Re-Animator is a 1985 American
science fictionScience fiction film is a film genre that uses science fiction: speculative, science-based depictions of phenomena that are not necessarily accepted by mainstream science, such as extraterrestrial life forms, alien worlds, extrasensory perception, and time travel, often along with futuristic...
horror filmHorror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...
based on the
H. P. LovecraftHoward Phillips Lovecraft --often credited as H.P. Lovecraft — was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction, especially the subgenre known as weird fiction....
story "Herbert West–Reanimator." Directed by
Stuart GordonAfter the University of Wisconsin demanded future theatrical productions by Screw Theater be overseen by a University Professor, Gordon cut his University ties to form Broom Street Theater. Its first production, the new translation of the risque Lysistrata, premiered in May 1969. Gordon is...
, it was the first film in the
Re-Animator series. The film has since become a
cult filmA cult film, also commonly referred to as a cult classic, is a film that has acquired a highly devoted but specific group of fans. Often, cult movies have failed to achieve fame outside the small fanbases; however, there have been exceptions that have managed to gain fame among mainstream audiences...
, driven by fans of
Jeffrey CombsJeffrey Alan Combs is an American actor known for his horror film roles and his appearances playing a number of characters in the Star Trek franchise.-Early life:...
(who stars as
Herbert WestHerbert West is a fictional character created by H. P. Lovecraft for his short story "Herbert West—Reanimator", first published in 1922. There have been several adaptations of the story including Herbert West as played by Jeffrey Combs in the 1985 Re-Animator movie and its two sequels, Bride...
) and H. P. Lovecraft, extreme gore, and the combination of horror and comedy.
Plot
At Zurich University Institute of Medicine in
SwitzerlandSwitzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
, Herbert West brings his dead professor, Dr. Hans Gruber (Al Berry), 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 UniversityMiskatonic University is a fictional university located in Arkham; a fictitious town which is said to exist in Essex County, Massachusetts. It is named after the Miskatonic River . After first appearing in the H. P...
in
New EnglandNew England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
in order to further his studies. He rents a room from medical student Dan Cain (
Bruce AbbottBruce Paul Abbott is an American actor. He has appeared in movies such as Re-Animator, Bad Dreams, The Prophecy II, Out of Time, and Bride of Re-Animator, and the TV series Dark Justice....
) and converts the building's basement into his own personal laboratory. There is an instant animosity between West and faculty member Dr. Carl Hill (
David GaleDavid Quentin Gale was a British actor.He is primarily known for his role as the evil, autocratic Dr. Carl Hill in the 1985 cult classic film Re-Animator, and its 1990 sequel Bride of Re-Animator...
). West declares that Hill stole the theory of
brain deathBrain death is the irreversible end of all brain activity due to total necrosis of the cerebral neurons following loss of brain oxygenation. It should not be confused with a persistent vegetative state...
from Dr. Gruber, West's mentor. Dan discovers that West has re-animated his dead cat, Rufus, with a glowing reagent. West recruits Dan as his partner in research to defeat death. Dan's fiancee Megan dislikes West, especially after discovering Rufus re-animated in a state of dismemberment.
Hill manages to turn Dr. Halsey, the school's dean and Megan's father, against both West and Dan. Barred from the school, the two sneak into the morgue to test the reagent on a human subject in an attempt to salvage their medical careers. The revived corpse goes on a rampage, attacking them. Halsey stumbles upon the scene and, despite attempts by both West and Dan to save him, is killed by the corpse. Armed with a bone saw, West dispatches the reanimated cadaver. Unfazed by the violence and excited at the prospect of working with a freshly dead specimen, West injects Halsey with the reagent. Halsey returns to life, but in a
zombieZombie is a term used to denote an animated corpse brought back to life by mystical means such as witchcraft. The term is often figuratively applied to describe a hypnotized person bereft of consciousness and self-awareness, yet ambulant and able to respond to surrounding stimuli...
-like state.
