Mutant Reviewers from Hell do
"Don't expect it to tango; it has a broken back."

1985 R / Horror Comedy Directed by: Stuart Gordon Starring: Jeffrey Combs, Bruce Abbott, Barbara Crampton

Tagline

Herbert West Has A Very Good Head On His Shoulders... And Another One In A Dish On His Desk

Summary Capsule

Mad med student whips up zombie juice to preserve the newly dead.

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Amazon.com: DVD | Amazon.com: Soundtrack

Justin's Rating: The Ten Commandments of Zombie Making, #5: Thou shalt not think that making zombies is a safe, wholesome practice
Justin's Review: Like its subject matter, Re-Animator is a movie pieced together from the remains of old zombie classics (Night of the Living Dead), horror classics (Frankenstein), and the 80's splatterpunk (The Evil Dead). The stitching that holds this monster together is Jeffrey Combs, whose creepy face and demeanor have placed him among the horror greats in film.

"What I learned from this movie: bone saws aren't just for bones"

Med student Herbert West (Combs), is well on his way to becoming a full-fledged mad scientist. He has an obsession with reviving the dead (perhaps his parents didn't love him?), which propels him to create this glowing green juice. Injected into the neck, eyeball, nose, etc. of a freshly dead subject, it causes the corpse to come back to life. Yum.

Of course, in these movies it's never a really good thing to do this. The re-animated undead howl in pain, they have ungodly strength, and host a hankering for live flesh. Herbert's roommate Dan helps him out with these experiments, which eventually gets the father of Dan's girlfriend killed and then zombified. Throw in a jealous doctor that yearns to steal Herbert's work, and you have a pretty gory flick. Probably until Dead Alive came out, Re-Animator held the record for the most graphic decapitations, stabbings, and gratuitous nudity (all teenagers out there yell "hey!"). Despite being in the ambiguous good/bad category, Herbert does his fair share of slaying (What I learned from this movie: bone saws aren't just for bones).

This is a fairly enjoyable flick; if you're a zombie film lover, I would say this is a must-have. The nitpicking part of my soul did have a few problems with some rough spots. Decapitated heads can't speak without lungs, and the girl pretty much fufills the horror staple of being useless and dumb.

Special note to women and mothers: while you might be quick to condemn zombie films as mindless trash and the men who watch them as idiots, consider the message that they're proposing. The good guys are eliminating a very valid threat in the form of the undead. Wouldn't you rather have your son/boyfriend/husband watching a movie where the people being killed are already dead, instead of being Tom Hanks, Robert Redford, or Harrison Ford being the ones chopped to pieces? Thank you, I rest my arguement.

Kyle's Rating: A zombie movie aHEAD of its time. See, there's a decapitated head involved. Get it?
Kyle's Review: Being a fan of H.P. Lovecraft, I had always wanted to see this film based on some of his short stories. I had heard it was scary and gross, with cool special effects, and lots of gore and blood. This has all of these things, and more!

"Jeffrey Combs is Herbert West, who perhaps yearns to re-animate dead people to find fame and redeem having a doofy name."

Jeffrey Combs is Herbert West, who perhaps yearns to re-animate dead people to find fame and redeem having a doofy name. He’s not much of a hero, since a hero would probably think twice or even thrice about injecting glowing green stuff into the dead with the intent of reviving them as flesh-craving unstoppable zombies. I mean, didn’t any of these people see Night of the Living Dead? Come on, people!

I guess Bruce Abbott as Herbert’s roommate Dan functions as the hero, though he mostly just wants to hang with his hot girlfriend, who is lusted after by an older doctor who also has an eye out for Herbert’s re-animating experiments (plot point!). But by the end, everyone will either be drenched in the exploding and grabbing intestines of the re-animated dead, or they’ll be readying a syringe of the glowing green stuff for just one last re-animation project. Or maybe they’ll just be decapitated. I guess when it comes to dealing with zombies, there really are no heroes left.

But no matter. As neat a gory zombie flick this is, I am certain that this film came about for one reason and one reason alone: the filmmakers wanted to show a decapitated zombie at least try to perform oral sex on an unwilling and screaming heroine. How or why they wanted to see this, I just don’t know. But they did, and Re-animator is what they thought up to surround the scene of their dreams. Enjoy!

Shalen's Rating: This was SO not Lovecraft.
Shalen's Review: It's been a long time since I saw a movie that actually scared me. This is probably because when Sibling 2 was watching She's The Man, I chickened out and ran screaming from the room. This time I was able to take my courage firmly in hand and say to myself, "Don't worry! There won't be any anorexic shrieky blond chicks! Just horribly gory animated human corpses!"

