque and genuinely funny moments that once seen are never forgotten, particularly THAT scene between Crampton and Gale, which is now the stuff of legend, though beware it is cut from some versions of the movie.
In Austria, the medical student Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs) develops a serum to resuscitate the dead while working with a famous scientist that mysteriously dies.
This was actually one of the first movies that I saw with Jeffrey Combs and what made me become a fan of his work and acting.The story in "Re-Animator", to those unfamiliar with the timeless work of Lovecraft, is about Herbert West (played by Jeffrey Combs) whose study in reanimating dead tissue goes awry and drunk with power, the scientist craves for more specimens to conduct his experiments on.
Helping him with the ghastly work is his roommate Dan (played by Bruce Abbott).Sure, the effects in the movie are ridiculously outdated and crude by todays standards, but back then they were quite good and actually were impressive to look at.
When you see it today, the effects make the movie appear campy and sort of goofy, but still the movie is driven by the solid story and not the visual effects."Re-Animator" spawned two sequels which also were quite good, and they were all part of a great many movies that Jeffrey Combs starred in that were based on the work of H.
The only thing about this film is its graphic gore and brief "head scene" with actress Barbara Crampton which may make it a bit tough to take at times, but it's well worth it.Rating: 8/10.
I went to an all night horror movie festival that supposedly featured the best of all the blood and gore films and although some of them were pretty good for the time (considering the "code"), I realized after seeing them that the ReAnimator was the film they were all trying to make.
Horrifyingly disfigured corpses cavort, dripping blood and gore, dissected cats howl and scratch, and severed heads....well, watching Dr. Hill's disembodied head molest poor Barbara Crampton in a "special area" is an all-time horror/comedy highlight!
After all these years I finally got around to watching Stuart Gordon's much loved and much talked about adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's Herbert West, Re-Animator.
Plot in a nutshell finds two medical students getting more than they ever could bargain for when they start reviving corpses with Herbert West's (Jeffrey Combs wonderful) gooey serum.It's all very 80s, but in a good way, because it takes one away from remembering all the formulaic slasher movies that dominated the decade, so with that in mind Gordon's movie should not be under valued in the context of being different.
Low budget collision of black comedy and gruesome horror marked the debut of director Stuart Gordon and has gone on to be a classic among horror fans.Medical student discovers that his strange new roommate has a formula that will bring dead bodies back to life, unfortunately it falls into the wrong hands and all bloody hell breaks loose.With its campy humor and wall-to-wall splatter FX, it's not hard to see how Re-Animator became a favorite among genre fans.
The film is loosely based upon the classic story 'Herbert West - Re-Animator' by the great H.P. Lovecraft and although this film adaptation doesn't have the same creepy atmosphere of the story, it more than makes up for that with some truly wild action.
Kudos also go to Richard Band for his quirky theme music, even though it does sound a lot like the Psycho theme.All around the performances are good but it's really Jeffery Combs who shines as the plucky Dr. West (villain or hero, you decide).For those that enjoy strong horror comedies Re-Animator is a must, but you might not want to watch it before dinner.Followed by three sequels.*** 1/2 out of ****.
The show is stolen by Jeffrey Combs, as Herbert West, the modern, mad scientist of horror movies.
Debut outing for Stuart Gordon provides a very entertaining film with a big helping of good special effects and quite a large amount of gore for an R-rated feature.Great touches of humour shine through the gore although the gore,which there is a lot of,is always excellent.Jeffrey Combs as a scientist/doctor Herbert West is simply amazing."Re-Animator" is visually interesting to look at,it is also quite creepy at times.It just can't get any better than this!In my opinion Stuart Gordon should be worshipped by all horror fans for producing such fine films like this one.OK,I admit that his another horror flick "Dolls" is pretty lame,but "From Beyond","The Pit and the Pendulum","Castle Freak" are all great.If you like "Re-Animator" check out its sequel "Bride of Re-Animator",also highly recommended..