Hill discovers West's work and gains guardianship over Halsey, whom he puts in a padded cell adjacent to his office. Dan and Megan break into Hill's office where they find evidence that Hill is obsessed with Megan and has
lobotomizedLobotomy "; τομή – tomē: "cut/slice") is a neurosurgical procedure, a form of psychosurgery, also known as a leukotomy or leucotomy . It consists of cutting the connections to and from the prefrontal cortex, the anterior part of the frontal lobes of the brain...
her father. Hill has gone to confront West in his basement lab and threatens to
blackmailIn common usage, blackmail is a crime involving threats to reveal substantially true or false information about a person to the public, a family member, or associates unless a demand is met. It may be defined as coercion involving threats of physical harm, threat of criminal prosecution, or threats...
him to continue his research so that Hill can take credit for West's reagent. While Hill is distracted, West decapitates Hill with a shovel. Overcome with curiosity, West re-animates both Hill's head and body. While West is questioning Hill's head and taking notes, Hill's body knocks him unconscious. The body carries the head and steals West's reagent, returning to Hill's office. Exercising
mind controlMind control refers to a process in which a group or individual "systematically uses unethically manipulative methods to persuade others to conform to the wishes of the manipulator, often to the detriment of the person being manipulated"...
over Halsey, Hill sends him out to kidnap Megan from Dan.
West and Dan track Halsey to the morgue, where they find Hill's body holding his head in a compromising position over a restrained Megan. West distracts Hill while Dan frees Megan. Hill reveals that he has re-animated and lobotomized several corpses from the morgue to do his bidding. However, Megan manages to get through to her father, who fights off the other corpses long enough for Dan and Megan to escape. In the ensuing chaos, Halsey is torn to pieces by the corpses after he destroys Hill's head and West injects Hill's body with what he believes is a lethal overdose of the reagent which began to destroy Hill's body. Hill's body mutates horribly and attacks West, who screams out to Dan to save his work as he continues fighting.
Dan retrieves the satchel containing West's reagent. As Dan and Megan run from the morgue, one of the re-animated corpses attacks and kills Megan. Dan takes her to the hospital emergency room and tries in vain to revive her. In despair, he injects her with reagent. Just after the scene fades to black, Megan screams, implying that her re-animation has backfired.
Cast
- Jeffrey Combs
Jeffrey Alan Combs is an American actor known for his horror film roles and his appearances playing a number of characters in the Star Trek franchise.-Early life:...
as Herbert WestHerbert West is a fictional character created by H. P. Lovecraft for his short story "Herbert West—Reanimator", first published in 1922. There have been several adaptations of the story including Herbert West as played by Jeffrey Combs in the 1985 Re-Animator movie and its two sequels, Bride...
- Bruce Abbott
Bruce Paul Abbott is an American actor. He has appeared in movies such as Re-Animator, Bad Dreams, The Prophecy II, Out of Time, and Bride of Re-Animator, and the TV series Dark Justice....
as Dan Cain
- Barbara Crampton
Barbara Crampton is an American actress.She is considered a scream queen.-Early years:Crampton was born in Levittown, Long Island, New York. She was raised in Vermont and spent summers while growing up traveling the country with the carnival as her father was a carnie...
as Megan Halsey
- David Gale
David Quentin Gale was a British actor.He is primarily known for his role as the evil, autocratic Dr. Carl Hill in the 1985 cult classic film Re-Animator, and its 1990 sequel Bride of Re-Animator...
as Dr. Carl Hill
- Robert Sampson as Dean Alan Halsey
- Al Berry as Dr. Hans Gruber
- Carolyn Purdy-Gordon as Dr. Harrod
- Ian Patrick Williams as Swiss professor
Production
The idea to make
Re-Animator came from a discussion
Stuart GordonAfter the University of Wisconsin demanded future theatrical productions by Screw Theater be overseen by a University Professor, Gordon cut his University ties to form Broom Street Theater. Its first production, the new translation of the risque Lysistrata, premiered in May 1969. Gordon is...
had with friends one night about
vampireVampires are mythological or folkloric beings who subsist by feeding on the life essence of living creatures, regardless of whether they are undead or a living person...
movies. He felt that there were too many
DraculaDracula is an 1897 novel by Irish author Bram Stoker.Famous for introducing the character of the vampire Count Dracula, the novel tells the story of Dracula's attempt to relocate from Transylvania to England, and the battle between Dracula and a small group of men and women led by Professor...
movies and expressed a desire to see a
FrankensteinFrankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel about a failed experiment that produced a monster, written by Mary Shelley, with inserts of poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley started writing the story when she was eighteen, and the novel was published when she was twenty-one. The first...
movie. Someone asked if he had read "Herbert West: Reanimator" by H.P. Lovecraft. Gordon had read most of the author's works, but not that story, which had been long out of print. He went to the
Chicago Public LibraryThe Chicago Public Library is the public library system that serves the City of Chicago in Illinois. It consists of 79 branches, including a central library, two regional libraries, and branches distributed throughout the city....