"It's too hyperactive to be scary, but there's just that edge of irrational terror trying to make itself known in the background."

I wasn't completely correct, as it happens. Meg, the female protag — okay, she's not a protagonist, she's an Accessory Female tacked on as girlfriend/motivation who is about as convincing as a med student as Denise Richards was as a nuclear physicist. But at least she's not anorexic. I know this for sure, because we see her completely naked at least once. The scene I describe was, not by coincidence, the freakiest thing I have ever allowed myself to watch.¹ I was trying to bench press and cover my eyes at the same time going "Oh PLEASE don't let that actually happen…" Fortunately, it was interrupted. I used to think scantily clad firearm-wielding women in horror films were a patronizingly sexist concept, but that was before I realized the previous entries in the genre contained things like this. Bring on the Alice and Jill from Resident Evil! Miniskirts! Shotguns! Please! I was that close to becoming a Bloodrayne fan, too, but fortunately I came to my senses just in time.

Justin and Kyle have done a great job of giving an idea/feel for this movie, although I'd disagree with one or two things. The serum pretty much has to be injected into the brain stem (one of the few medically correct things in this movie), unless you want the writhing intestine effect that happens toward the end of the film. And the zombies aren't so much hungry for human brains as they are just homicidally peeved at everything in general. Unlike traditional Romero zombies, they don't seem to be contagious. There is some resemblance to the Lovecraft story on which this film is based, but the Lovecraftian not-quite-telling-everything method has been replaced with exaggerated, drippy gore.

Another thing that deserves a mention is the soundtrack. The music was one of two reasons I watched the whole thing. It has an over-the-top orchestral vibe with repetitive crashing chords, referencing Jaws and traditional horror soundtracks and taking it just that much further. The end result is a vibe akin to that one might achieve by downing six shots of espresso and running through a carnival house of horrors. It's too hyperactive to be scary, but there's just that edge of irrational terror trying to make itself known in the background.

The other reason I finished the movie is Jeffrey Combs' performance as Herbert West. I have to laugh when I try to picture the interview that got him admitted to medical school in the first place. This guy is so obsessed that when (spoiler) he's writhing in the grip of living intestines extending from the headless body of a victim, his first concern is that his partner gets away with his notes.² Combs hits the perfect note of oscillation between absolute chill and frenetic, obsessed activity, the ideal mad scientist. I'd recommend the movie on the strength of his performance and the soundtrack alone.

Of course, it's not exactly for the squeamish. But then, a squeamish person probably shouldn't be reading this review, unless they were just morbidly curious or dutifully reading another mutant's review out of loyalty despite their own revulsion.³ If that's the case, I recommend reading the short stories about West first. They're available online here and elsewhere.

1. I did not watch Evil Dead specifically because of that part with the tree roots.
2. And speaking of said partner, this is not a film for cat lovers, either.
3. Thanks, Lissa!

"What I do to get an A in biology..." Med students: sexy under the white coat When dentists go a little too far in cleaning your teeth

Didja Notice? [some sources: IMDb]

• Memo holders are good for holding heads
• Even with nerves severed, a decapitated head can communicate with its body
• You can be expelled from med school for conducting unorthodox experiments with corpses
• The first man who is re-animated at the morgue was Arnold Schwarzenegger's body double.
• The man sitting next to Meg with his jaw bandaged up is James Cameron's father.

Is It Worth Staying Through End Credits?

No.

Intermission! [some sources: IMDb]

Very loosely adapted from H.P. Lovecraft's "Herbert West - Re-Animator".

The special effects department went through 25 gallons of fake blood during the shoot.

The "brains" in the severed head were made up of steer meat by-products, ground beef and fake blood and when they shot the scene in the autopsy room with the severed head being thrown out the door and then smashing onto the hallway wall, the crew were all behind the cameras with garbage bags over their clothes because no one knew just how much the brains would splatter.

Groovy Quotes

West: Who's going to believe a talking head? Get a job in a sideshow.

Cain: What if we get caught?
West: What'll they do? Embalm us?

West: [about the zombie cat] Don't expect it to tango; it has a broken back.

West: I must say, Dr. Hill, I'm VERY disappointed in you. You steal the secret of life and death, and here you are trysting with a bubble-headed coed. You're not even a second-rate scientist!

If you liked this movie, try these:

• Bride of the Re-Animator
• Beyond Re-Animator
• Dead Alive