But once you see it, it's another reminder of how sick and twisted and hilarious a film can be when its creators keep logic dangling by a thread - sure, some of this is logical, but that's after setting up the 'fact' that people can come back to life by some weird green liquid that one isn't really sure how it's made but, hey, it's Herbert West so maybe you just don't want to know...Simple premise: Herbert West (Herbert to his friends) is at a medical school when he takes a room with Dan and Megan, an engaged couple who also are connected to the medical university (Dan also a student, Megan daughter of the uptight dean), and tries out his formula to extend life past the expected amount of time the brain can function after death.
But probably the best assets to make it crazy-funny as opposed to just crazy is David Gale as Carl Hill (mostly after he's a severed head and body, doing more campy takes than one could ever ask for outside of Bela Lugosi), and Jeffrey Combs as Herbert West.
The turn out to being very livid, uncontrollable zombies.The story is loosely based off of H.P. Lovecraft's work, "Herbert West, Re-Animator".
Stuart Gordon's "Re-Animator" of 1985 is without any doubt one of the most wickedly entertaining films ever brought to screen, and no lover of Horror and Gore, no, no true lover of cinema could possibly consider missing it.
This is not least due to the brilliant performance of Jeffrey Combs, who doesn't play but IS Herbert West, and, of course due to director Stuart Gordon's brilliant sense of macabre humor, and his talent to make an ultra-gory Horror/Sci-Fi flick one of the most outrageously hilarious comedies ever.The film starts out with a delightfully macabre and witty scene, which I don't want to give away, and then really begins at the renowned medical University of Arham, Massachusets (Lovecraft's town for everything macabre), where the kind-hearted Dan (Bruce Abbott) is studying to become a doctor and working at the University clinic.
Because it was a return to black humor (which "motel hell" (1980) had already broached) which had been completely forgotten in the likes of Freddy ,Friday the thirteenth ,Halloween....And funny,nay hilarious,"Re-Animator" is!Jeffrey Combs is wonderful as the lead.I dig the way he introduces himself,I love his swagger,I love his deadpan face,and above all his logic (I'm a scientist!).His reluctant pal Dan delivers this line which is the best euphemism I 've heard in the whole horror cinema:after the extremely gory scene in the morgue ,he mumbles " must be dreamin'" .The cat in the fridge,the dean turned into a zombie,the lecherous professor licking Barbara Crampton's magnificent body,and more and more!
At least Re Animator has a level of intelligent direction to it.Being the kind of movie lover who's not a great fan of horror films and tries to avoid them because of the often awful repetitiveness.
But it's definitely not for everybody, as Gore-don's effects take center stage in an entertaining zombie free-for-all.In a deliciously over-the-top role, Jeffrey Combs is Herbert West, eccentric and dedicated medical student and the Re-Animator of the title, who as the film opens, has already resurrected his first corpse and I must say, it's literally eye-popping.
He presents his neon-green miracle potion to the disbelieving Dan, but finds himself breaking into the morgue to resurrect dead bodies.As with any horror movie of this caliber, there has to be a bad guy, and in this case it's Dr. Hill (David Gale), who experiences first-hand the effects of West's serum (the head on the box cover art belongs to him).
The movie itself is sacred among gore fans and it's easy to see why, what with its gonzo bloodletting and its impressive use of technical and makeup effects, not to mention Jeffrey Combs in the lead role, delivering the kind of B-horror performance that jumps out from the screen.
All of those combinations make Re-Animator one of my favorite Horror/Zombie movies,a Horror classic and Cult Classic.Based on H.P Lovecraft's story of the same name,Re-Animator tells the story Dan Cain(Bruce Abbott),a Miskatonic University Medical student who needs a roommate to share rent on a house.
However,Dan gets more than he bargained for when finds out Herbert West conducts bizarre science experiments using a serum chemical that brings people back from the dead and when Cain decides to help West the results are lead to chaos and insanity for Herbert and Dan.1985 was an amazing year for Zombie movies with the release of Horror/Zombie classics such as George A.
