Warning: this review may contain spoilers. Yet, the film’s poster, trailer, and DVD cover art are – in a sense – spoilers just the same.
Re-Animator can best be described as a horror/comedy. It borrows the storyline of Frankenstein, adds the essence of Evil Dead, and juices it all up to form a far from mild mid-'80s cocktail. Laughs, blood, and a glowing green reagent compile the script. Brilliant music, ingenuity, and grotesqueness assemble the movie. Even though nothing between the credits is altogether revolutionary, Re-Animator is still a highly entertaining horrific comedy.
When Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs) returns to the United States — after basically combusting a Swiss Professor — he enlists as a student at Miskatonic University. Considering West believes he possesses the secret to life after death, he functions as nothing more than an insubordinate student to his new professor, Dr. Carl Hill (David Gale – no, not the one Kevin Spacey played – instead, the John Kerry look-alike).
Eager to test his solution to “brain death” and prove his professor wrong, West rooms with “one of the best young hopes for the future of medicine,” Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott) and begins to conduct experiments in his basement. After West supplies a black cat with three of its nine lives, Cain is convinced of the power of reincarnation. In turn, Cain begins to devote his time and energy to West’s work. However, when Dean Alan Halsey (Robert Sampson) becomes one of the first “re-animated” human beings, things don’t turn out as planned — especially considering Halsey’s daughter Megan (Barbara Crampton) is Cain’s girlfriend.
In a film that bends genres (horror and comedy), one expects the acting to be over-the-top. While Jeffrey Combs and David Gale are deliciously devilish as the mad scientist and the decapitated professor respectively, Bruce Abbott and Barbara Crampton cause cramps in the dialogue. Both portrayals from the lead couple feel forced and too serious to fit the mold.
Since cheesiness and nonsensicality make this motion picture worthy of praise, Re-Animator is one of those ridiculous features that is unreceptive to unfavorable adjectives. No matter how hard you bash Re-Animator, you simultaneously enjoy it. It is gory, perverse, and insanely inventive. In fact, within the film's final third, you receive an asked for overdose of chuckles and scares.
Re-Animator is as vital part of any horror/comedy collection as a ten-blade is to a surgeon. Buy the “Limited Edition” DVD, display the “hypodermic” highlighter, and join the cult of indebted Re-Animator fans. Just remember: when the feature becomes cheesier than Velveeta and a woman is nearly raped by a severed head, keep Cain’s initial reaction in mind: “This is a dream — fiction.”
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