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 story was set around the turn of the century, and they soon realized that it would be too expensive to recreate. They updated it to the present day in
ChicagoChicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
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 CarpenterJohn Howard Carpenter is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, editor, composer, and occasional actor. Although Carpenter has worked in numerous film genres in his four-decade career, his name is most commonly associated with horror and science fiction.- Early life :Carpenter was born...
's
Dark StarDark Star is a 1974 American comedic science fiction motion picture directed by John Carpenter and co-written with Dan O'Bannon.-Backstory and plot:...
, repeatedly told Gordon that the only market for horror was in feature films, and introduced him to producer
Brian YuznaBrian Yuzna is a director, writer and producer of films.- Life :Yuzna grew up in Nicaragua, Puerto Rico and Panama before moving to the United States in the 1960s.- Career :...
. 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.
Yuzna described the film as having the "sort of shock sensibility of an
Evil DeadThe Evil Dead is a 1981 horror film written and directed by Sam Raimi, starring Bruce Campbell, Ellen Sandweiss, and Betsy Baker. The film is a story of five college students vacationing in an isolated cabin in a wooded area...
with the production values of, hopefully,
The HowlingThe Howling is a 1981 werewolf-themed horror film directed by Joe Dante. Based on the novel of the same name by Gary Brandner, the screenplay is written by John Sayles and Terence H. Winkless...
". John Naulin worked on the film's gruesome makeup effects and worked from what he described as "disgusting shots brought out from the
Cook County- Counties :*Cook County, Georgia, US*Cook County, Illinois*Cook County, Minnesota, US*Cook County, New South Wales, Australia*Cook County, New Zealand, one of the former counties of New Zealand on the North Island...
morgue of all kinds of different lividities and different corpses". He and Gordon also used a book of
forensic pathologyForensic pathology is a branch of pathology concerned with determining the cause of death by examination of a corpse. The autopsy is performed by the pathologist at the request of a coroner or medical examiner usually during the investigation of criminal law cases and civil law cases in some...
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 GaleDavid Quentin Gale was a British actor.He is primarily known for his role as the evil, autocratic Dr. Carl Hill in the 1985 cult classic film Re-Animator, and its 1990 sequel Bride of Re-Animator...
could bend over and stick his head through so that it appeared to be the one that the walking corpse was carrying around.
Reception
Re-Animator was released on October 18, 1985 in 129 theaters and grossed USD$543,728 on its opening weekend. It went on to make $2 million in
North AmericaNorth America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
, above its estimated $900,000 budget.
The film was well-received by critics, earning mostly positive reviews, and today has a 92% "Fresh" rating on
Rotten TomatoesRotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
.
Roger EbertRoger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
gave the film three out of four stars and wrote, "I walked out somewhat surprised and reinvigorated (if not re-animated) by a movie that had the audience emitting taxi whistles and wild goat cries". In her review for the
New York Times,
Janet MaslinJanet Maslin is an American journalist, best known as a film and literary critic for The New York Times. She served as the Times film critic from 1977–1999.- Biography :...
wrote, "
Re-Animator has a fast pace and a good deal of grisly vitality. It even has a sense of humor, albeit one that would be lost on 99.9 percent of any ordinary moviegoing crowd". Paul Attanasio, in his review for the
Washington Post, praised Jeffrey Combs' performance: "Beady-eyed, his face hard, almost lacquered, Combs makes West into a brittle, slightly fey
psychoticPsychosis means abnormal condition of the mind, and is a generic psychiatric term for a mental state often described as involving a "loss of contact with reality"...
in the
Anthony PerkinsAnthony Perkins was an American actor, best known for his Oscar-nominated role in Friendly Persuasion and as Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho , and its three sequels.-Early life:...
mold. West is a figure of fun, but Combs doesn't spoof him". In his review for the
Los Angeles TimesThe Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
, Kevin Thomas wrote, "The big noise is Combs, a small, compact man of terrific intensity and concentration".