Right from the very beginning Re-Animator is an amazing Horror-Comedy that for it's 85 minutes gives viewers a terrific and memorable movie that is twisted and offbeat,weird and hilarious as well as gory,bloody and disgusting.
The Comedy and Humor in Re-Animator is hilarious and funny with a dark Comedic glee that is politically incorrect and matches the insanity that happens throughout the movie and it's the way the characters react to situations that are over the top and wild and when the horrific scenes become more horrifying you cannot help but laugh.
Everything Works in this Boundary Pusher.The Low-Budget SFX and Makeup are Outstandingly Over the Top. The Dark Humor mostly comes from a Deadpan Delivery from a Star Turned Jeffrey Combs as the Delightfully Demented and Giddy Discoverer of the Re-Agent that turns a Medical School into a Playground for Catatonic Corpses Creating a Commotion, and a Gadfly Student.The Movie has its Roots in Lovecraft and Shelley but it Grows on its Own. It is Very Rare that such a Complete Genre Exploitation is Enjoyed and Exalted by both Fans of this Type of Thing and Usually Stuffy Critics.
However West's obsession does not end there and experimentations in Cain's basement produce a certain amount of success but will only lead to terrible failure.I'm not a big horror fan but I do have a certain amount of OCD when it comes to watching films and when I saw this in the TV listings I realised that I had never seen it and decided to do so.
It does differ in humour though because, although some reviewers have said it is "tongue in cheek" I actually thought it did a good job of playing it as straight as possible and, although excessive in tone and gore, it is certainly not a "comedy" in the way that the Evil Dead films could be described.
From Comb's performance it is not hard to believe West as an obsessive character, but given the relative short runtime of the film, just over 85 minutes with both opening and closing credits, it really seems like that little extra bit could have been in there somewhere.But in the end this is a classic of horror cinema.
Ok, so it had a love interest and THAT SCENE, which Lovecraft probably couldn't even have imagined, let alone written, but somehow it really managed to capture the feel of the stories despite bringing them more up to date.It's a B-movie, some of the effects are kind of hokey, some of the action is so dark it's hard to see, but as a horror movie (as opposed to a scary movie, they're not necessarily the same) it works well, and the ending, while seemingly inevitable, was both unexpected and perfect.
Yes, it was a blatant case of plagiarism (very closely resembling Bernard Hermann's classic theme), but it worked well.I highly recommend 'Re-animator' to all fans of gory horror, but I do suggest that they watch the 'unrated' version and then the deleted scenes afterwards to fully appreciate what might have been..
The main two elements that make Re-Animator so memorable are one, it's sharp witted dark humor (mainly thanks for director Stuart Gordon and co-writer Dennis Paoli), with it's shockingly over-the-top gore done with a sly nod and a wink, and secondly, the film features a terrific breakout performance by Jeffrey Combs as Herbert West.
The satire in this film is beyond plentiful, not the least of which comes in the form of obscenely over the top gore effects.This movie is scary, gory, original, and above all, a lots of fun.
A lot i said about Re- animator and I admit, it's a classic but have seen it the other day it's still watchable for the effects but in the beginning it moves slowly towards the point of no return for Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs).
Jeffrey Combs is okay but you can see that the combination of Combs and Crampton do works which went on in From Beyond (1986).Still, it's a must see horror flick that do have some black comedy scene's like in The Evil Dead (1981).
Brilliant tongue-in-cheek horror which has stood the test of time well as it camps up an HP Lovecraft story with over-the-top gore, cheesy dialogue and gratuitous nudity.Obviously it's quite dated in some aspects but the SFX are well done although the cat scene amuses more than scares and Jeffrey Combs steals the screen with his creepy and insane Herbert West.
P. Lovecraft's "Herbert West-Re-Animator", a wonderful short story to check out to complement the film..