Review: Re-Animator

Medical student Daniel Cain is seemingly on the right path, and is even dating the beautiful daughter (Barbara Crampton) of the school Dean (Robert Sampson). Then he accepts a new roommate, the peculiar and arrogant Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs), a fellow student who will drag poor Daniel down into all kinds of icky, bizarro trouble conducting medical experiments in an attempt to re-animate the dead. David Gale plays the sinister, lecherous surgeon Dr. Karl Hill, who lusts after the Dean’s daughter and loathes West (and vice versa, I might add).

 

Morbidly funny 1985 splatter classic from director Stuart Gordon (“Dolls”, “From Beyond”, “Space Truckers”) is a quintessential cult item and perhaps sadly, the high point of Gordon’s career (The futuristic actioner “Fortress” is sorely underrated, however). A good measure of whether you’re gonna like this thing or not, is if you find the idea of Jeffrey Combs and Bruce Abbott wielding baseball bats and chasing a re-animated cat inherently funny. I found it completely hilarious, the subsequent scene would be disgusting if it weren’t so stupid and funny.

 

Elias Koteas lookalike Bruce Abbott is OK as the straight man of sorts, but running away with the whole thing is the inimitable Jeffrey Combs in his best role to date. As the arrogant, chilly, oddball medical student Herbert West, the idiosyncratic actor is perfect deadpan silliness. He looks to be having a ball basically playing a very weird version of the arrogant and ruthless Peter Cushing mad scientist deal. The film around him is already good fun, but Combs really gives this thing an extra dimension. Also memorable is the late David Gale as the sinister, arrogant Christopher Lee substitute to Combs’ Cushing (though really Combs’ oddball performance is more akin to someone like Donald Pleasence), and like Combs he pitches his performance at about 11 and keeps on going. Watching the duo square off is very funny stuff. He and an admittedly very game (and naked) Barbara Crampton are involved in the film’s most memorable gory sex gag, which absolutely positively could never be done in today’s world. Whatever one makes of the scene, there’s never been anything like it before or since. It’s completely ridiculous and Combs’ chiding of Gale just makes it sillier and, for sickos like me funnier. Ms. Crampton is good in the role, and one can’t help but find it funny how much of the film she seems to spend horrified, mortified, confused and screaming at the darkly comedic insanity going on around her. In the midst of all the camp and gore, Robert Sampson is on hand to give a genuinely solid performance as Crampton’s father and the mentor of Combs and Abbott. One almost wonders what he’s doing in such a film, especially once his character takes a very disgusting (but again, funny) turn. Meanwhile, you can’t help but smile at how neck-deep Abbott – and in a way, the audience too – gets into all of the mess with seemingly countless re-animated bodies that turn into mindless, bloody messes. Although it’s hard to defend Abbott eventually, the true monsters here are clearly Gale and Combs. Perhaps best of all here, Gordon gets us in and out in under 90 minutes. There’s at least two longer cuts of the film, but I viewed Gordon’s preferred theatrical version, which is actually gorier than one of the alternate cuts.

 

Flaws are few, but the most irritating is the blatantly plagiaristic music score by Richard Band (“Ghoulies”, the enjoyable “Puppetmaster”). Deliberately ripping off Bernard Herrmann’s “Psycho” score was apparently meant to be a joke, but I didn’t think it was a necessary or helpful one. Also, I think Gordon over-uses the ‘jump’ scare tactic. One or two of them are funny/scary, the rest are just irritating and lazy as is always the case with ‘jump’ scares for me.

 

Given that much of the film’s humour is derived from a severed head, and a lot of the rest from a re-animated cat, I think it’s safe to say that this splatter movie is an acquired taste. For its target audience, this one’s a gory, silly delight. It’s completely bonkers and out of control, and often very, very funny. Jeffrey Combs and David Gale are an hilariously unscrupulous double act. Not for the squeamish, and probably fairly indefensible in 2022 on certain levels, but undeniably well-done for what it is and when it was made. Very loosely based on an H.P. Lovecraft story, the screenplay is by Gordon, William J. Norris (no other screenwriting gigs, but he had a role in Gordon’s version of “The Pit and the Pendulum”), and Dennis Paoli (“From Beyond”, “Ghoulies II”, “The Pit and the Pendulum”), though a lot of Paoli’s contribution is not evident in the 85 minute version I’ve reviewed here.

 

Rating: B