David EdelsteinDavid Edelstein is the chief film critic for New York Magazine, as well as the film critic for NPR's Fresh Air and CBS Sunday Morning. He lives in Brooklyn, New York....
, writing for
Village Voice, placed the film in his year-end Top Ten Movies list.
Entertainment WeeklyEntertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
ranked the film #32 on their list of "The Top 50 Cult Films". and also ranked it #14 on their "The Cult 25: The Essential Left-Field Movie Hits Since '83" list.
Release
The film was re-released with a premiere on May 21, 2010 as part of Creation Entertainment's Weekends of Horror.
Sequels
The film was followed by
Bride of Re-AnimatorBride of Re-Animator is an American horror film released in 1990. It was directed by Brian Yuzna and was written by Yuzna, Rick Fry and Woody Keith. H. P. Lovecraft wrote the original series of stories, titled Herbert West–Reanimator, from which the characters were derived. The plot roughly...
, as well as by
Beyond Re-AnimatorBeyond Re-Animator is a horror film, directed by Brian Yuzna. It is the second sequel to Re-Animator. The film premiered on the Sci-Fi Channel . This showing was cut to a TV-PG rating...
. Both of these
sequelA sequel is a narrative, documental, or other work of literature, film, theatre, or music that continues the story of or expands upon issues presented in some previous work...
s were preceded by another horror film based upon a Lovecraft story called
From BeyondFrom Beyond is a 1986 American science fiction/ body horror film directed by Stuart Gordon, loosely based on the short story of the same title by H. P. Lovecraft, and was written by Dennis Paoli, Gordon and Brian Yuzna...
; though this film was also directed by
Stuart GordonAfter the University of Wisconsin demanded future theatrical productions by Screw Theater be overseen by a University Professor, Gordon cut his University ties to form Broom Street Theater. Its first production, the new translation of the risque Lysistrata, premiered in May 1969. Gordon is...
and starred both
Jeffrey CombsJeffrey Alan Combs is an American actor known for his horror film roles and his appearances playing a number of characters in the Star Trek franchise.-Early life:...
and
Barbara CramptonBarbara Crampton is an American actress.She is considered a scream queen.-Early years:Crampton was born in Levittown, Long Island, New York. She was raised in Vermont and spent summers while growing up traveling the country with the carnival as her father was a carnie...
, the story line was completely different.
Gordon has been quoted on several occasions as expressing a desire to make a fourth installment in the series, entitled
House of Re-Animator; this film would, he claims, be a
political satirePolitical satire is a significant part of satire that specializes in gaining entertainment from politics; it has also been used with subversive intent where political speech and dissent are forbidden by a regime, as a method of advancing political arguments where such arguments are expressly...
wherein West moves into the
White HouseThe White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...
during the
BushGeorge Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
years and re-animates the deceased Vice President (played by
George WendtGeorge Robert Wendt III is an American actor, best known for the roles of Norm Peterson and Tug Clarke on the television shows Cheers and Modern Men.-Early life:...
). This film is also supposed to star Academy Award-nominee
William H. MacyWilliam Hall Macy, Jr. is an American actor and writer. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his role as Jerry Lundegaard in Fargo. He is also a teacher and director in theater, film and television. His film career has been built mostly on his appearances in small, independent films, though...
as the President.
In a Q&A session held at the Music Box Massacre, an annual 24-hour horror
film festivalA film festival is an organised, extended presentation of films in one or more movie theaters or screening venues, usually in a single locality. More and more often film festivals show part of their films to the public by adding outdoor movie screenings...
in Chicago, Gordon announced that he has abandoned plans for the long awaited sequel,
House of Re-Animator. He said that, after the departure of the
Bush AdministrationThe presidency of George W. Bush began on January 20, 2001, when he was inaugurated as the 43rd President of the United States of America. The oldest son of former president George H. W. Bush, George W...
, he saw no further reason to make a political satire.
External links